Quick update

Just a quick update to advise that we now have our approval from The Ponds (received on the 07/07/2010). Our new brick choices were acceptable to their guidelines (which is great as we much prefer our new bricks).

Our plans have now gone to Council for approval - this will take anywhere from 4-6-8 weeks. The waterboard will also complete a sewer pegout during this time.

We have received the rest of the quotes we were waiting on - and just need to finalise and sign the post contract variations. After all of this is done, we can finally put away all of the copious amounts of paperwork and await the approval of our plans by Council.

According to the "unregistered land" link - our land is now due to be registered on 30/07/2010. This could change - however, to date, the delay in registration has had no impact on our progress.

Keep you posted with updates in due course :-)

An update about nothing...

Well as the heading suggests, we have a whole lot of nothing going on at the moment. Well, that's how it feels...

Ok - so we have now chosen our new brick colours and added extra planting to our landscape design (rear yard) as requested by The Ponds Review Panel - so hopefully now we will get their approval as soon as possible (as our original assessment was rejected).

We have been for our electrical, staircase and flooring appointments too - so that's all of our appointments out of the way.

Besides that we're just awaiting on a lot of quote/s from suppliers - of which some we've had to chase up on numerous occasions. These quotes are not paramount to our file moving forward - however, we'd like to have them all finalised anyway. Some things are just dragging on for too long! We're remaining patient and staying positive - hopefully this week we can finalise some of the quotes and post contract variations :-)

Re: Land registration: it's now listed at the 16th July...Here's hoping.

During this period of inactivity, we have been able to focus on our wedding plans, which is very exciting :-)

Will post again soon when we have more to report. We will be heading out to The Ponds again within the next month :-)

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.......