Thursday 28 June 2012

Rain, rain, go away!








Just a quick update - the rain in Melbourne is likely to cause some delays with our framing. We haven't been able to get out and have a look at what's been done since last week, but will go out tomorrow.

We did ask our SS for an update today, because we hadn't heard from him in over a week. Hoping to have framing completed by the end of next week.

Monday 25 June 2012

And the framing begins

The following Wednesday night we went out to the site to see what had been done since the weekend. It was dark when we got there, so our photos didn't come out too good. But basically, there were piles and piles of timber planks and timber sheeting, ready to be put up over the next few days.


The night before there was an earthquake in eastern Victoria that was felt in Metropolitan Melbourne. Our little apartment in one of the many high rises in Melbourne CBD shook a little, and then swayed some more. When it was over, we both thought about our slab and wondered whether that was safe.


It was. Our trip out there on Wednesday night confirmed it. Our house has already survived an earthquake!


We went back out in the weekend and spent some time studying the frame and getting a sense of the different rooms of the ground floor:


Ground floor getting framed up



Looking from the front of the house



Looking from the Alfresco towards the living area


That basically brings our blog up to date!

We can't wait to see the framing for upstairs. I'm sure if it wasn't so dark by the time we got home from work we would be out there every night trying to see if anything new had been done. It's almost as though we don't want to miss any of it.

Framing is supposed to be finished by the end of the week, depending on weather. And Melbourne (like Auckland) is known to have four seasons in one day.


We are currently doing some research on independent inspectors so that we can book in a few inspections along the way. We are also due to meet our SS for the first time when the frame stage is finished. We would have expected to meet our SS much earlier in the process.

SLABBED!

Our SS called again the following week to let us know that the slab would be poured on Thursday. Gosh, things really were moving fast!

We went out the following Saturday, and this is what greeted us:


We could see our Garage, our front porch, the little extension for the fireplace provision, and the Alfresco. It's pretty exciting to see it coming up before your very eyes after so many long nights and weekends planning.

It was great to see the other houses coming up around us as well - our future neighbours. I wonder if we'll have any street parties! And it was also good to know that there are some other double storey homes coming up.

Within a few days we had site start and the base stage completed.

We got a call from our SS the following Monday and he confirmed that the frame stage was due to start the following week, with completion estimated by the end of the week after.

But before we got to that stage (which also happens to be current day, so our blog is finally in real time), we had a large invoice to pay to Carlisle.

Site Start!!

We got a call from our CLE a couple of weeks after sending in the signed contracts advising us that they were about to start on our site.

A couple of days later, our Site Supervisor (SS) called to introduce himself. It was a Thursday afternoon. He said that they were looking to pour the slab by the end of the following week.

How excited were we!!

We headed out to see our block on the Saturday and saw that the site scrape had been done, and we could make out the shape of the ground floor perimeter.


Site scrape - front view




Site scrape - rear view


We were really excited just by seeing this.

We spent most of the weekend thinking about the house and picturing different rooms and how we wanted them to look. And then we realised that our house has actually started. And things would move fast.

Back to planning mode - more phone calls, emails, and driving around...

Nothing more to do

More than a year after we started the process of looking at blocks of land, house designs, bricks, tiles, carpets and taps, we were finally at a place where all our hard work and perseverence was contained in a few bound documents.

It's a strange feeling getting to this point, because all of a sudden the one thing that took up every spare minute we had was suddenly all done and dusted.

After sending back the signed contract, we still looked through the documents, just in case we picked up on any errors.

We raised two more queries with our CLE. We requested for our glass splashback to be in one piece, and we wanted to confirm that the toilets we were getting were of a standard size. We didn't really spend too much time looking at the toilet options when at Spectra, because we assumed that we would be getting something of a standard size. We just confirmed that what was in the display homes was what we would be getting.

So there was really nothing more for us to do in relation to design and selections. It was now up to Carlisle and the contractors to do their thing...


Sunday 24 June 2012

Contract Signing


In true form with the rest of the process, contract signing did not go smoothly.

Some time between our post-contract variations and our actual contract, our CLE changed.

We received our documents in the mail - we were very excited and waited to get home from work and settle down on the couch before we opened the big envelope. We started to go through each document carefully, but it didn't take long for us to notice that there were errors, again. We kept going, Post-it Tabs at the ready, and marked up all of the errors. There were qutite a few.

