Week 2 - Frame and Roof Trusses

We have been told this week will be a slower week than our first and that it looks like not much is happening but it is.

This week our frame has been completed, all the walls are up and we have walked through to make sure everything is where it should be. We have noticed that there is not frame up to the entry of the study. The original plans have the study open as you walk in the front door however we have closed ours in using sliding doors as we need a closed in office space and we also didn't like that when people fist walk in the home, the first thing they can see is computer equipment and printers etc.

We have been told that there are a few small things that need correcting with the frame, so we are hoping that this is one of them. We will watch this over the next week and make sure its fixed and has been picked up already.

We have also had our roof trusses go on this week, now it really looks like a house, what a big space the roof is.

One thing we have noticed now that we have a frame up is that our alfresco area is much bigger than we originally thought. We are now deciding if we build onto it as much as we had planned after handover or maybe we just build out another 3 meters instead of wrapping it around the house, which was our original plan.

Next week we have been told that we will have our first onsite meeting with our supervisor. We have also been told that the roof will be on by the end of next week.

Frame complete and roof trusses are on - Front the back of the house

Frame and roof trusses - from the front of the house

Week 1 - Plumbing, Slab and Frame

We turned up on the 20th June as today was the day our slab was starting. We have said from the very beginning, we wont believe this is real until the slab is down, so its a big thing for us.

We could see all the plumbing was is and we had a surprise lot of our bricks sitting there too. Not enough for the whole house but a few pallets.

This was pretty cool to see as we could now see and visualise where things will be in the house.

The next day on the 21st June, we drove by again to see that the concretors had been there and that all the waffle pads were in ready for the slab to be poured. Again this was great because we can now the size of our home and how it is placed on the land.

On the 22nd June, Slab was down!
The day is finally here, we have a slab, foundations of our home has been laid and this journey is about to begin. We took the kids and had dinner and champaign (soft drink for the kids) at the block to celebrate. It looks huge!

Friday 23rd June. Today we were told by our supervisor that the frame will arrive today and that the frame will go up on Monday. Wow we could not believe that this part is happening so fast. We were told that the chippy would be onsite today to probably receive and may lay the frame out ready to start at 7am on Monday morning. I drove by late afternoon to see if the frame had been delivered and to my shock and absolute surprise we almost drove by not realising it was out block. Our frame was UP. I think it was safe to say that the frame was delivered. The Chippy was there and all the wall frames were up and he was just finishing off the the day. I couldn't believe it.

What a great 1st week of building. to think this time last week we had an empty block and now we can actually see our house take shape. Pretty exciting.

We have been told that next week the chippy will be back to finish off the frame and that the roof trusses will also be put on next week.

Plumbing

Waffle Pads


Slab


Frame


Frame

Site Scrape

Site scrape  - 7th June 2017

We have had a call from our Site Supervisor, to introduce himself and let us know that our site scrape will happen on the 14th June and that our slab is booked in for the 20th June. Finally, we are staring.

Much to our surprise, our supervisor called back the next day to let us know that the site cut has been moved forward to the 7th June, however, the slab is still booked in for the 20th.

Driving by our land on the 7th June, we are now able to see that the site scrape has been completed and we are feeling pretty excited that we can see progress, even though only small, it's the first part of our physical build and we can't wait.

From Admin to Construction

Now that we officially own the land, Plantation homes have now completed the site and soil test and lodged our plans to council.

We have received an email from the building certifier that Plantation has contracted to let us know that they will be the building certifier at our lot and also it states #12. Yay, we have an actual house number now. 

Given we are building to the boundary on our left side of the property, Plantation supplied us with a form we needed to get signed from our adjoining neighbor for permission to carry out works on their land to build the garage as it is on the boundary of our lands. Given we didn't know who our neighbors were we sent the form to Stockland and asked them to forward it on to the neighbors to sign and send back to us so Plantation could start. because of privacy laws, Stockland could not give our the neighbors details to us directly. Basically, if we don't get the form signed Plantation are not able to step on site and makes our build difficult. 

2 weeks later we still had not heard from the neighbors so we called Stockland to make sure the definitely sent the form to them where I was told that they girl who would have sent it was on leave but they could actually give me the contact details of the neighbor as it was a builder and not a private home owner. I called the builder and within 1 hour I have the signed form back and submitted to Plantation. 

From our view, this was pretty annoying as Stockland could have given us that info 2 weeks ago and we would not be held up like we are now with the building. 

With this form now filled in, Planation were able to finalise our contract variations and site plans.

Land Registration and Settlement

When we purchased the land back on the 1st October 2016, we were told that our land is due for registration in February 2017.

Early February, we received an email from Stockland to say that "we are still on track for an early March registration". I was a little confused as we were told February and we have heard nothing since, only this email that states early February. We thought maybe we heard the dates wrong originally and whilst a bit bummed, we excepted it and eagerly awaiting early Feb.

Come mid Feb, we received an email again from Stockland now stating "we are still on track for end of February registration". I called Stockland to find out what was going on and they told me on the phone that they are waiting for some final sign offs and would keep me posted.

Come 24th February, I open my email from Stockland titled "An important update on your land", Yahooo its finally time....NOT! yet another "We are still anticipating registration to occur in Mid-March."
Now we are wondering if this is actually ver going to happen.

By now we are just going with the flow, as Dan points out, we are not yet paying mortgage repayments so lets just leave and not push the situation. 

Finally 29th March 6 months after we signed the contracts to a piece of dirt, we get the email "Your lot has registered".

We quickly cal the builder to let them know it has registered and we hear from our Solicitors to let us know that settlement has been booked in for 12th April 2016. Attached to this email is a breakdown of final costings that the solicitors will be paying on settlement day. I check it al off and notice that our part of the final payment is 3K more than we were originally told by our finance. This is 3K that we should have in our bank as our remaining deposit. We are 3K short!

I call Rams who are our finance and after much back and forward it seems there were extra things that were not added on in the initial costing breakdown. Soooo, yep we need to come up with 3K within 2 days before settlement. We did not have this so needed to extend settlement by 2 weeks so we could get this extra together. 

We finally get this outstanding amount together from our pays and we settled on on 19th April at 4:00pm. Yay, that piece of Sunshine Coast dirt officially belongs to us.

We get a letter from Rams to say our first mortgage repayment will be on the 1st May. Things are serious now and we couldn't be happier.

Here are some pics of our land and our street from the footpath in front of our soon to be home. 
Also Dan and I and our youngest having a celebration.

Valuation

What a bloody stressful 3 weeks we have had.

Our valuation was booked in for the 17th January. Becuase we have purchased our land off the plan, the valuer was booked in to do a site tour along with others in the area on the same day.

We got the notification on the 18th January that the valuation has fallen short. The house was valued correctly however, there was a shortfall of $10k for the land. The problem was, that given our block is one of the larger in the area and it's a brand new development, there was no real comparable data for the valuer to do his assessment.

After the valuer going back and forward with the land developer to see if they could get him to up the valuation, showing him other comparable data (that was obviously NOT good enough for him) he would not budge.

This is where I went into panic mode as we only had a few options before it was all over, no house, no dream!
1. Request a 2nd valuation (I was told the bank may not allow this to happen)
2. Negotiate with the land developer to lower the price of land by 10K
3. Change our finance company so we could have it re valued under a different loan (not an option for us

We requested a 2nd valuation which was accepted. Phew!

We have just found out on Friday 10th Feb that the 2nd valuation has come in a-okay!
We received our letter from our finance company that we have now gone unconditional.

Now we are just waiting on the land to register which should be in the next few weeks.