To council at last

Since my last blog, we have approved the plans to go council. We have visited Boral Bricks, Westside Ceramics and PGH bricks and tiles.

The plans went to council last week with only a few changes from the original. The island in the kitchen is still shorter than i have asked for - i have spoken the the consultant about this and they will fix it. Other than that we are happy with the house plans.

Today was a busy day, we visited Westside Ceramics which luckily was just down the road from our house plus ran a few other errands. Tiles was chosen for the main bathroom, en suite and laundry. The colour scheme chosen was charcoal floor tiles and white glossy wall tiles. This will go well with the light gray wall paint. One thing i found out was that the wall tiles does not go as high as i expected in the wet areas - this will have to be done after handover.

Tomorrow we have an appointment with the colour consultant at Kellyville - this will also include choosing our electrical - extra power points or light points etc.

To Kellyville again...

For the last week we have been back and forth with our Allworth consultant regarding prices and changes. On Friday we paid our second deposit to secure $8,000 worth of bonuses including alarm systems, dishwasher and remote control garage.

We went to Kellyville again this weekend to finalised all the changes with our consultant. One thing we didn't like was the design of the kitchen. So instead of a U shape kitchen with a breakfast bar, we have changed it so it is L shaped with an island. I have updated the house design with the new kitchen. This will create a more open feel to the home, plus i can now have a place to make my cocktail mixes...

We also received our colour folder on Saturday - this contains numerous choices of suppliers and colours. I am sure we will be having loads of fun picking the colours for the house. During the next month we will need to visit these suppliers to choose our bricks, roof, tiles and paint colours.

Tender Recieved!

We received our tender today from Allworth Homes - 1 week longer than expected. The quote was more than what i wanted it to be, but it was the price i expected because of all our added options including bay windows to bed2, building under eves not to mention 9ft ceilings - $6k extra.

Compared to my previous tenders some items cost more and some was less. We will be going back to the Allworth consultant in a few days to see if we can get them to match my previous tender... hopefully we can get a bit off. Some things we also need to clarify next week/changes we have made with the builders is:

• steps from the back door to backyard included or extra,
• toilet/bathroom frosted glass included or extra,
• bay window - they move the whole left side of the house forward 1m but it looks like the bay window was not added to bed2 but rather just cut out of the original size (we will have to look at the actual size of bed2 before and after bay window was added to know exactly),
• they've charged us for adding walls to make the cinema room but did not consider that we actually removed some other walls, dining and toilet - i questioned them on this and they will get back to me,
• separate toilet to be included with the bathroom as one,
• we moved the front entry of the house to the middle,
• double doors instead of sliding doors to the cinema room,
• we wanted to increase the width of the kitchen under the eaves but this could not be done, the builder will get back to us.

The original design with Cinema room added and wider kitchen.


The red arrows show changes that we have made to the design.

Last week we went away to Brisbane for the weekend so things have stalled a little, that and the fact that i just got promoted means more work.

We went to Kellyville again today to see our Allworth Homes consultant. The previous plan had too much changes to the original design so we went with one of their designs the "Fiesta". We did some re-arrangement to the "Fiesta", 4 bedroom home to make it more open and to fit in my cinema room :). We have put down an initial deposit in order for them to undertake the contour study and tender. This will take 2 weeks and hopefully the price is right!

Let the process begin...!

We have purchased a block of land in the Fairfield council area and are currently starting the process of building our new home. During the next... well hopefully it won't take a year to build, we will be blogging our experience.

The land is 450sqm it is 20m wide and 22m long. Due to the land not being too long and council regulations we are building a wide but short house.


Yesterday we visited Homeworld at Kellyville, and visited a few display homes. After talking to a number of project builders we determined that Allworth Homes best suited our needs. They have country style homes which are wide but short, exactly what we wanted!

I had earlier designed a floorplan of what i wanted in a home and the consultant loved the idea, nice, open and simple. He is sending a copy of my design to the head office to see if they can build it! We will know by next Friday. By the way, design is not to ratio.