Two steps forward....One step back.

Our builder advised us last week that we had received BASIX approval - which is great! One approval down, a few more to go.

On Wednesday (16th June) our CSO advised that she had submitted our plans to The Ponds Review Panel for approval (YAY!!!!) - however, then advised us on Friday that the preliminary feedback (from The Ponds) was that our wonderful brick upgrade of BLUE STEEL FLASH was not permitted at The Ponds - Denied!!! This is because it is made of about 3 different shades (of greys and blue). It seems they want all bricks to be one uniform colour. Ho hum.

Alas, we were prepared for circumstances such as this (during this experience) so took it in our stride and made a trip back out to PGH bricks at Schofields today (Sunday 20th June). We have now come up with a few other brick choices and look forward to finalising our final choice this week. All in all, it was great that our builder was so prompt in letting us know this information :-)

After that, we went on to visit our land and it was wonderful!!! So much has happened since we were last there...the street lights have gone up, Telstra pits in are the ground, electricity pillars erected and tree bays in place. It was such a glorious day and we were in awe of this new place that we will call home - it was so nice to be in a place where we felt so energised (especially after the stress over the past 6 months or so) - Splendid!!

Building has even started in our area (however in the land releases prior to ours) - We're hopeful that our land will register soon.

This week, we have another appointment with our builder - this time to finalise our staircase design, electrical requirements and also ALL of our internal flooring (carpet/tiling/wet area selection). It's going to be a LONG, yet very exciting day :-)

For homework, we are going to look over our house plans and look at where powerpoints, light switches will be required...as well as what lighting options we plan to use.

We hope you enjoy the photos we took today :-) (Oh and it's 5 months today until our wedding!!)

Rain, rain - go away!!

Well, it's been raining here in Sydney for the past 2 weeks and is forecast to be raining all of next week too. Hmmmmm....

Before the rain started, it looked like they were about to lay the elecricity cables...put in street lights, Telstra pits etc (in our land release area) - however, upon our last visit to the land (last weekend) this still hasn't been done. Understandably. So there's not a lot to report regarding our land.

We went to our colours apointment at the Home Options Gallery on the 31/05/10. That went really well!! Almost too well. We even had time to go out for a yummy lunch. Then it came time for our kitchen appointment and we were confronted with a few issues. To cut a long story short, the kitchen we thought we were getting (as per The Ponds display home) was slightly different to the "standard" one on our plans. Eeek! After a slightly stressful kitchen appointment, we finished up our long day and came home and emailed EB about our concerns. They have sinced replied and cleared up a few of our concerns, so that's a good start. Hopefully we can get everything else resolved a.s.a.p.

So now we have officially chosen the colours for the following: bricks, mortar, roof tiles, gutters, fascias, down pipes, window frames, moroka, driveway, kitchen, bathroom vanities, internal paint, skirting, cornice, front door, front balcony rail, internal stair rail. We have also added a few upgrades along the way - especially in the brick and plumbing (toilets/showerheads/basins) departments.

Our next appointment is in a few weeks, where we will finalise our: electrical requirements, internal flooring (including bathrooms) and an appointment about the staircase options too - party times!! We won't have the time to visit The Ponds prior to then, so hopfeully some more land progress has been made upon our return.

In other news, we emailed our landscape plan to The Ponds Review Panel the other day and they replied saying that their preliminary overview indicates that everything looks good. So that's a positive outcome. I'm sure they will look at it in more detail once it's officially submitted. EB has advised that our BASIX certificate has been issued, so that's good also.

We hope to resolve our queries with EB promptly and then, from what I understand, our application for approval will go forward to The Ponds Review Panel. Then from there, it will go on the Council for approval. Hopefully in that time, our land will register (which in now due to be in July/August) and we can settle on the land and it will be all ours!! ...and all ready to start building on :-)

Building Contract signed! One step closer to our new house!!

We met with our builder EB last Friday for our contract signing. The appointment went a little bit longer than anticipated (from 7.30am until 11am) - mainly because of our queries etc. The final result - we have now signed our building contract!! It was quite an exciting experience and was wonderful to know that we are one step closer to our new house!

We have a colours appointment in a few weeks and still have to finalise our bathroom tile/colour selections. We went out to DiLorenzo today, however, it was closed. It must be a new thing for them to be closed on a Sunday as we'd previously been there on numerous Sunday's before. Oh well - just means another trip back there next week.

We did however finalise our kitchen colours today (at the Home Options Gallery) so that was good.

A visit to our land today was wonderful. It was fantastic to see the progress since we last visited and both Waterfall 5&6 releases are coming along nicely. It appears that they still need to install the Telstra and Electrical connections and erect the street lights, as well as planting the trees within their bays (which are already in) and the trees along the footpath(s). Besides that, not alot to report, however will advise more after we visit again in a few weeks.

We have taken a few photos over the past few weeks. Hope you like them.

Peace Out!

Twelve hours of colour option/s discussions!

We met my Dad at The Ponds on Saturday at 9.30am and had a yummy breakfast. After that, we went back to The Ponds and EB to say "hello" to everyone in the sales office and also have another squizz at the Cambridge 34 (our new house).

From there, we went to have a sneak peak at our land. The workmen have done so much work and were busy working away whilst we were there. We remain hopeful that the land will be registered in June 2010 (as anticipated). It was so beautiful out there. Michael and I were so excited :-) Dad, as always, loved it there too :-)

From there we went to PGH bricks at Schofields for more brick research. We're pretty sure we have decided on our brick colour now - YAY! It is an upgraded brick and costs a fair bit more, however, we think it's very important. We were even able to take brick and roof tile samples home!! Now we have 3 x bricks and 2 x roof tiles in our living area at home - such a great look - well not really, however, exciting none the less.

