….I think it is DONE!
Our house is now officially complete! We thought it was a bit touch and go there over the last few days…especially with a public holiday in the way. Some things on the list were not quite finished, last time round, and a few things were not quite right (all minor I might add!) but our SS has come through with the goods as we had hoped!
Thuy and I both had the day off today to finish packing, and to organise some stuff from Bunnings for the new place. We went to the house early this morning to measure up the courtyard and alfresco for dirt and paving etc. We were amazed when we arrived to see now less than 7 or 8 vehicles parked all around our house! Plumbers, electricians, air con guys, painters, tank guys you name it they were there. It was a pretty crazy half our when we were there, with so much happening. We did our best to stay out of everyone’s way, pretty much keeping to ourselves and doing our outdoor planning. Our poor SS was looking a little under pressure (hopefully not from us!) with his phone going off every 5 minutes. I know I’ve said it before, but a really big thumbs up and thanks to him for getting our house done and looking great.
Without further delay… here are some long awaited pictures of our NEW home! 
Theatre room door closed…
Theatre room door half open (or half closed?)…
That’s one way to get a tank in the yard!
On Monday our new lounge arrives, our driveway and decks are being built, and later in the week our blinds should be being installed. Perfect timing! Of course, the only people to NOT have their act together are Telstra. Apparently the whole estate won’t have phone connections until the 21st…. which is pretty bad considering we have neighbours that moved in nearly a month ago now!
November 5th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Awesomely awesome. : ) Looks just a *little* different to the image you have on your banner up the top. ; ) Looking forward to seeing it in person…and making sausage rolls in your ovens!!!
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
November 11th, 2008 at 4:27 am
Ahhhhh! I’ve been there!
It’s very cool and super fun.
:D 
November 13th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Awesome… Congratulations!…
Your new house looks amazing! Keep the photo’s coming as would love to see how decking turns out.
Takody
November 24th, 2008 at 6:13 am
Congratulations Guys! You’re almost there. We are also first home builder. We have chosen also Urbanedge (ludo 001 design). We have not yet formally entered into a contract and it is just a preliminary works (choosing a design, modification, negotiating for inclusions, etc.). We are foregoing the alfresco (3.1 x 3.1) by turning it into internal feature as part of dining area (but maintaining the sliding door). They are charging as additional $2,500.00 for the tiling since it is now part of the floor. But I think we have also spared them of supposed glasses on each side of the supposes al fresco. Can I ask your opinion on this? Is this fair for both of us? Thank you again for your informative blog.
lizzie
November 24th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Hi Lizzie,
Thanks!
Just looking at your floorplan now… I’m not an expert but, at a guess I would say 3.1m x 3.1m for tiles so let’s say 10sqm at say $25sqm = $250 for the actual tiles plus labour obviously….so maybe $500 all up. Plus you’d need 10sqm of concrete that you didn’t have before…. and that is probably up to $150sqm (I don’t know how much a slab costs, but it’d have to be more than a driveway)…another $1500. So I think you’ll find the concrete is probably the expensive bit. Perhaps query the breakdown of the costs if you’re unhappy with the price?
Plus on top of all that, they need to pay a draftsman to redraft the designs to take into account your changes. They need to resubmit the plans for engineering checks, for the 5 star rating checks, to the council etc. So that is often quite an expensive process as well. A sliding door is actually pretty cheap, but the costs of redrafting the plans are pretty expensive.
We found that deleting stuff generally doesn’t save you money.
Simply because making the actual change costs more than whatever it is you are removing.
e.g. we delete a window from our bedroom - that cost us$200
we added a window of the same size to our garage - that cost us $300
Good luck! I hope it all works out for you!!
We’ve moved in now and overall have been very happy with Urbanedge!