We called our CLE promptly the next morning. We tried to be nice about it (but made sure she knew that we were getting frustrated) and to her credit she was very understanding. We talked about the errors over the phone, but then we decided that we would need to go back to Carlisle and sort everything out face to face. That would be the only way to get the contract resolved.

Our land was sitting pretty and we wanted to put a house on it!

So we requested a meeting with our CLE. By the time we got an appointment, it was early May.

We sat down with our CLE and her team leader for a few hours and used our marked up version of the original contract to explain each and every item that needed to be fixed. There were a few more issues that our CLE raised that they had never mentioned before (like the fireplace provision that they had quoted us for and drawn up was actually not what we were getting... go figure!).

There was no paperwork to sign at this meeting - we all thought it would be best if Carlisle updated everything and sent us all of the final documents to sign.

A few days later, we received the final contract documents. Of course we went through every little detail again, but this time we were actually able to sign everything off and send it back to Carlisle.

Post-contract Variations

Our Tender signing appointment was just before the Christmas break, so things quietened down a bit for a few weeks while we got through the Christmas/New Year period.

In mid-January, our land settled. That was exciting as the developer had delayed titling for a few months.

Towards the end of January our CLE got back in touch with us to arrange our Contract appoinment.

Over the Christmas break we worked on our electricals and had an appointment with Argus Technologies. The electrical plans were coming together nicely and were pretty much ready to go when our CLE called. Some of the things we discussed with Argus Technologies impacted our building contract with Carlisle, so we had to make a few more amendments (such as sound insulation to the Theatre Room, and shifting the Return Air vent out of the Theatre).

So there were more emails to/from our CLE. And after so many checks of the Tender documents, we were still finding errors and omissions. We typed up all of the problems and sent a long email to our CLE. After a few more emails and phone calls, we finally felt like all of the changes and confirmations we requested had finally been addressed.

These changes were included in our Post Contract Variations document. There was nearly 3 pages of variations - some of them were clarifications for things that were inconsistent between the different documents, and others were things that Carlisle had omitted.

After signing off on the variations, Carlisle said that they would post us all final contract documents, including the engineering plans, colour schematics, colour selections, tender, and variations.

We waited about 6 weeks or so for these to come through because the engineering drawings weren't finalised...

More phone calls, emails, and questions for our CLE

Our CLE emailed our tender documents to us because they weren't able to update some of our sketches or finalise our electricals at our Tender appointment.

It is very important to go through all of these documents when you get them. Keep all your correspondence, notes, details of colour choices etc with you when you're doing this. We found that there were many things that had either been changed or omitted from the time we were at Tender to the time we received the documents. It also pays to check things a few times when your CLE changes (as ours did twice).

The changes and omissions were very frustrating, because it really meant that we couldn't trust any of the documents and really had to look at every little detail. This also meant numerous trips back to the display home and Spectra to make sure we had model numbers etc correct.

There was a long chain of emails back and forth between us and our CLE to ask them why things had been changed or omitted, how our selections could have changed within a matter of days when we hadn't asked for anything to be changed, and how they could change things without telling us. There were several doors that we wanted as CSD that were confirmed at Tender that ended up not being possible (for structural integrity). But our CLE never explained why these things had been changed, and that was annoying.

During the Tender process it really hit home that we couldn't let the builder run the process - this was our house and we had to make sure we were getting what we wanted. It's not that Carlisle were overly pushy or anything. There were just moments when we felt like they were saying 'she'll be right mate' but weren't willing to understand how important some of the changes were to us.

There was also the issue of finalising our electrical requirements. Our contract with Carlisle would onlly include lighting and power points. All other wiring, TV points, phone points etc was to be provided by Carlisle's electrical partner, Argus Technologies.

Drawing up our lighting and power point configuration took a lot of time. Included in our considerations were:
  • How many lights per room?
  • Downlights or batten points?
  • Do we need any noggins to allow for ceiling fans or feature lighting?
  • How would we switch these lights?
  • Do we need any two-way switches?
  • How many power points do we need in each room?
  • Does the kitchen have enough power points?

Anyway, after a few weeks of emails, long nights of sorting through information, and a few packs of Post-it Tabs, we finally got everything sorted out. We went back into Carlisle's office to go through the Tender documents again and signed them there.

Another step closer to site start...

Saturday 23 June 2012

Structural Variations


We didn't want to knock down any walls or extend any rooms. All we wanted to do was add a few doors and change the staircase.

