Waiting for the land to register is a whole lot of waiting.
Waiting for the plans to come back from council is a whole lot a waiting.
The waiting isn't an issue, I realise these things can take time as they follow the relevant course. It's just frustrating when you are trying to plan and have some kind of timeframe in order but no one can offer an answer. Still, having this time meant that we could really sit down and go through everything so that we were as prepared as possible for things to move quickly when they could.
April 1st, no joke, was when we heard the land had been registered and Beechwood could actually submit the plans to council. Mandy, in the Chisholm office, was helpful during this time and showed a genuine pleasure for us when everything came back from the certifiers clear. She booked us in for our colour selection at the earliest opportunity and we had a few last minute things to nut out.
We thought we were almost fully prepared for the Colour Selection but there were a couple of items we really had to think about... our budget was at the forefront of every decision. We meet with Jeannie on the day, and she was to take us through everything for the final selection. The bricks, tiles, colorbond colours and layouts were all an easy point to sort. We found Austral at Beresfield very helpful and courteous with their time and they made this part of the process quick and efficient.
There were a few points that we left the Colours appointment feeling disappointed with. Most notably was the cost in the sarking. We had been advised by many people to pay the extra and have sarking installed under the roof tiles to assist with keeping heat and rain out. We had this added in our first tender and thought $1900 was a high price but probably worth it in the long run. In the colours appointment Jeannie advised us that all through our variation no one had picked up the fact we needed to have ducted vents installed to assist with the airflow out of the house, and a casual $490 had to be added to tender.... not a great start. This item had been through as few as 5 people and possibly as many as 10 before it was raised with us!
Without boring everyone too much with negatives i will quickly list a few points to note for your consideration:
I Upgrading your front door. Expect to pay an upgrade for anything other than plain glass. Expect to pay and upgrade for anything other than a simple deadbolt knob. Buying an upgraded door means that you buy just that, nothing extra.
II Don't feel that you have to choose paint from the standard list. You can upgrade to any paint within Taubmans' range for $135... to do the whole house! Bargain?? :)
III Know where you want your outside taps. Don't waste 20 mins of the day trying to work it out. Remember of the 2 outside taps, only 1 runs off the water tank.
IV Don't assume that the Beechwood office staff have added your tender to the system correctly. Jeannie almost brushed over the fact that we had a 900mm oven paired with a 600mm electric cook top according to her software. Once we established the cooktop was in error, and had been reverted back to the 900mm gas cooktop, we picked our hearts up off the floor and continued on...!
V BE PREPARED! Our advice would be to take the final tender with you and go through each point one by one so that you have piece of mind that each item has been addressed how you planned. Window openings, mixer positions, power points, lights etc.
Over the following 24hrs there were quite a few occasions we turned to each other and said... 'oh hang on, we didn't mention...' Still, 3am emails to Beechwood kind of fixed this!
You're only a first time builder once, next time we will know better :)
