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.