Earthworks have begun! It's happening!!

Hi all!
So the earthworks have indeed gotten underway, they're really wanting to deliver this slab by Christmas which is phenomenal. 2 days after the fence went up I walked up to the block to see if there was anything happening and sure enough, there was a dude with a bobcat.

The photos are ones I took on my phone so sorry about the quality but as you can see they had built up the back bit with gravel and were starting to cut into the front.

Then yesterday I went up with the in laws to see that they had finished all that and were getting set up to frame the slab! It's all going so quickly, it's amazing.

We're signing a new lease next week for our rental for 6 months and I'm crossing all my fingers that it will be the last lease we ever sign and we'll be able to move directly into our very own house.

Exterior colours

Just an update on the colours of our exterior. Colorbond went and discontinued a heap of their colours which made me angry. Initially I wanted Loft walls and headland roof and both of those colours are gone. In the end I had to make do with this:
Roof, gutters, facsia etc.: Wallaby (new colour)
Walls: Monument
Garage door: Shale Grey

Should look a lot like this:

Long time no post!

Hi Everyone!
I know it's been a while but most of what was happening was too depressing to write about so I'll pick up now. We did end up choosing the second builder and saying good bye to the first. He wasn't happy but we had to do what was right by us.

We had a struggle with the valuation from the bank but after some careful debate with the valuer I managed to get him to increase his valuation and we got our loan approved!

On Monday we signed the contract with the builder! It was just a standard HIA contract, very straightforward. Although we had to sign a variation as well because we made the ensuite a bit bigger and had to allow for the tiling.

We're off to the bank this afternoon to sign the FHOG paperwork and get that sent away and finalize everything for our loan.

I have to go to the block some time this week and tell the neighbors to stop parking on our land unless they want to be hit by a bobcat because the concreter wants to get the slab down by Christmas, meaning groundworks could start any day now! I don't want them to turn up and have issues trying to get them to move their car and I want to give them our details so that if they have any problems they can just call us and if they see anything happening on the site at night or that just shouldn't be happening they can let us know too. Trying to start the whole thing on the right foot.

Finally we can start getting excited again, it's been such a long road to this point and it can only get better from here. I have total faith in the builder we chose and we're looking forward to the following 6 months.



edit:
Just realized I forgot to mention what happened with council.
It went through like 3 days after that last post. I think all up it was 2 working from when I officially lodged the thing until it was approved and it only took that long because the guy was sick the first day. Such a quick and painless process! I highly recommend trying to do a complying development if you can.

Builder Change?

Hi everyone!
So we paid our council fees and we're officially lodged. I got an update this afternoon, one of the great things about the EHC is that your planner can comment directly on the online application, that said the site inspection has been done, everything looks good for complying development and we are a low fire risk. So there shouldn't be any hold up on getting through and the max CDC takes is 10 days. However, our loans manager is away until the first week of August so it will be another month at least before we can build.

So I have also  just had the meeting I've been waiting to have with my builder for a month now! Just not with him. We decided to get a second builder to price our build because while we had pretty much decided our builder, we didn't want to be chumps. A price from a builder means nothing without anything to compare it to. So anyway I met with the second builder today and it was what I'd been trying to get from our original builder. 

He asked all the questions about things that I wasn't sure about and took note of everything. He's picking me up tomorrow and we're going to the block to double check the fall over the build site so he can do an accurate estimate of site costs. 
The guy we WERE going with has always been kind of cruisey about it. He's got a lot of work and we've never seemed to be a priority. He's also more used to architect's plans and people knowing exactly what they want and doing all the planning I think. This new guy asked me about architraves and tiling height and all of that, that's the stuff I have been waiting to be asked because I don't know what's standard and I don't know what's cheaper and no, I hadn't thought about How we'd do the fall in the bathroom with the tiles we'd selected so it was refreshing to have someone actually ask me those questions. 
So we will wait to get both of their tenders and then choose but I have a feeling we're leaning towards the change. Yes, our first builder has put in time and energy to our build but he's been more of a hinderance then a help so far and every time I speak to this new guy I'm reassured that he's organized and ready and he wants our custom.

Lucky we haven't signed any contracts yet so there is nothing officially holding us to anyone. They both have 4 weeks to impress us sufficiently so that we pick them. 

Council Submission Time! My experience with the new EHC; Part 1

Hi everyone!
So i guess today we have some progress. Our engineer managed to get the plans done and delivered them himself which was nice. On that note I headed to council yesterday (with a bit of dread I might add, council is always made out to be this bottomless pit of bureucratic BS with piles of paperwork and miles of red tape).

 Happy to say that it's getting easier! Two days ago they launched the EHC (http://www.ehc.nsw.gov.au/) Which is a new way of submitting to council for approval of exempt and complying development. You go through an electronic form and then submit your plans, engineering and BASIX as pdfs to the website. These get emailed to your council planning office. They then do a cursory check to pick up on things that may need to be altered BEFORE you have formally lodged your plans for consideration. This includes the fact that you may have to convert to a full DA, which are more costly. However, if everything is hunky dory, you just head down to the council to pay your exorbitant fees. Good thing about this is, you can be fairly sure you will get approval and not be wasting the money on something that  will only be rejected. I think more people need to look into complying development and see what they can do to fit within its limitations. It's a much cheaper and quicker process.