The Theatre Room wasn't closed off, so we asked for a cavity sliding door (CSD) to be put in. The ground floor of the house has high ceilings and doors, but unfortunately they weren't able to give us the higher CSD for the Theatre Room because the bulkhead above the doors wasn't big enough. We didn't mind this too much because the doors will be left open most of the time.

We also added a door to the Master Bedroom to close off the Ensuite.

And we changed one of our Meals windows to a glass CSD to improve the indoor/outdoor flow from the Alfresco.

The staircase upgrade was one of the biggest changes, but also is one of those things that changes the whole look of the house and opens it up a bit more. We changed from the standard carpeted stairs to a timber staircase with open treads. We've gone for a dark stain - Walnut - to contrast against the white floor tiles downstairs and the browny-grey carpet upstairs. We can't wait to see this part of the house when it's completed.

We also got our fridge space extended a little bit to allow a bit of a buffer for a double-door fridge.

We would have liked to extend the Garage width and add a roller door to the rear, but our lot width didn't allow this.

We added evaporative cooling throughout, and also asked for a fireplace provision to be put in so that we could put a fireplace in later. This involved an extension to the brickwork and foundation, plus a plaster projection on the inside wall.

As we said at the beginning, we chose this house because we already liked the floor plan the way it was. Aside from adding a few doors and upgrading the staircase, we didn't make any other significant structural changes.

Tender

After selecting our colours and internal items, we turned our attention back to electricals, and worked on this until we got to our tender appointment.

Our tender appointment went well, although the Client Liaison Executive (CLE) that we had thought that it was going to a be a long, tough day. The people at Carlisle really had their work cut out for them throughout the whole process, because we didn't just accept everything that they wanted to include in (or omit from) the contract. So we kept them busy, but that also meant that we were flat out trying to make sure we thought about every little (and big) thing that went into the home.

We finalised our colour selections and were happy with them all. We spoke about our electrical requirements, which still hadn't been sorted out. If you've read our Electricals page, you'll have a better understanding of why Carlisle couldn't provide what we wanted and why they sent us to their electrical 'experts'.

We had also discussed a few minor structural changes over email with our CLE, and these were all pencilled onto our plans and included in the tender.

Overall, we compromised on a few cosmetic things, but stuck with the changes that were more important and functional. There are a couple of indulgences in there but overall, we'd like to think that what we've added will make the house a comfortable, practical home.

At the end of the day, we had basically had a tender that included everything we wanted, except for a few structural changes, and most of our electricals.

Fittings

Aside from choosing colours, the other selections we made were as follows:


Bathroom, Ensuite, and Powder Room Hand Basins - Lucerne Round Inset Vitreous Basin and Alder Nuova Mixer Tap/Wall Plate:






Shower Tapware - Alder Moda Round Microphone Rail Shower:






Stove and Oven - Techika TU950TME8:


Rangehood - Technika FHEE22A9S:


Diswasher:



Hafele Waste Bins:


Methven Kitchen Mixer Tap:


Kitchen, Bathroom, and Ensuite Cabinet and Drawer Handles - Lincoln Sentry Valentino:

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Internal Door Handles:




That's most of the bigger items. Pics of other things will no doubt pop us as the story goes along.

Inside Story

Choosing colours and materials for the inside of the house was a lot more time consuming and required a lot more research. We wanted the house to have an open, spacial feel, so we immediately thought of light colours and simple materials with clean lines. But we also didn't want to be too safe with our colour choices so that we could give the house more of a modern look.

This is what we came up with after all our research and two colour selections appointments:

Flooring:
Titan Laminate Flooring - NSW Spotted Gum

Carpet - Quest Sunday Dawn with Platinum Underlay



The laminate flooring will cover the main living areas (kitchen, family, meals), with carpet to all other rooms downstairs, and all of upstairs. We will also have large tiles from the front door through the entry hall, which will meet the laminate flooring towards the rear of the house.


Tiles:

Monument Ivory Floor Tiles 600x600 with Misty Grey Grout


It's a bit hard to get the real look and feel of these tiles from the pic above, but they are basically large porcelain tiles with a slightly off-white look and a high gloss finish. We decided to upgrade our floor tiles to the 600x600 size. These will run from the front door to the main living area downstairs, and in all other wet areas.

Bathroom and Ensuite Feature Tiles - Dimensions Black 300x300 with Charred Ash Grout


Again, the pic isn't doing this tile justice... These tiles are charcoal, with a bit of texture and shine. They'll go on one wall of each of the showers.

