roof tiles and a wrap

Before the builders went on holidays they wrapped our house and put the roof tiles on. pics are coming

framing pics

alfresco

back of house

front of house

more framing

By looking at the framing its almost complete.The roof trusses need to be finished a

and by friday everything should be done.

front of house

fencing, noggins/frame inspection

Spoke to my building supervisor today he says go ahead with the fence, and the noggins are nothing to worry about.

Going to have a framing inspection on Monday.
We also asked for a temporary fence on the back of the block.

Photobucket Album

framing started

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went to our block today.. they have started our framing... thought alot more would have been done. but anyway its a start.

It seems that PD have fixed up the damage on the alfresco slab as couldnt spot it.

Can anyone who reads this post have a look at part of the framing it looks like they have used damage wood.. tell me what you think please . I dont think it looks normal.

the alfresco car park

Im not very happy .Went to our block tonight hoping to see some start on the framing.. there was none:( Why give you a date for a framing start and nothings done.)

Second gripe for the night some @#%^& tradesman is driveing up onto my newly laid Alfresco slab and parking what looks like a large car. how do i know !!!!this lots of tyre marks and some nice damage to the slab grrrrrrrrrrrrr . you see they cant get around the front of the block because of the building materials arew in the way.. so they drive around the back of the block. I cant see why they need to park on the slab when theres plenty of room on the land behind me.

Anyway i have sent a email to PD telling them im not happy .

One good thing the windows have been delivered.

kev from new homes

I contacted kevin from new homes . we are going to get him to inspect the building of the house. interestingly he said that for single story house like ours he dosent inspect them at the frame stage but preplaster before the bricks go on. So he said when we see the tiles go on and bricks starting. ring him and he will come down. Also said the quality inspectors that the builders have mostly they are ex tafe teachers. and once the builders know he is coming they get the best tradies on to build the house,, Asked him about the painters as some people have been complaining about the quality of their paint jobs again there been a shortage of good painters up till now and hopefully the situation going to improve.. sounds like he knows what he is talking about.

we have a slab

As mentioned on the forum we have a slab:)) it is massive went to the block tonight hoping to see some progress and was nice to see our house slab. wished we had seen it poured but couldnt. looks like it was done yest or today.

our scrape

yeh We have finally started down the building road, six long months we have waited for PD to start and the day has finally arrived. We had a site scrape today and the dunny and rubbish cage was delivered. I noticed though it seems that if you build prestige the dunny is quite superior to the ones delivered at the lifestyle houses. Thought u needed to know that lol. wonder if the tradies are envious.

site superviser

Had a call from our Site Supervisor lenny who will be looking after the construction of our home. Site scrape is tomorrow Nov 20th and plumbing ect should be laid thereafter. Then our slab will be poured NOV 27 and the framers are booked for Dec 4th. Cross fingers it all happens on time.

throw a few coins

A friend of mine who is from a Greek back ground said to throw a few coins in the slab when its being poured its supposed to bring prosperity and good luck. Might just give it a goe if i can get there in time. When we first saw the block their was a rainbow over head. We thought now that means good luck for the future.

This is the PORTER DAVIS HEYWOOD home which we are going to build with the Fremantle Facade.Of cause the bricks and facade colours will be different.

signing of final contract drawings

Today we signed the final building drawings. I thought the site start which they said is tomorrow would be a scrape of the block but it turns out it wasnt .It meant the drawings would be sent over to construction by next wednesday and they will start scraping the site next friday Nov 16.

our bricks

the damage lay back

mentionedin earlier posts about the damaged lay back heres a pic

we have a tap

we have a tap . drove to the block today just to check everything out before site start this friday . PD have installed the tap and water meter... yippee good to see that something is moving. took a couple of pics in the pouring rain. the block seems to have taken the heavy down pour really well.

site start

our sales consultant has told us site start will be november 9th... yippee. a month earlier than expected!!!!

building permit

received our building permit in the mail yesterday... not long to go now:)))). we are supposed to get our final drawings in the mail anyday soon. Still undecided what to do with the aircon, we want to get it installed wont be till later on because of money. If we got the add on air it would mean a extra 3grand or so when you compare it with evaparated. which is worthwhile in the end. . But after asking a couple of ppl who have evaporated they could only give positive comments about it. So i think in the end we will go for evaporitive.

future neighbours

We met a couple of our new neighbours while visiting the block on sunday. They seem nice. one couple was saying they had some of their windows stolen ( their house is currrently being built) and a house further down the st , had all their windows stolen. When you dont have people living in your st the thieves abound. Lucky we are starting later this year by then we will have people living in the street to keep a eye on things.. still not happy about the builders mess on my block it gets worse each time i go there.. my neighbour said throw it back.. yeah not a good idea to cause trouble at this stage with the neighbours.I have been taking fotos and informing Pd about it anyway.

