Where it all began

Been a while since I posted, so there will be a few coming in soon as we have been rather busy both at work and at home. A couple of weekends ago we went and visited the Pakenham display centre, the place where we originally fell in love with the Cremorne. Said hello to 'Gina' and 'Natalie' our friendly PD folk and once again scrutinised the house for any items which we may have missed in the design.

We decided to alter the WIP (walk in pantry) a little more as it needs to be more economical in its space usage. The kids were unleashed and had a ball and also took some time out to do some light reading - books courtesy of PD.




Took a look also at the "Access" range of PD homes across the road as well. Surprisingly if we had decided on one of their designs it would have been no good as they don't build out our way anyway! They have specific localities they operate in, so only where there is a boom of housing will they offer to build within. Lucky we didn't find anything we liked.

The Tender Appointment

Last Wednesday (Jan 17th) we had our Tender Appointment at the PD offices in Berwick at 1pm. 'Glen' was the man and he was going to explain to us all of the in's and out's of what we were buying and what other variations we had decided to include. The session ran from 1:00pm till 5:20 with a half hour break for a bite to eat and a coffee in the Berwick main street.

Glen went through every single item , front to back, all 10 pages worth and read every single word, including the model numbers for the appliances, 'upside down' - just so we could read along with him right side up. This is what he does, twice a day, every day (well almost anyway).

First up we went through the 'standard' house and inclusions.... yadda yadda yadda. Then came time for the Site Costs. Well..... we had been provided an allowance by the PD consultant which we had hoped was possibly overstated as we think our block is in reasonable shape. Apparently not. It has gone up by $7,000 - that's right, seven big ones, all beacause the land has a slope. (time to start saving!!)

As can be seen from the image below, they (the Builders) are going to have to excavate the block and include retaining walls and drainage pits along with cut and fill sections to ensure the area is usable around the house. Glen explained in great detail what the drawing meant with all the squiggles and figures and it actually sounds quite good what they have decided to do. The garage will actually be lower than the house level by 240mm to allow the driveway gradient not to be too steep and they have included a level plateau before the garage entry so its not a steep rise into the garage itself.

I think with the retaining walls and level areas around the house it should make for an interesting and creative landscape, one I'm looking forward to building :-)

More display centre visits

Yesterday we went out early and visited Hopetoun again to look at the bricks on display (our 3rd visit). Once again, the staff out there looked after our eldest cherub with fluorescent textas and paper to draw on (Thanks Brianne). I actually think she may have asked for them herself - she's so cheeky. We narrowed the field again on A DIFFERENT range this time to 'Cleveland', a brownish brick, not as dark as Mocha and with a warmer tinge. We also compared it to the roof tiles, gutters, fascia and render, including the Garage to ensure the ensemble worked.

From Hoptoun we drove further out to Caroline Springs, the one PD display village we had not yet been to. This time the weather was fantastic; 24 degrees with a cool breeze. This display had yet another version of the Cremorne 41 and again more different inclusions. When we enquired as to what the costs were for some of the inclusions we were asked if we had land and if we were dealing with any specific consultant. I replied that we had signed up with the Pakenham office and paid our deposit. From this response we were then advised that all of our queries should be directed to the Pakenham office sales consultant as they should be our point of reference. Ahh Sorry....what are you saying? You can't tell us even though you have the price list here? How inconvenient is that.
If we had not told them we had signed up and were merely curious they would probably have openly told us the answers. But it would seem that as soon as they realise that we have signed up they don't have the time for us and would rather spend the time on new clients. There seems to be yet another flaw with the PD process, one which again only inconveniences the customer.

Bricks, bricks and more bricks

The journey to find the right brick seems endless.

During my two week chrissy break we again went looking for more houses to help decide on which brick colour to choose. The eldest cherub and I went out on a rather warm day to visit the Boral display centre to bring back some samples for Lou to have a look at. When we got there we had a quick chat to the sales person who advised us that we could take a couple of samples of each brick from the yard. I started off by getting out a small umbrella to help shade the cherub. After 5 minutes of this, the heat became too much and I decided it was best to leave her in the car with the air-con running.





I grabbed samples of 5 bricks and went back home. We looked at the bricks and ummed and arred and narrowed it down to 2 - Gypsy Rose (reddish with a black fleck) and Mocha (brown with black fleck). Then I rang Boral and asked for some addresses of each so we could see what they looked like on a large scale. I went out driving the next day to visit each of the addresses and found that the colour Gypsy Rose was very Red - almost too Red. The more local address for the Mocha brick colour was in Fern Tree Gully. When I got there I found a totally new estate which was fantastic as we had been driving for miles to the outer suburbs generally to see examples of new estates. While trying to locate the 'Mocha' house, I found not 1 but 4 versions of the Porter Davis Cremorne 41, the same house we are building all in the same estate! They didn't have the same facade as ours but they all had a similar brick colour; a reddish look, a bit like Gypsy Rose which was great because I realised then that it wasn't the look we were trying to achieve.