Wall, Bath Hob, and Vanity Tiles - Gloss Stone 300xwith Mud Berry Grout



After all the fuss with tiles at our colour selections appointments, we actually ended with quite safe tiles, but we also had a specific look in mind for each of the Bathroom, Ensuite, and Powder Room. The vanity tiles for the Bathroom and Ensuite are the smaller 200x300 tiles, slightly off white.



We've opted for nicer vanity tiles in the Powder Room, because this is the room that our guests will use. The wall behind the vanity will have small silver mirrored tiles, right around the mirror.

We're hoping to accessorise the Bathroom and Ensuite with colour, so that the light tiles don't make the rooms look too white.

Kitchen:

It was important for us to get the kitchen right. We wanted it to feel light and bright, but also be practical and easy to work with.

Caesarstone - Organic White (40mm edge)


Laminex Cabinets and Pot Drawers to Island Bench - Ebony Macassar (laid vertical)


Laminex Cabinet and Drawers & Wine Rack - Bleached Reed (laid vertical)



Perspex Overhead Cupboards - Caffe Latte
Starfire Glass Splashback - Alecon Lace

We also got :
  • Hafele Soft Close to all of the Kitchen drawers
  • Cushion Doorstops throughout
  • Flyscreens throughout
  • Locks to all openable windows
  • 3 remote controls for the Garage Door
  • Fireplace provision to the Family Room
  • Additional Extractor Fan in the Laundry

Bathroom, Ensuite, & Powder Room:

Bathroom Caesarstone - Jet Black



Bathroom Laminex - Bleached Reed



Ensuite Caesarstone - Ice Snow



Ensuite Laminex - Ebony Macassar




Powder Room Caesarstone - Jet Black


Feature Walls:

We decided to get a couple of areas done as part of the build.

Theatre Room walls - Dulux Toffee Fingers


Fire Place Feature Wall - Dulux Doe



Laundry:

Benchtop & Overhead Cabinets - Laminex Milano Walnut



Base Cabinets - Lamiex Bleached Reed


 
Internal walls - Dulux White on White
Skirtings, Architraves, and Cornices - Dulux Lexicon
Internal Doors - Dulux Lexicon
Ceiling - Lexicon

Staircase stain - Cabot's Interior Stain in Walnut

That's pretty much it!! It's funny, when we were doing all this it seemed like there were so many things to choose and get right. When you put them down on paper (or blog), it all comes into perspective and seems much easier to manage.

External Colours

Our external colour selections will hopefully give the house a warm, modern look. There were a few developer guidelines that we had to keep in mind, but none of them restricted us from choosing the colours and materials that we wanted.

Bricks - Boral Horizon Naturals Brown Terrain (with rolled ironed mortar in off-white):









Roof Tiles - CSR Monier Horizon Profile in Barramundi:











Feature Render Colour 1 - Dulux Pale Earth:



Feature Render Colour 2 - Dulux Yarwood:



Rear Cladding - Dulux Snuggle Pie:



Gutters, Fascias, Downpipes, Flashing - Colorbond Monument
Aluminium Window and Door Frames, Flyscreens, and Garage Door - Colorbond Dune



Double glazing throughout (mostly to meet energy rating requirements).

Front Door (Double) - Corinthian Madison PMAD104 in Colorbond Dune with Translucent Galzing:



Garage Door - Gliderol with Tuscan Profile in Dune (sectional panel lift):



Balcony Tiles - Lifestyle Saltbush Textured 400x400 with Travertine Grout:






Some of our front facade colours together:



We really liked Brown Terrain so choosing our bricks was quite easy. We didn't really think about it much more. The other colours on the front facade were inspired by some of the display homes we saw. Yarwood is a very dark grey, it can sometimes look dark purple. This will be used on a feature of the facade so hopefully it won't look too dark. The lighter garage door in Dune should provide enough of a contrast.

I love the name of the rear cladding colour - Sunggle Pie. It actually is a very warm and fuzzy colour. We wanted the rear cladding (which covers the rear section of the top floor) to blend in nicely with the bricks, and Snuggle Pie was a good pick without making it look like we were trying to match the brick exactly but couldn't.

Hopefully everything works well together...

Friday 22 June 2012

Colour Selections - Take 2


This is where the fun really begins...

Many of the selections that we made at our first colour selections appointment didn't need to be changed. These were things such as brick colour, roof tiles, gutters, window frames, all painted areas, cladding etc. What did need to be changed was tiles throughout, Cesarstone and Laminex, and a few smaller (but equally as important) items.

