Piering

We now have a fair few screw piers put in so it looks like the plumbers and electrician weren't on site to do their work on Thursday so hopefully it happens on Monday so they can pour the slab on tuesday.

I also thought i would see what the brick and the render colour will look like in the sun and i think we are pretty pleased with our choices :)

The A&L is for the window frames and the A4 colour sheet is the Dulux Silkwort for the render.

Just ignore the red folder and the white foam between the bricks because we are having natural mortar not off-white.

A LOO!!!!!!

We finally have a porta-loo and some fencing!!

They also put some very rough pegs with some pink paint in the ground to mark out the corners of the house.

They also kept the pile of rubbish that was on our block of land before they started and i hope they will remove it for us.

Construction!!!

So the day has finally arrived!!

We met with the SS this morning and we rocked up to find that the site scrape had already begun and was nearly finished.

The SS just talked us through the process and some formalities for insurance and OH & S purposes.  Some time this week the surveyor will come back and redo the pegs for the house and then the plumbers and network people will come out and do all the lead-ins for the nbn. 

On Tuesday they will start forming and possibly pouring the slab!!  Might have to have a slab party i think :)

Small update.

So we have won the dispute about the ceasarstone and Coral have agreed to not charge us to have the stone on the bathroom vanities. YAY!!!!

We went out to a PGH display centre to see if we want to spend close to $700 on off-white mortar or not and where given some sample bricks and a couple of address's that have used the Eclipse brick.

So we drove around to a few places and took a few photos of the bricks and we reckon that they look good and agreed that off-white mortar would make the bricks stand out a lot more but since the rest of the colours are going to be a fairly dark grey to light grey, we do not think that having such a big contrast between the brick and the mortar to be applicable for our design.  Maybe if the black brick was just to be a feature brick for the façade but it is going to the the brick for the whole house as well.

This house pretty much has the same colour scheme that we are going to have except i think the roof may be a little bit darker.

This is a photo of the display wall at PGH with off-white mortar

Saving the money means we can spend it on other things.

Electrical

Ok so we had our electrical appointment on the 13th.  Sorry it has taken me so long to post the results.

The standard inclusions for the Newport 19 with the Designer inclusions totaled $4,499.00 and with our variations of $1,297.20, our total electrical amount is $5,796.20.
We are pretty happy that we only needed to spend about $1200 to get what we wanted, we just have to spend about another grand and a bit to have downlights installed by the electrician and not through clipsal.

These prices differ from other people's prices on here which could be different electrician company or something.

* Batten Holder - $66
* Wall W/Proof light (batten) - $94.30
* Light switches with 1 or 2 buttons - $0
* 4 way light switch - $12
* 2-way light switch for entrance hallway - $60.40
* 1 socket GPO - $60
* 2 socket GPO - $62.60
* 1 socket outdoor GPO - $85
* 2 socket outdoor GPO - $105
* 1 free-to-air tv socket - $92
* Installation of owner supplied fan - $142.10
* Unflumed exhaust fan w/draftstopper - $169
* fan switch and controller - $0
* Smoke detector - $125
* Facade pillar and garage pillar up/down lights - $143.70

We added pretty much an extra 2 socket gpo to each bedroom except for the main bedroom, seperated the kitchen light from the dining room light as they had both of them to come on at the same time (weird), move a tv point from the dining room to the lounge room nook where the tv is supposed to go (why would you want one in the dining room and not lounge?), add an exhaust fan to each bathroom (we think this is strange to only have one in the water closet), add another batten to the garage, add an outdoor light for the clothesline and also a outdoor powerpoint in the alfresco.

We moved the batten holders in the bedrooms to a corner where we want it to be converted to a downlight and just ask the electrician to possibly do a cash in hand installation of owner supplied downlights.  This would cost us there basic installation price with just the cost of a downlight ($15 approx.), so maybe something like $100 tops compared to about $130 or more with getting clipsal to do it.

We were thinking of having a light with exhaust fan like a hellar one but they wanted to charge about $263 to supply and install one where they are about $30 at bunnings.  So we just said to do the exhaust fan by its self and we might switch them out during construction.

The only thing we are worried about is that the surface area is a lot smaller where the fan can draw from compared to a normal sized fan.  Has any one else found the combo fans are not that good?

We also want at least one feature light in the house and we think the front hallway will be the best place so when people enter they are greeted by a nice light.  We will have to buy two of these though and are finding it a bit hard to find some lights that aren't like birdnests or dust catches plus it has to be somewhat masculine.

What do people think about the type of light in the garage?  I was thinking about a bank or two of fluro's to give a fair bit of light distribution and brightness but the other half has problems with his eyes that gives him very bad migrains in fluro lighting.

This is just a basic look on what each component looks like.

Major Update

Wow! what a few long months it has been to finally get to the Colour and Finishes selection appointment!!!

