New Start date!!

Got an email yesterday from our PD CSC 'Holly' asking if we would be interested in bringing our start date forward. Apparently they have had some vacancies come up to due some clients not getting titles completed in time. I replied immediately saying YES PLEASE!!

So its official, we now have a site start date of March 28th - 6 weeks earlier than originally scheduled - we are over the moon. Basically it means that we won't be moving in around the busiest time of the year, Christmas! Best case scenario, if it takes them 26 weeks (they allow a max of 30) we could be at handover by the end of September.

Coulour swatches

Here’s some of our colour choices from our appointment. All very neutral colours that we can add to, or subtract from, using furniture, appliances or cushions etc.

The kitchen overhead & below-bench cupboards are all the same colour, 'Licorice' - and the picture below shows how the light benches with the dark cupboards will look. This was our inspiration.

The colour swatch below shows the aray of different cabinet colours we chose throughout the house along with the external gutter and fascia colours too. The kitchen bench top is made from Quantum Quartz stone - we tried to match the colour for the laminate in the walk in pantry. It was pretty close.

The picture below shows the bricks we chose - Boral 'Mocha'....notice a brownish theme happening....

The Contract Appointment

Well the day finally arrived. We were going to find out all the costs, finalise our changes and sign on the dotted line. Little did we know we would need to sign our names at least 50 times and still have to go away and make more decisions!

We arrived at 2pm and met 'Holly' our CSC. Firstly we went through the Post Contract variations we had included ie: items dicussed 'after' our Tender Appointment. One of which was to render just the balcony on the front facade (as opposed to the balcony and Garage). At our Tender appointment we had been told that the cost to render the balcony would be $666 - a price we thought was quite cheap). A few days after the tender appt Lou had rung Glen and asked to proceed with that option based on that amount. When we got to the cost for the balcony render, it was a staggering $2933!! What THE...!

NOT... happy... 'JAN'!

Did we miss a meeting? No - apparently 'he' had looked at the wrong item when quoting the figure & the figure he gave us was to render the garage & not the balcony at all. You can imagine our disappointment & how annoyed we were! Was this our problem? Well...apparently so.

When we explained that this mistake was another let down on their behalf & expressed our unhappiness, Holly invited Glen to join us and explain what had happened. He happily admitted fault, but explained that this should have been the price & we could decide if we wanted to proceed or not. After we politely and in no uncertain terms told him what we thought about his blunder. I asked to speak with the manager as this was the second time they had screwed up the figures and expected us to wear it. For us, it was more the disappointment of thinking we were getting it for a lower figure & then being told "no actually it is over $2000 more than origianlly quoted” that ticked us off. While he went off to speak with the manager, Holly tried to sympathise with us as much as she could, as we were obviously quite annoyed & stressed (to put it mildly). (PS I'm still waiting for a response from PD Head Office re the last pricing mix-up on the garage extension costs)

He returned saying that all the managers were in a meeting, but was able to pull one of them aside and brief him on the situation. They had agreed to halve the difference and therefore we would need to only pay $1,466 rather than $2,933.

After a short break to compose ourselves & discuss our frustrations in private, we moved on from this and carried on with the other items that had changed.

At the end of the session there were still a couple of things that we still needed to decide on (after being given the prices). Holly was great, saying we can go home & think about them & just confirm if we wish to proceed with any additional changes or just leave them out & she would just do them as a Post Contract Variation (no.2). We then signed the HIA Contract and initialled all the pages and plans. Oh, and by the way we also picked up some errors on the plans which they had messed up as well. It pays to be listening & looking!

Although a little soured by the 'rendering cost' debacle at the start, the overall experience was great & we had lots of laughs. Holly was fantastic throughout and made us very comfortable. A PD newbie was also sitting in on the meeting, 'Mary', who was also very accommodating and helpful in making decisions. Before we finished up, a Feedback form was provided for us to fill out at our leisure and Holly encouraged us to be honest and detailed. Suffice to say, we took it home to add some additional pages to it ;-)

The Colour Selection Appointment

On Tuesday (29th Jan) we attended our colour selection appointment. Lou dropped the cherubs off at her sisters (she has been so helpful during this event) and then hopped on a train & tram to my work. We then took a quick 10 minute drive to the Port Melbourne site below, arriving at 12:30. From other fellow bloggers going through PD we had been told it would take round 2-3 hrs. We decided to get there early as we wanted to make some final choices on the render for the balcony along with confirmation on the window colours. After 15 mins our colour consultant 'Shelley' asked if we wanted to get started early - hey, why not?

The selection itself consisted of all the internal wall colours (including feature walls), all the cabinet and bench top colours, skirting and architrave style, tap fittings, door knobs and handles, locks, garage door style and colour (front and rear), bricks & mortar colour, roof tiles, balustrades, basins, render, even the colour of the water tank out the back. All in all we took 2.5 hrs to make all the selections. When we left we felt pretty darn happy with ourselves. We had spent a lot of time visiting display centres to make sure we knew what opitons were available and had chosen what we thought looked nice (and within budget).

The major upgrades were the bricks. We chose Mocha, a category 4 brick and also the 'off white' mortar - not as cheap as you think when you consider this is a double storey – a lot of bricks. In the next blog I'll try to add some pics of the samples we walked away with to show some of the colours.

After the app't we had a little time up our sleeve so we dropped in at the National Tiles display centre again for another quick look. Our tile app't is on Feb 19; still a little time to decide on the colour scheme for those. Next Tuesday we go in to sign the contract. Apparently this should not take as long as the tender and we finally get to meet ‘Holly’ our Customer Service Coordinator who has been very patient as we bombard her with queries and ‘tender’ changes.

One last look

Lou and I went out one last time (without the cherubs) to view some displays to help finalise our choices before our Colour Appointment. While we were out there we dropped into the Cremorne in Mernda which has the same facade as ours (but were not getting the full render or the abstract art building blocks in the front!).

The image below is a display with the bricks we are getting, Boral 'Mocha'. It also has the same colour scheme with the dark grey roof, gutters and cream fascia, downpipes and windows (the colour is Colourbond 'Paperbark'). The mortar is also the same, flush off-white.

Our garage door will look like this one. Its a remote controlled panel lift door in the 'Caprice' style in the Paperbark colour.

Colour Homework

A couple of Mondays ago (21st Jan) Lou took the cherubs out for one last look at what was on show in the Mernda & Craigieburn PD display centres before our scheduled colour selection appointment. Visiting during the week was a little quieter in the displays which was handy as the youg ones were somewhat inquisitive and playful with the spec home props! Nothing broke thankfully.

Lou took her pen 'n' pad and listed all of the items worth noting in colours she thought we would like. Items included the wall colours, feature walls and tiles. She listed all the locations and home styles so that we could later call Hopetoun and find out each of the styles and colour names. The idea was to take a bit of the leg work out of it all & make our next intended last visit together (less cherubs) for that coming weekend a much more quicker & efficient one.

It was a sucessful day filled with 'adventure-a-plenty', a bribery of McDonalds & a massive play stop in between locations. Cherubs were zonkered by days end & lets just say that mummy's trip was a very quiet one on the way home. zzzzZZZZZZZZZ

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.