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.

Rubbish removal

Had an opportunity to visit the block on Monday night as we were in the area after watching our niece, Bella, in her school Christmas concert . Pulled into our driveway and some [insert expletive] low-life had decided to use our drive as a dumping ground for their unwanted household rubbish - not impressed. We found new holes in the ground from the PD soil tests right next to the ones we had done by Henley (taken before we put a deposit on the block). We took some more happy snaps with the cherubs and then drove round the corner to view some local homes. We came across some friends who happen to live round the corner in the estate and as it happens they had witnessed the low-life dump the rubbish not 10 minutes prior to our visit! Thankfully they had taken down the rego and make of the vehicle ;-)

Later that night, I made a phone call to local Constabulary and advised them of the event. The next day I received a call from the boys in blue letting me know that they had visited the site and then visited the 'alleged' perpetrator (who had blankly denied the act) and had been issued with a $220 fine. To top it off, they were told that if they didn't remove the rubbish before the days end, that they would be issued another fine! Later that night a relative went past the block and low and behold ALL the rubbish was gone. Your taxes at work - just lovely.

Another Pre-visit to Hopetoun

On Sunday 16th we made another trip out to Hopetoun to look at more colour and accessory selections. This time we went with only one of the cherubs, the eldest one - a lot easier to occupy in situations like these. She seems to have the gift of the gab and cheeky charm (she only turns 3 in Jan) as halfway through our visit she had befriended one of the colour consultants and was sitting opposite her at her desk and colouring in sheets of A4 paper with fluorescent highlighters supplied courtesy of Hopetoun. This gave us ample opportunity to apply some serious consideration into the colours for the bricks, roof tiles, gutters, fascias, garage door etc.

The staff at Hopetoun as mentioned before were fantastic and we must thank them for their honest and helpful advice. When we left, we had made some firm, agreed, decisions on a number of selections which left me feeling like a weight had been lifted of us. We walked away with even more brochures for upgrades we probably can't afford but we'll let the bank decide that.

Pre-visit to Hopetoun

Thought we'd drop in for quick visit to Hopetoun on Sunday on our way back from Ballarat and see what colour selection tasks await. The place is laid out well with all (well most) of the options marked for each price category. Managing the two little cherubs whilst trying to take in all the info from the staff made it quite interesting. (Thank god for Portable DVD players). Suffice to say come time to make the final selections we will be visiting childless. We thought the visit was quite beneficial although we did have a couple of issues.

1. The colour consultants were nice and helpful although they were very insistent that they could not advise on pricing of items for upgrades as they are only here to advise on the selections, which we thought was kind of odd (this applies to the weekend 'browsing' visits only). The whole premise for coming to these places is to choose what items you want included as part of the build and obviously you'd like to upgrade if the item is nicer and if the price is reasonable and within budget, right? There must be some underlying ploy here to get you in on the day and entice you to make the upgrade with little time to weigh up the cost in the greater scheme of things.

2. Our Display Centre consultant had advised us that we would need to pay $400 extra to have the additional 2mm PVC edging on the kitchen cabinets which we were prepared to pay as we have it in our current home and appreciate it worth. The Hopetoun consultant showed us the standard cabinet sample and what do you know - the PVC edging is STANDARD! What the! Obviously we will be subtracting the $400 from our tender.

3. In the showroom they have a separate room which showcases all of the lighting options and additional room speakers etc. When asked if we can take a look the consultant advised me that we can only go into that room during our 'Electrical Selections' appointment and that it was separate to the colour selections appointment (what 'the' again). Nobody had advised us that there was a separate Electricals app't.

Overall, the visit was well worth it, walked away with a few selections done and dusted and some selections that we need to.... err... 'discuss' (for want of a better word ;-) ).

Land Settlement

We've bought some land in Lilydale in a new estate and are still awaiting settlement, which should have been last month - something about the titles still to be finalised due to the subdivision, which is no biggie as we aren't due to start building till May '08. Aparently PD are booked up that far in advance. The property overlooks the Yarra Valley with green rolling hills - quite picturesque really. It is a bit further out from the city than our current home, but the block is 700m2 - try finding a block that size close to the city!

Tender & Contract Appointments

Got a phone call yesterday from our new Customer Servcie Coordinator 'Holly'. She wanted to introduce herself and lock in a date for our Tender and contract appointments. We settled for the 8th and 30th of Jan respectivlely. This should give us enough time to go to 'Hoptourn', the PD colour selection centre in Port Melbourne and decide on some colours. We have hopefully now made all of the variations we can think of to the house, with only a few items with unknown costs which should be available at the tender app't.

6/12 - Well, we've finally decided on a builder.

We've finally decided on a builder and on Friday the 30th of November I visited the PD display centre and put down some hard earned cash. After months of driving around Melbourne's outer suburbs and masses of comparison spreadsheets we have chosen the Porter Davis Cremorne 41.
We loved the design (obviously) and think the kids, once they are old enough, will come to appreciate it too.














We checked out a host of different builders and nearly completed a full circle back to PD. Whilst some builders were pretty flexible, we were amazed how some were not so inclined. Our PD Consultant 'G' has been really accomodating, as we have hammered her with questions on different options for this and that, some of them a necessity and others a luxury (which, if we can squeeze it in the budget we will).

I must make a quick mention of the friendly folk on the Homeone website (http://www.homeone.com.au/) who have opened our eyes as to what to expect on our journey and who without them I would never have started this Blog. Countless hours have been spent following the forums and taking in all of the highs and lows associated with building. Some of the crappy builders out ther leave a lot to be desired!