4. Site Prep

Excavator Moves In

The first site cut was on 10-Jul-2014.

 The only concern was that the neighbour's tradies kept moving their fence onto my block to put up their trestle to finish the brickwork. The guy driving the bobcat didn't bother moving the fence back, he just excavated inside it so the scrape doesn't go to the site boundary where the garage should be.



The stick with the white top marks the site corner & the added red line shows where the fenceline should more or less be.

The loo was in first, a sure sign they're getting serious:

 

Piers were done at the front section of the slab. I don't really know why the front & not the back, soil reports were the same for all cores on the site. There had been a bit but of rain before this visit & clearly the sandy clay here doesn't drain  too well (contrary to what the developer told me).

The cut at the back surprised me with how deep it was. The land here appeared more or less flat when walking over it. Really hoping they put effective drains in or I'll need to get ducks instead of a dog.

From the SW corner

3. The Land

From Dirt to Ownership

The block is in a reasonably large release on the Bellarine Peninsula. On the inland side it's bound by a golf course & winery.

I signed up around October 2013 and the land was still plain dirt. The expectation from the developer was that it would be titled before Xmas and ready to build by February.

By November they had started putting the infrastructure in - I'm about half way down on the left:


At this point, the delays started. Progress didn't happen, there were some wet periods and then the tradies took off for their Xmas break so work stopped. To add to this, the Victorian government still had not titled the land by the New Year. By March, the land had been cleaned up, crossovers put in (on the wrong side of the blocks, ensuring the garages got the winter sun), lighting and trees in place. Quite a nice job. The entire development is optic fibre for all TV, phone and data, so we should keep quite a clean look.

By April the services were in and some spring rain had put a nice green cover over it all. The land was still not titled, so the frustration continues with the government.

Can anyone tell me what trees these are & how they'll look in ten years?

Bit of a bummer that they terminated all of the services for the street right in front of my block - I'm the only one who doesn't get a tree. It also made it far too expensive to move the crossover so that the garage was on the south of the block.

The Purchase Process

The land was finally titled in May 2014 - five months late. Apparently the main villain was the electricity authority. I was finally able to engage a solicitor and get buy the land.

I was lucky to find a good local solicitor. Being new at all this, the process was a complete mystery to me and anyone in the chain could have stuffed me around. From titling by the government, you are not given a lot of time to complete the purchase, usually either seven or 14 days. 

It was all resolved on the allotted day, with a bit of drama. The developer's legal people turned up pretending we had never sent them copies of the contract etc (not true!), so there was a lot of last minute emailing of very large pdf's, together with some vigorous threats made on my behalf. 

2. Colours

The 'Colours' Appointment

Doing the colours always seems a pivotal moment for new home builders. This is generally the first time visiting the builders HO and first real contact with the pre-start consultant, who holds your hand all the way through every process until building starts. It's also decision time - you have to make most of the decisions to determine the look & feel of your home. 

This would be a different experience with a volume builder than if you had an architect, where you can pick & choose from any source. In my case, like so many others, you're limited to the materials, brands & colours that the builder has on offer. It is possible to source from a 3rd party but from what I've seen, it's quite a pain - certainly not something the builder wants to encourage. They do this as much for containing risk as anything else. Putting in a 3rd party dependency which the builder doesn't directly control adds schedule risk, cost risk, quality risk not to mention the legal liability issues. I don't much like it, but I can see why they do it.

Colour Selection Process

I've been very lucky so far with my contacts at Boutique. My sales & pre-sales people, Dale & Rolinka have been terrific. With bigger companies, it's luck of the draw if you get good people allocated to your job or not, so touch wood for the next phases. 

Let me start by saying I'm just not really into the light & bright obsession that seems to dominate magazines & a lot of design drivers. Perhaps it because I'm prone to migranes from bright light or maybe I just like it dark & cozy. I might sacrifice some sense of space but the rooms all seem plenty big enough for me as is.

For those not familiar with the process, you get one appointment, morning selectinmg the colours and after lunch selecting electricals (socket & switch placement, lighting, etc). Boutique have a pretty good set of options with some notable exceptions (more later on this).

