Colour Appointment with Wisdom

Yesterday we had our colour consultation with Anita from Wisdom. To our surprise we were all done in a little under 2 hours. We heard some people were spending up to a full day choosing colours. We pretty much new what we wanted for the external colours so it was rather straightforward. We chose black windows which matches the blackheath bricks really well, the only thing is on the inside we will have a very strong contrast with out light coloured interior. In the end we said we can always have curtains and blinds to soften the look of the black windows.

Anita really knows her stuff of what works and what doesn't and the colour schemes she put together for the display homes are what we are after so it all went smoothly. I will have to in another blog let you all know our colour selections. In the mean time the photo below is of our external colours.

Landscape Plan

For approval of our Plans with The Ponds Design Review Panel and Blacktown City Council we needed to provide a Landscape Plan. We decided to do this ourselves and save around $800. I happen to have AutoCAD at work and with my work as an engineer I also had some basic knowledge of how to use it. So after looking at a few examples and spending hours on the Internet researching trees and plants we had an idea of what we were going to do with our landscaping now just had to transfer all that to AutoCAD.

I was working on the landscape plan for just over a month, doing a little bit each night, and needed to have it finished by the 4/12 so that it could be included with the submission to The Ponds DRP. The last week was hectic with a few late nights trying to finish it all off in time. Our plant selection focused around native plants and I made sure all the DRP requirements were included and noted on the drawing. In the end the Landscape Plan was finished and we were quite happy with it, fingers crossed it passes The Ponds DRP. I will have to upload a picture of it in a later post.

Brick Selection

Who would have thought that brick selection would be so difficult. After our tender acceptance Wisdom told us to go out to either Boral or Austral and select a brick for our house. Well sounds easy doesn't it...

Our tender price meant we limited ourselves with our brick selection in that we would be selecting from the included range or the next range above to save some $$. Well it seemed me and Dawn at first were liking the total opposite colours which is not a good start in the selection process. We found a few bricks we liked at Boral, they gave us a few addresses of houses with the same bricks so that we could see what they looked like. This we felt was a great idea and after seeing what they looked like it made us change our opinion of what we wanted and liked. It is very deceptive looking at the small displays compared to a complete house in the brick. So after a little frustrating times we both agreed on a brick "Boral Blackheath" and found a house in Ropes Crossing with the same which we basically used as a starting point for our external colour selection. This made it a lot easier as now we could visualise the brick colour together with the windows, garage door and roof tiles we liked.

Bricks Boral 'Blackheath'

Initial House Plans received

We recieved our house plans today and I must say the quality of the plans is very good. It's exciting looking at our house on the plans, well for me anyway but not really for Dawn. We went through the plans and marked up a few small changes such as the way doors open, sink position, window heights and niche positions which we will discuss with Wisdom.

Below is a copy of our plans.

House Upgrade and Extras

Here is a brief summary of upgrades and extras we have chosen for our Providence 24 MkII.
- Florence Facade
- Rendered painted finish to front facade columns
- Timber effect colour grain garage door
- "New Lifestyle" Package
- 8"6' ceiling height
- Raked ceiling to kitchen/dining area
- Upgrade front entry door
- Upgrade internal doors
- Upgrade lighting including down lights, pendant lights and external up/down lights
- "Designer Kitchen Upgrade"
- Provide overhead kitchen cupboards
- Provide appliance cupboard and upgrade pantry unit
- Upgrade vanity basins

The extras we will be doing ourselves after handover include painting the feature walls, installing air conditioning, driveway and landscaping, ceaserstone for the niches and installing shutters and blinds.

The next phase is the Plans, being an engineer myself I am eagerly awaiting the house plans...

Tender Accepted

Today we went into Wisdom to finalise our tender and negotiate the final tender price. The tender was looking okay with all our extras included but the price was on the upper end of our budget. After agreeing with everything in the tender we asked for a $831 discount to round the figure to an even whole amount, but to our disappointment this was rejected after a call to head office. This left us quite disappointed, but in the end it is the house we want and therefore we accepted the tender and paid the next installment to have our plans produced.

