The Causarina 30

After looking at a number of options, and variations we decided to go with the Coral Homes Causarina 30 design.

The basic Causarina 30 design is  essentially a 5 bed house (well 4+ study).

From the basic design we made a few changes

• firstly flipping the house to match the plot shape,
•  then we widened the front adding some extra space to the garage 
• removed the bath from the en-suite adding more storage to garage
• flipped the laundry room around so we don't have a washing machine just behind our bed
• redesigned the patio door arrangement to put larger doors and minimize the internal corner pillar.

Moving forward

Had some progress this week, the revised drawings and variation paperwork finally came through (only took 3 weeks), and on receipt of the drawings we submitted them to the estate management company and received design approval.

Design approval wasn't entirely straightforward, we have an entire book of covenants to comply with and we had a lot of problems with keeping within the boundary setbacks, this wasn't helped by the non rectangular shape of the lot.

In the end we opted to apply for some boundary relaxations, by applying for the front boundary setback of 5m to be relaxed to 4m we were able to fit without infringing the rear boundaries. We felt this application could be justified because the lots to either side of us were corner lots, and as a consequence only had a 3m setback from the same line that we had a 5m setback.... anyway, cut a long story short, we successfully got the relaxation from the estate management, just now have to reapply for the same relaxation from the local council.

Also progressed this week was the tile selection appointment for 4th May and the colour selection appointment for 14th may, we also need to arrange an electrical design appointment.

Also through this week was the variation documentation which took $30K off the quotation price, this removes the solar system, driveway, turf, and fencing from the quotation which I'm sourcing from third parties, solar and driveway alone saved $6K, fencing is provided by the estate management, leaving us a $16K surplus to spend on turf and patio screening.

So next stage is to push forward with council approval, this process can take 4 weeks.

Site Plans

waiting waiting waiting

The last week has been a little frustrating, a few weeks ago we received the detailed plans and I started the process of obtaining covenant approval from the Estate managers (got a whole book load of details that we need to comply with!!)

The approval process raised the issue of some boundary infringements, which we did know about, and the fact that I needed to obtain official permission before the approval, which before this point nobody told us about!.

Anyway, whilst marshaling our arguments for official approval I realized that we may as well get hung for a sheep as a lamb and as well as asking approval for the current design approval I suggested that were we to infringe the front boundary even further then everything would be better...... and they agreed... providing we resubmit a site plan that shows the buildings relocation, which I immediately passed on to Coral

...two weeks later I have neither the revised drawing or any idea of when I will receive it....

On the good news front we have now received official finance approval from the bank.

Whats gone before

Well as said for better or worst we have already taken the decision to build a home with Coral Homes and at this stage we have land plans finance sorted out and just getting ready to pull the starting trigger.

Getting to this stage has already been something of an adventure, and having not build a home before then there has been something of a steep learning curve.

Initially we started out early January going to the local estate land office and finding a likely looking LOT, its about 600 square meters and of a non regular shape but it has some situation factors that we like, and given the limited choice of lots then Jill and I decided that we would make a go of it.

At this stage we did some math and figured that we could build a reasonable home on this lot with a $450K budget.... Ill get to the cost blow out issue later

Having taken the decision to build and found a plot of land the next step was to come up with a house design, this was mostly done by touring the local show homes and finding a standard plan we liked, at a price we likes, that with some modification would fit the lot.... and this is where Coral entered the picture.

Whilst there were several options we looked at nad they were all more or less coming in at the same price the Coral Causarina 30 was the best fit, and at a $187,000 price tag with free ducted air con and free Solar electricity and Hot water, it looked the best design and deal, however Im sure that if we wanted to spend longer looking we probably could have done better

OK, lets get this price thing out the way first, $187K.... is a pretty good price, too good in fact, unfortunately whats not made clear is that this price is based upon a certain set of ideal circumstances that probably never exist, especially when your building on a planned Estate.....

...So $40K later we have a basic house design that meets the estates Covenants, engineering requirements of our lot and a drive, and we are now looking at a build price of  $227K......

....at this stage we started modifying the specs, out goes the 1.5Kw solar system and in goes a 5Kw system, made the garage larger, few mods to make the house actually fit on the plot, carpeting, tiling.... and new we are actually at $270K, many of the items priced into the quotation are there for the purpose of the finance application, and at the current time of writing we intend to vary it back out of the contract and have the work done by third parties at a considerable saving.

Starting out

Not being a natural blogger I've taken the unusual decisions to write a blog that Chronicles the process of building out new home with the Australian Builder Coral Homes.

My reasons for taking this action are complex, firstly having tried to do research on various builders I tend to find that people only ever post reviews that are incredibly negative, because they have had something go very wrong, and feel they didnt get the response they deserved, where people who got OK to good service (and you would hope that's the majority) tend to say little or nothing.

Given this scenario its very hard to get a balanced opinion on any particular organisation, and when your working on a project as large as building your own home then this can be a little frustrating.

So my solution to this problem is to start out with the intention of writing a review (blog) as the building process happens, this way readers can be fairly sure that if I've got anything positive or negative to say then it will have a context.

Another thing I should say is that I intend to make Coral Homes aware of this blogs existence, and this fact may affect their service and what/when I write it, for instance I may not publish details or information that affects critical decisions or negotiations, until after the information can have no negative effect.

So, there are my intentions, how the next months unfold are something of an unknown, and whilst I hope for the best there is every opportunity for the worst.