The Time Is Near...

Countdown to:

Colour/Interiors Appointment: 4 days

Contract Signing: 7 days

Tile Appointment: 14 days

Approximate Site Start: 9 weeks


Well, nothing major has happened since the last post. We've just been going over and over our tiles and colors and door designs and cupboard designs and I think we've pretty much got everything figured out. Hopefully these appointments wont take long, as we've heard they can go for hours! I've also found out our CSC is an extremely hard person to get in contact with. I sent an email regarding some queries I had, but still havent got a reply yet, and that was 5 days ago! I rang the office this morning and apparently they're sick and will be back tomorrow. *sigh*

We spent a few hours at National Tiles on Saturday looking at tiles that we liked, speculating on whether we should have feature tiles in the bathrooms and showers and which tiles were upgrades etc. We then spent yesterday going to random display homes (mostly looking at the bathroom and what tiles and designs they've used for the vanity) but also looking at what colours go together in other rooms of the house, and ideas for the backyard. Both were pretty good exercises as we saw a few nice bathrooms with designs we liked, and got a few ideas on what we can do with the other rooms in our home.

Ugh.. Tender...

Well, we finally made it to tender, only to find out that having a pre-approval from the bank (which our mortgage broker said was ok) wasnt enough of a guarantee that we were serious about building, and we are going to have to pay 3% of the quoted price up front!! Apparently, no other builder does this except the one we're building with! Hrmm.. I feel like we're being jibbed..

Anyways, we added all our structural variations and upgrades and it didnt come up too badly. Our site costs, which we thought were going to be sky high, only came up around $900 more than what we were quoted which was great! This included an upgrade to the concrete slab as well, so I guess that was pretty good. At the moment, our structural variations include:

• upgrade concrete slab to "H-Class" slab
• upgrade to higher door height for all room doors
• added cupboards to both sides of the rangehood
• added pot drawers
• added a cupboard to the top of fridge space
• widened fridge space to 950mm
• added a door to the ensuite and rumpus
• changed the window size of two bedrooms
• changed bi-fold doors leading to proposed alfresco area to french doors

I think that's about it off the top of my head.

Next up is our colour appointment in about a week. I'm talking wall colours, bricks, roof tiles, door, locks, handles, cupboards, garage door, front door, sinks, taps etc etc.. you name it, we have to pick it.. argh.. Then about a week after that is our tile appointment. I'm still not ready!! :) And what about the upgrades that we might pick?

Oh dear.. what have I gotten myself into?