First we had problems with the lender we went through due to staff leaving and not passing on our file with proper explanation for what is to happen and also on Coral Homes part as well.  Coral Homes are adamant that the house and land package pamphlet we handed to them and said we want this, is this doable and they said yes.  It turns out that they never intended the package to be a house and land together.  Even though it says on the pamphlet we gave them and also on the preliminary contract mentioning that it is house and land package.  Because of this stuff up we are not currently having one loan being a turn key loan.  It is now two separate loans, we have to pay interest on the land loan while we are still renting which we were not prepared for and that is the main reason we chose to have the turn key loan.

Once we requested a person who knew what they were doing, we were moved on to another lender branch who have definitely helped us to get the ball rolling in terms of getting the loans fixed and for us to advance to the next step of coral's process.

Once we paid the deposit to start construction the plans were submitted to a private certifier and they were approved within 2 weeks.  When they were approved we booked the colour and finishes and the electrical appointment for the 13th Oct.

The electrical appointment had to be done over internet conferrence as we live in Newcastle and it went fairly well.  We kept mostly to the main inclusions but added a few more power points, some extra outdoor lights for the facade and the clothes line at the side of the house and also some exhaust fans in the bathrooms.  Our main goal is to have most of the baton lights to be removed and replaced with led downlights through the electrician themselves for a cash job.

Next appointment was at the very small room here in Newcastle that Coral Homes has for their colour and finishes appointments.  We upgraded the carpet to the Gold range and chose this carpet to match the rest of the colours in the house.  Lasting Impressions Range - Colour: Winter.

We upgraded the floor and shower wastes to round chrome instead of just white plastic.

The roof tiles: Designer collection from Bristile and the Colour: Sanctuary

The gutters, downpipes and garage door: Colour: Woodland Grey

The windows and the sliding doors will be the Precious Silver colour, (Far right A&L sample in picture above)

The bricks: PGH called Eclipse with off white mortar

The front entry door was upgraded to a 1200mm wide door with translucent laminate on the glass:

We chose the XS26 and with the darkest stain available.

The door handle:

With the same look throughout the house on the internal doors with this handle:

The Rendering on the facade: Colour: Silkwort

The Soffit will be: Colour: Mt Aspiring

The internal wall colour, internal doors and the door woodwork: Colour: Beige Royal 1/4

With the Bathroom floor tile on the left with the wall colour in the middle and the bathroom wall tiles on the right hand side.

The Cabinets laminex has been changed to: Colour: Bronzeworks

Colours with the floor tile:

We chose to change the cabinets to this one as it does not have such a pronounced wood pattern as it looked like it clashed too much with the woodgrain tiles and there was no extra charge that you would get with a wood grain laminex.  The bathroom vanity's and the kitchen cupboards will all be the same with Osprey Ceasarstone for the top.

The Vanity's will be floating with a recessed kickboard.

The handles for the kitchen and bathrooms were upgraded to the Bronze range and will be vertical.

Basin: Caroma Carboni Seamless (inset):

Basin tapware:

Shower rail and bathroom tapware/toilet roll holder: Phoenix range

Bathtub:

Kitchen sink tap:

For the skirting and archetraves we chose: Style: Half Splayed

The oven 600mm:

Rangehood 900mm:

 The Stovetop 900mm:

The laundry/washing machine taps:

The letter box: Design: Haven Colour: Black

The driveway will be a silver coloured brushed concrete.

Now to just dispute with Coral about the vanity tops to be ceasarstone as that is what we signed off on the building plans and we even brought it the attention of the sales consultant who said we must get it now that we have signed the plans and Coral Homes have signed off on the plans.  The say that it was an admin error even though when we told them they didn't mind.

Tiles!

So first off settlement for the land was on the 15th YAY!!!!

Today though we went in for our meeting with the tile consultant.  We had been into Beaumont Tiles twice to have a look at the range and fell in love with the wood like tiles as we like wooden floors but the tiles are easier to maintain and a lot cheaper.  We also wanted some chocolate/latte sought of colours for the house and found a few we liked and made a wish list and then a safe list.

The safe list included tiles that were within the range for Coral Homes that wouldn't cost us anything as we only had a small budget for tiles.

We went in with the list of tiles that we liked and the lady gave us some great news that the tiles in our wish list we had wouldn't cost us anything (no extra labor costs) because Coral expanded their range to include a few more tiles.  So now we don't have to fork out over a grand to get the wooden look tile in the below pictures that we wanted and could spend the money on the kitchen splash back which will be the orange tile that will be 100mmx300mm size laid horizontally.

The wall tile will be laid horizontally as well.

The WC and the laundry will have the wet floor tile as the floor and the skirting tile while the splash back in the laundry will be the white wall tile.

The kitchen and bathroom cabinets are going to be the laminex sample with Osprey ceasarstone just like in the below picture.

And for carpets maybe something this colour?

 All the tiles together.