Things you could investigate prior to council are the general housing code (http://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/fragview/inforce/epi+572+2008+pt.3+0+N?tocnav=y) this will explain things like your setbacks from front, back and sides. It's a bit wordy but you can find a more broken down version here (http://housingcode.planning.nsw.gov.au/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=o6ZfOapvV_M%3D&tabid=40).

The other red flag to watch out for is bushfire zones! I didn't realize until I went in this time that we are technically in a bushfire buffer zone. This is not the end of the world though, have a look at this website (http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/dsp_content.cfm?cat_id=1009). After getting a headache from attempting to analyse my block and it's position to bush using the Spatial Information Xchange website (http://maps.six.nsw.gov.au/), I came to the conclusion that it is highly likely that we are at most a BAL 12.5 which is very low and will only have some limitations. At best, a BAL low which will probably have none.

One thing that did trip me up was the width of the block at the building line. Our setback is 6m and at that point, the width is 18.3m. This is where we get an issue. See with a width of less then 18m you can stick to the 900mm side setback rules, not worries. However, at 18m+ you have to have a setback of at least 1500mm. Our lowest? 1460. This meant I had to get the draftsman to rotate it slightly away from north again to get the full 1500. Make sure you have all the information before you try to go through your complying development! If we had formally lodged that, it would have cost us approval.

Anyway, now we just have to wait for the planning guy to go through on monday and have another squiz at it all. Now the EHC is pretty good for most things, you don't have to cart in a million copies of plans and certificates for one thing and the interactivity of the forms make them easier to fill out without falling asleep. This does not exempt you from paperwork entirely!

You still need:
-A driveway construction form which needs to include who is doing the concreting and their insurance details.
-A DA approval form! But I'm doing a CDC? Why do I need this? You need to fill out one part of it, the section 68, A and G bit of the form. All that paper for one tiny bit.
-A Water and Sewer application form
-You may need a bushfire risk assessment form, I'm still not sure about whether we do that or council does, will update once I know.

I'll talk about the fees. Our's ended up being a total of $2400 for approximate cost of development at $230,000. This is the biggest cost we have had to shoulder outside of deposits for land etc. Our draftsman was $700 and our engineer was $900. We got a really good deal on both of those things and I think we made a really good choice to go through these things ourselves and get the right people to do them. We have been really lucky to find all the people we have.

This is by no means the end of the council saga, I would like to document the entire process so that someone who is considering NOT going with a project builder might be able to stumble across and have some more info about what's involved.

The best thing I took away from it is council isn't scary, they want to accept your proposal! They don't want to reject it and they want people to do it right the first time. This means that they want you to come and talk to them, interrupt their day and have a chat about what exactly is required. Take notes! You will not remember a word they say after you leave, it's all jargon and riddles.

Hope this helps someone, be back soon with more updates.

Waiting!

Not impressed with the engineering firm. It took 2 weeks for them just to organize the fee proposal and I have had no reply to my request for a completion date. The only reason I'm staying is because they knocked off $600 for having previously viewed the site etc. No doubt it will be another week before they have the engineering plans ready and then, finally, can submit to council.

Holyshit. So many delays. After council there is only one more step which is to get final approval from the bank and then hey, we'll be building! I've said this before though. Oh we only have to get the drawings done and then we're almost there. Oh the drawings are done, won't be long now. Never ends. That is the pain of building! I'm sure as soon as those temporary fences go up, we'll be happy as larks. Until then I continue feeling disgruntled.

Updates

Long time no post! A lot has happened since my last and also a whole lot of nothing as too.
Our land settled on the 3rd of April, this happy event was somewhat overshadowed by the fact that on the 22nd of March, I broke my leg when I came off my push bike. I had surgery to fix the bone internally and was then in plaster for the next 8 weeks. I was hoping I would have the house stuff to keep me occupied.

 Unfortunately we had taken the builders assurances that he and his friend would be doing the plans. This seemed like a good idea at the time until 8 weeks had gone by and I was about to be out of my cast and still, no plans. No ones fault per se, the guy wasn't 'hired' by us or anything and there was no sure then but we had to make an executive decision to bring in a draftsman at that point. I called him and he said $700 and 2 weeks would have it finished and I said done deal. Sure enough, 2 weeks later, the plans are done. Builder came in on Thursday and was still trying to make changes but we had to say no. We've wasted so much time already and it's our first home, no one ever said it would be perfect. Many of the suggestions were non-issues anyway as far as I'm concerned. At any rate we will have hardcopy plans next week. These then have to go to an engineer to design the footings. I have the notes they did for the previously proposed dwelling that were done by the old owners of the block. I'm hoping these will help the engineer and cut some time off the process.

As for the plans https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9vO_9sHCsoxLXhZc0tVaW9rY00/edit?usp=sharing
here is a google docs file for them so you can have a look. I'm excited about the linen storage and the fact that I managed to find space for a whole cupboard in the bathroom. We'll have storage coming out of our ears. I know there isn't a fancy walk in robe but I'm not worried. There should be plenty room for all our clothes and we can have a fancy WIR in the next house we build.

The colorbond I'm planning on is Loft for the cladding and headland for the roof. It will look something like this:

I'm having a love affair with mid century sofas and sideboards at the moment so my plan is to furnish and decorate it in an eclectic-boho-midcentury style.

So that's my updates so far. Next one will probably be when we get the engineering plans back and finally submit to council. Hopefully soon!