Tender Price received

After waiting patiently for our tender price to come back from Wisdom we were quite disappointed with what we received. The total price was some $22k more than the initial quote given to us. As we then looked through the tender, we some how had inclusions that we didn't even ask for and some that are only relevant to a double story house, ours is a single story house. So the first tender received was pretty much useless.

Today we received the 'updated' tender price which looks a lot better. But still the total is not right. I thought I would double check the figures and what do you know, the total I calculate for all our inclusions is $1,350 less than what they have on the tender. Well back to Wisdom to get it right before we can sign off on the tender and start the preparation of the plans.

Initial Deposit for Providence 24 MkII

After spending a few weekends looking at display homes all over Sydney we felt the Providence 24 MkII from Wisdom Homes on display at The Ponds was the best home for us. The idea of the sunken home theatre room and the layout of the kitchen, dining and living rooms really suits our life style and what we want from our house. The size of the house is also well suited to our land so it was a some what easy decision on selecting the Providence. After an initial budget cost we were comfortable that the house would be within our budget so we went in on Saturday afternoon and paid our initial deposit for a fixed price tender.

TV Super Stars

Well where do we start... Dawn and I were out today at HomeWorld in Kellyville looking at display homes. We were there for only maybe 10 minutes, looking at the AVJennings Homes when we walked out of a home and noticed a camera man and reporter out the front. We looked at each other and said "what's going on there" and as we walked past they asked if they could ask us a few questions and before you know it we are chatting away answering a load of questions. The questions were all to do with the First Home Buyer Grant and the housing market, all something we really didn't know much about at the time. So after finishing off the interview we both looked at each other and said "Oh my goodness, we are going to be on TV." The first thing Dawn does is call her mum to let her know she is famous and to make sure she watches channel 7 news tonight. Stardom had hit maybe 2 mins after when we were like, 'I'm so glad I had make up on today, I'm so glad I had my new shirt on and my hair was done'. It was quite surreal, all we could focus on was being on TV.

So there we are at home on a Saturday night eagerly awaiting the start of channel 7 news when before you know it, 2nd story in and there we are our faces on the news. Dawn had the speaking role, for which I am still being heckled about by my brothers for not speaking. Within a minute both our mobiles were going off with people seeing us on the TV. It's a tough life being a TV Super Star...To be continued.

Land Contract Signed

Our appointment with the solicitors was yesterday to sign our land contract. It started out with 'April' our legal expert, explaining all the scary stuff to us. The contract side of it seemed all straight forward. An hour and a half later of chit chat, ink went to paper and the land was officially ours. Well technically not yet, it had to be signed by Landcom as well. So Dawn and I signed our names ("Pete make sure to leave room for me") and handed over the cheque with our 5% deposit.

We marked the day with a celebration dinner at a fine Italian restaurant in Parramatta. We went all out with champagne and wine and enjoyed an Italian feast. We thought we would treat ourselves as now we have to make sure to save the $$ so that we can build our 'Dream home at The Ponds'.

Land Purchase

It was a cold, foggy morning in front of The Ponds display village when we arrived at 7:00am. We were eleventh on the list and with 28 blocks to be released that morning at 10am we were a little unsure if the blocks we were interested in would be available. What was surprising was that people had been camping out for 3 days/nights to be the first ones on the list, now that's dedication.

So with time approaching the price list was made available and to our surprise the prices for the blocks were a little higher than previous releases in The Ponds. We had our eye on a few blocks we were interested in that were within our budget. The slow process of calling in the people off the list wasn't as nerve racking as we thought it would of been. The blocks were slowly being crossed off that had been purchased before us and luckily for us the ones we were looking at were still available. Next we are called in to the office and select Lot No. 5222. Within 5 minutes we have purchased our block of land. Let the adventure begin...

Welcome to our blog

Hi,

My partner and I are new to the blogging scene, we hope that our blog "Peter and Dawns Dream Home" is interesting for all to enjoy. Our aim for the blog is to document our progress in building our dream home, and share with others the experience. So here we go...