It's all a bit helter-skelter. There are others in there at the same time & it's quite a rush to get through all of the selection topics within the time constraint. There are also constraints placed on the development by the developer, eg I have to have low profile roof tiles & you there can't be more than two(?) houses in the same street with the same facade & design. How you're supposed to do that without seeing everyone else's plans ahead of time, I don't know. Guidelines for fencing & minimum trees etc in the front yard are very specific & extensive, at least where I'm building. eg a double-garage is mandatory, regardless of size of block or actual need.

Exterior Choices

Options for things like bricks, renders, garage doors etc were very standard new-devlopment fare. 

Exterior Selections

Flooring

I'm quite allergic to dust mites so no carpet at all for me. I went in set on selecting a bamboo floor - solid wood was a bit beyond the budget I had set myself. I was dissapointed at the poor choice of bamboo floors available, only two & I didn't like either. Surprised that Boutique said they get very little demand for bamboo. I reluctantly settled on a laminate floor throughout, but quite like the colour & texture. 

Kitchen Materials

Paints

Boutique use Solver paints, so that's the choice. Solver have no merged with Wattyl but for some reason, you can't choose Wattyl.

I went with a dark grey-blue for most walls in the house. Ceiling & skirting birds will be white. Boutique don't do feature walls, so I might paint an odd wall here & there myself later on for a bit of variety. I selected a light colour for bed 2 & bed 3, and a darkish grey for the music room walls.

A couple of months later I found a Solver dealer & got some sample pots to paint up some larger cards. Happy with the colours except for the music room grey, which turned out to be a paper-bag brown colour, not grey at all. I was able to select a different colour, test it & got it changed in the contract in time to avoid the variation fee.

I'll take some pics of the sample cards & insert them here.

Bathroom Finishes

The feature strip is a bit misleading in this pic, it's only two of those mini-tiles wide & runs the full height of the shower tiling (floor to ceiling), all the rest of the tiling will be the black (there I go again!).

1. Starting Up

Firstly, a bit of setup. I'm writing this blog mainly for family & friends to follow my home build experience. I've found some really building handy tips from  blogs of others who have recently been through this process and will be happy if anyone gets a few insights out of my journey.

Carl 

Finding Where to Live

I started looking for a block outside of Geelong in late 2014. Torquay was a bit expensive, the blocks on sale in Ocean Grove were far enough back from the beach that it was just like being in the suburbs anywhere, the huge Armstrong Creek development is a convenient location but I didn't like any blocks that were available at the time. 

I ended up on the Bellarine Peninsula, not far from Drysdale. It's a less congested feel, Port Philip bay is 1km away, the area is surrounded by golf courses and wineries, so quite a nice feel. I don't have a view of the water - there were blocks with views available for extra $ but the water is likely to be lost as soon as the houses go up around them in the next couple of years. Hopefully the area will retain much of the current feel once all the homes are built in the new development areas.

Selecting a Builder & Design

I quickly narrowed down builders to 3 or 4 and then spent quite a bit of time looking into options & pricing, ending up settling on Boutique Homes. I started with a Venice 26 design, here's the original plan:

Modifying the Plan

The front of the house faces a little north of East (typical Victorian compass skew), so the plan below gets the winter sun on the bottom side in this view. We had to swap the front rooms around as the developer put the street crossovers along the whole street on the north of each block (stupid!). My block has the service terminations for the street so too expensive to get them to change it.

• I got rid of the dead space in the 2nd passageway
• Home theatre became home office. I can never understand why so many designs have the master bedroom closest to the street - I want quiet.
• Enlarged Bed4 & turned it into a music room. 
• With the front room flip, the bathroom moved towards the front & the both the loo & Bed2 also moved to the other side. By moving the loo away from the outside wall, I also recovered enough space to give Bed2 a walk-in-robe (guitar case storage!). Also added additional linen & broom cupboards.

Here is what it ended up as:

Now to get the block of land sorted so that the build can start.