Around midday, my Dad headed back to his place, so we grabbed a quick bite to eat at the new Rouse Hill shopping centre and headed off to DiLorenzo tiles.

As usual, we got a bit overwhelmed at this place - there are SOOOOOOOOOO many tiling options, it's hard to now where to start!! After nearly two hours there, we have come pretty much decided on our main flooring tile and all wet area tiles (of course, they're the upgraded ones - however, aesthetically worth it). Oh and whilst we were there we looked at carpet options and chose our carpet colour too.

From there it was straight to EB Home Options Gallery - basically we spent the majority of our time looking at bathroom vanity/benchtop and kitchen door/s colours. We also chose the colour of our Essastone benchtop. We took heaps of samples home and once home, our discussuins carried on well into the night. We were able to narrow down our colour selections and were on the internet until about 9.30pm looking at possible toilet/bathroom accessories upgrades too.

After another 12 hours of talks - we're pretty confident that we know what we want. Having said that, we're heading back to DiLorenzo/Home Options Gallery again next weekend to finalise/verify our choices.

We're due to receive our house plans and contract from the builder today. Once received, we will forward to our Solicitor (to have a look at). All being well, we will go and sign the contract with the builder on Friday!!

Exciting times.....

Eating, sleeping and talking about bricks 24/7!!

Ok, so as per our last post, we felt quite confident that we had a fair idea of the brick colour we wanted. However, since receiving a copy of the "Standard brick range" from our builder, we now know we want to upgrade the bricks. Nothing out of the blue...steel flash (as we'd pressumed the standard bricks wouldn't have been to our liking).

So now we have taken to talking about bricks (of all things) just about 24/7. Who knew we could be so boring!! :-)

Every night (after a hard days work) we get out the laptop and our PGH brochure and ponder ...which brick do we want? Which brick fulfils our colour requirements? Which brick is the best brick for us?

It really doesn't get more exciting than discussing bricks well into the night (and often dreaming about bricks too). However, we can see the bigger picture and know it will all be worth it in the end (when we finally get to move into our new house!).

We're heading off to the Home Options Gallery and PGH bricks over the weekend to get a better idea of what's available. Needless to say, we're pretty excited about visiting these places and hopefully getting some type of finality to our brick options.

We will report more after the weekend.......

Brick colours, tile colours, mortar colours, plant options - OH MY!

We are well aware of all of the choices we will be making over the next few months with regards to our build / landscaping. Many people have shared their experiences with us and also we have read comments on other blogs, such as this.

Our colour appointment won't be for at least a month or so, however, we have already commenced our discussions/reasearch on this matter. We plan to head to the Home Options Gallery (in two weeks) to get a head start on our choices (prior to our official "colour choice" meeting there in about a month).

So far we already have a fair idea on the following:
*Brick colour *Mortar colour *Moroka "bagging" finish colour *Roof tile/gutter/down pipe colour *Internal tile colour *Carpet colour *Internal paint colour *Kitchen/Essastone colour/s...so on and so fourth.

We have been told by various people that often their colour choices no longer remain available (due to discontinuation of tiles etc etc) so we forecast this happening to us at some stage (although - hopefully not) - It was suggested to us to have a list of our top 3 colour choices (in regards to everything) that way if our first choice is unavailable, we will know exactly what our next choice is. Very good idea.

The funny thing is, a few months ago (prior to buying our land) we were actually planning a wedding. Luckily, we are pretty up to date with our plans, so have been able to focus SO much time and attention to our build. We even have to remind ourselves at times that we're getting married this year too!!

Anyway, enough wedding talk - back to the house.....

Since we are completing our own landscape plan, we've been doing a lot of research online and at Nurseries/landscape places etc. It's been great to learn about plant/trees and broaden our knowledge in that respect. Overall, our current plant/tree favourites are: Waterhousia, Globossum, Murraya, Buxus (Japonica), NZ Flax and Mondo Grass. Needless to say we're very excited to be designing our landscape plans.

We will discuss our plans with The Ponds Design Panel to get their feedback before we submit them to EB, who inturn will forward with our house plans to Council.

We have already decided on the majority of our furniture choices/colours and pendant lighting too! In a perfect world, we would buy it all now (as we're so excited to do so) - however, the reality is we have nowhere to store all of our new furniture! So we have to stay patient (and maybe stop looking in all of the furniture shops too) - at least for another 8 -10 months or so.

That's about it for this post...Overall, we're just really looking forward to visiting the Home Options Gallery and receiving our house plans (then finalising our landscpae plan) over the next few weeks. We'll keep you all posted as to how it goes.

House research....Our house choice.

Over the past few months, we have been back to The Ponds (and Home World at Kellyville) on numerous occasions to have a sneak peak at our land and also investigate housing options.

There are so many beautiful homes to choose from...some of our favourites were houses by Metricon and Wisdom Homes. However, our most favourite was Eden Brae's Cambridge 34 (the house is great and we're loving the bathroom layout as per their display home at The Ponds- alright!).

We spent many hours going through the inclusions with Bede at the display centre (The Ponds). He was great to deal with and answered all of our (many) questions.

Ok, so the time had come (27/03/2010)- time to go ahead and authourise the Fixed Price Tender.

We went to our Tender presentation (27/04/2010). All went pretty well, however, once we left, we had numerous questions (nothing new for us). So we proceeded to email EB with all of our questions and they promptly replied and provided the clarification we so desired.

So, yesterday (04/05/2010) we accepted their Tender. Our copy of the the Contract/house plans will arrive in a few weeks (very exciting) :-)