cool and calm

Ok, after my last heated post, I've simmered down (and written some firm emails along the way).

The issue of how the house is to be built has been resolved. A third party (and representative of the manufacturing company) will be installing the weatherboard. We're just waiting for quotes.
The issue was that the builder did not believe that brick could be vertically joined to weatherboard. As our house has different sections of both, he gave us the ultimatum of full brick or only horizontal joins (1/2 brick 1/2 cladding). This was not how the house company designed it or how we envisaged it. It took lots of researching on our behalf (to find other examples, manufacturer's specifications and cladding companies) to finally get the builder to properly look into it. Now it can be done, we're just getting quotes on finishes.

So the frame is completely finished (including outside area roof), the roof is on (and looking fantastic), the plumbing is all roughed-in, all windows have been installed, and the brickwork is going up. We should only be a week or 2 away from lock-up.

(inside view)

(outside view)

Unfortunately the gutters were bent when the roofers installed the big sheets of colourbond. I hope we're not up for another battle to get this repaired / replaced.

We've come to the realisation that we cannot "win" when it comes to meeting our allowances. Our house building company (on a fixed price contract) has given us set dollar amounts to spend on items (doors / carpet / taps / etc.) so we can choose what we'd like to have in our home. In retrospect we should have specified particular brands / models in the inclusions list and / or shopped around with the proposed allowances. Instead we're now spending our weekends and evenings scouring the internet and renovation warehouses trying to find items for our home within this small-medium budget.

Don't get me wrong, we could leave it all up to the builder to pick these items, but when it comes to tiles / vanities / carpeting, we'd like to see a larger range and try to get a good deal for our $. In the instance of the bricks and floorboards, we've managed to come in under budget with really massive savings on beautiful finishes. On others, like carpet, we're going to have to chip-in to have natural fiber carpet as the allowance only covers the super-synthetic stuff. It's our choice, so we pay extra.

Ultimately, the allowances are set low for us, and without a trade discount / contacts in the industry, we're having to pay more in certain areas to achieve the finishes we're after. The upside? The house is finished to our specs. The lesson? Be more specific early-on during the negotiation stage. This is our first house build and we thought specifying "reverse cycle air conditioning throughout" was specific enough...not so. Brand / model / extras would have been good...more time consuming earlier on, but better in the long run.

With the few rebates we've received from finding absolute bargains (check out: www.lightinthebox.com), we'll put these towards some little luxuries like a bigger bath, extra cabinetry, etc. We'll still be quite a bit out of pocket after this build is finished...can you believe I actually thought with a fixed price contract, that's all we'd be paying??? Huh, what a novice!

utterly frustrating!

(written 2 weeks ago - only published now)

I'm sick of this! Another sunny day and no movement on site. Again.

On Monday we had a meeting with the builder and home company to discuss the many issues that needed addressing. 3 hours later, I felt like we hadn't resolved a whole lot and I'm stuck writing the minutes and emailing them to everyone.

Let me list the things I'm really frustrated about (it's my blog, I can vent if I want to!):
1) Everything is costing more $$$$. What happened to the fixed price contract?
2) The slab has to be cut. Why wasn't it poured correctly the first time? Builder says the plans were wrong (they're not, we checked).
3) The framer didn't have the right set of plans and framed up some of the windows incorrectly. Now it can't won't be changed and we're stuck with dinky windows.
4) The home company didn't merge two sets of drawings, hence, point 3.
5) The outside roof wasn't built. Now it is, but why wasn't it done the first time?? Why do we have to draw their attention to things that are on the plan?
I should be clear here...we haven't changed the plans since they were lodged to council last year. We'd just like our house built to plan...that's all.
6) The builder only received our list of inclusions for the house this week. Yep, that's right, his boss signed the contract back in November and he only found out what was included in the build cost on Monday.
We wondered why he was confused when we were discussing flooring  / fences / tiling - all things we'd negotiated  in the beginning.

Now we've got no one on site because the house builder doesn't believe the house can be built to plan (this info would have been handy 5 months ago). The home company is looking into an effective solution (to be honest, a lot of houses are built this way, I don't know what the builder's problem is). Until both parties find a solution, we're just watching an empty work site. Utterly frustrating.

No doubt, (another) compromise will have to be made (by us) and the cost will increase (again).

taking shape

Lots to report on since my last entry. Though things have felt like they're moving in slow motion, as I put this blog together, I can see lots of work has been done. Best of all, we can really see our house coming together...and it looks great!

After the slab was poured, the brickwork around the garage door and big column at the front were built to first floor level. After this was in place, the framing guys came on site (for a around 5 days in total) to build the entire frame of the house. This part was awesome. After they'd leave for the day, we'd walk through the site seeing our rooms coming together, along with views from windows and shapes of ceilings.

Now (some) windows are in, the plumber has "roughed-in", and scaffolding is up to complete the brickwork around the house (I think this will start tomorrow - weather pending). Soon the roof will be on and we'll be much closer to lock-up.

This hasn't been without some major hiccups...we're still to resolve some window sizes (due to the framer using the wrong set of plans), have the slab cut (due to the concreter's f*%# up) and get the roof re-measured (due to a misinterpretation of the elevation drawings e.g. missing an whole section of our roof!).

I cannot imagine what our house would be like if we weren't paying attention to every detail. I can only imagine it would be very different to the one we planned and designed. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a professional builder / architect / engineer by any stretch of the imagination, I just know what this house should look like and what we negotiated in our fixed price contract (more on that another day!).

If you're going down this same path of building a house, or thinking about building, my advice would be: document everything! Changes agreed upon and suggestions made...it all needs to be documented and signed off by both parties.