In the weeks between colour selections 1 and 2, there were numerous emails and phone calls back and forth between us and our deisgn consultant (DC) and client liaison executive (CLE). For the most part, they were both helpful and willing to accept that our first go at choosing colours wasn't as satisfying as it should have been. There was a bit of negotiating involved on both sides, and it got frustrating at times, but we refused to back down on what we really wanted. Because at the end of the day, building a home is not cheap, and you will be the one living in it and seeing all of those colours and selections every day...

At each stage of the selections process (from land to house to selections) we focused our blog and forum research on different things. During the colour selections stage we picked up loads of tips from others who were going through our had been through the same process. The wealth of knowledge available online is invaluable.

Our second colour selections appointment was much easier and satisfying. We had a different DC, who came across as being more experienced and offered her advice and design tips (which is what we wanted all along). She helped make the selections much easier, and didn't hesitate to pull out the options lists and find photos for us to help us visualise things a bit better.

We went over all of the selections from our first appointment, just to confirm, and found that some of our selections had been noted down wrong... We got all of this fixed up along the way. It pays to check these things several times to make sure there are no mistakes.

Selecting tiles, benchtops, and vanities was much easier this time round. We also ended up changing our laminate floors because a new product had come out since our last appointment. And our new DC also pointed out certain upgrades that were included in our promotion that we weren't aware of, so we went with those as well.

The few posts will give you an idea of the selections we made. We're looking forward to your comments!

Sunday 17 June 2012

Tiles

One of the main areas that we wanted guidance in from our Design Consultant was tiling in the bathroom, ensuite, and powder room. Not so much the floor tiles, but the vanity and feature tiles.

Examples of some of the display bathrooms and ensuites we'd been to gave us some good ideas:







So we spent almost a full day at Beaumont Tiles picking out different colour schemes and seeing what sort of feature tiles we could put together. The entire range in their showroom is labelled so that you can see which tiles fall into the different ranges (standard vs upgrade) that the builder provides.

The staff are quite helpful, and you can be left alone to try out different things without them following you around. They also have a really handy simulation program that lets you try out different looks in different rooms. We wrote down the item codes of the tiles we liked, and were able to look them up again on Beaumont Tiles' website.

We also went out and had another look at Boral for bricks, Monier for tiles, and Cesarstone for the kitchen bench.

By this time we had also made another colour selections appointment, with a different Design Consultant, and we felt more confident with our choices.





Saturday 16 June 2012

Colour Selections - Take 1



Selecting the internal and external colours, fabrics, and materials should be fun, right?

Definitely. But sometimes it can get tedious and frustrating. And at other times, what worked well in your mind doesn't work well at all!

The display homes that we had visited gave us a good starting point, and hubby and I were lucky that for a few of the bigger selections, we were on the same wavelength.

We went into Spectra (Carlisle's colour selections centre) on our own one weekend to get an idea of what they had. As we've said in previous posts, its definitely worth visiting product suppliers' own display centres prior to making colour selections, because the range at Spectra is limited. If you don't really know what you're looking for, the colour selections centre will only give you limited choices.

It was well worth the visit, and it was nice to be left to have a look around on our own and in our own time. Even though they don't hold the full range of colours and styles available for each product that you are selecting, what they do have gives you a good enough starting point to then build on and play around with.

You can take away samples of laminates and paints, and take photos of everything else, and there is also the option to view the detailed list of inclusions of their display homes.

A few weeks later, we had our 'first' colour selections appointment. We were really looking forward to it, and felt quite well prepared. We had ideas in terms of general colour schemes for different rooms, and thought that we would draw on the advice and expertise of the Design Consultant to help fill in the blanks and challenge us to think outside the square.

It didn't exactly go to plan...

Not because the products and showroom were lacking in anything, but because we thought we'd be getting a lot more guidance from our Design Consultant than we actually got. We found that she didn't really give us any guidance or advise us of other options that were available to us. She  was lovely, but seemed disinterested in the whole process.

By the end of the day, we had selections down for everything that needed to be chosen, but we weren't entirely satisfied with some (a lot) of those selections. In particular, we weren't happy with the tile selections for the entry, bathroom, ensuite, powder room, and laundry. They were very safe - everything was white, cream, or beige. We didn't mind experimenting with colour, but we weren't made aware of our options.

It was a good experience to go through the process though - ike a trial run. We requested another colour selections appointment, and this time, we'd be much better prepared.