Took a drive to Cardina lakes Pakenham . PD have their Lifestyle range there. Im going to be building a Heywood 28 and PD dont have one built ..well so i thought until the sales lady said theres a Heywood 28 around the corner being used as a land sales office by Peet . I went around and the guy was happy to unlock it for me and i had a look inside and took lots of fotos. It was great to finally get a birds eye view of how big our house was going to be. It was a such a mess in side and no furniture . without the furniture and decor to look at you can actually see the real thing. Iwas worrid about the size of the 2nd shower in this house is smaller i got the tape measure out and the width of the door is 530 millimetres .. its sooo narrow. I had to turn side ways to get in. and im a small build. A big person wouldnt get through the opening.this is a huge design error. On my plans our shower seems to bigger than this one hopefully we wont have problems.

upgrade of paint product

We have decided to upgrade our paint. The paint PD uses is a Washable Velvet, which in our opinion and the opinion of a trade centre (which i wont name)isnt as good as Wattyl ID and Solar Guard. We used ID and Solar Guard on our last house and finger marks and grease wash off really well. So this upgrade will cost us an extra $1,300 which is money well spent, as if we went with the other product we would have to re paint alot sooner and and spend more.

Our sales consultant said that we will be getting the drawings in a couple of weeks to look over, then they will send our file to construction and apply for building permit in nov building start dec !!!yippee!!! not long to go now:)))))

We wanted to have mouldings around the front windows . This would have been a upgrade of $800 decided to leave it . We

the lake and wetlands

this is why i picked this estate.. fell in love with it...

my block

1. these are pics of my block . they have planted some nice trees in our street currently blossoming. each street in the subdivision of botantic walk will have different coloured trees so this will create a rainbow effect . the map of the subdivision top left shows the future school and footy oval pity the schools only primary level i was told it was going to be also secondary but the sales person got her facts wrong grrrrr. not happy jan. forgot to add around us are some nice wet lands and walking tracks going to be nice when matured. heaps to do in this estate. lovely lake to stroll around, ride a bike ,canoe even a nice cafe . great for familes

opps

novice trying to down load pics didnt work

im jealous

had to give megan from pd a copy of my infrastructure levy receipt so hopefuly things will start moving. went for a drive to our block noticed two blocks have had their slabs poured i was soooo jealous!!!! why cant that be us????): the land next to mine has been scrapped that block is for a pd prestige im told and two blocks down is a pd access. i guess the lifestyle range like mine is more popular thats why mines taking longer to get started. most of the houses in my street will be pd. i have shots of the land and heywood display in my camera and fone will have to download them here.

more news

havent been on for a couple of weeks reason being my old house settled 3rd so had to move out aug 1st . took five hrs to pack and unpack the truck, of cause i had removalists to do that but still i was buggard by the end of it. the truck was chockers. im glad im out no regrets.. now renting in a better area for at least 12 months till the house is built. not worrid just have to relax now and be patient with it all. so westpac finally got the loan docs correct and gave them my land title . i now offically own a block of land yippee. paid my infastructure levy $485 so my permit can be approved. i cant get over the ammount of fees costs charges i have laid out since i sold my house ...no wonder houses are so expensive. so anyway think that is it for now.

update on doc signing post

had a call from choice homes loans on friday it was my broker that made the mistake. he sent the wrong interest rate information to westpac consequently westpac prepared homeloan docs for the higher rate. so now the documents have to be redone but there is no worries about getting the cheaper rate. second mistake in their docs ...the docs were prepared as a land and construction loan should have only been a construction loan hence the reason for the $15.000 land transfer stamp duty they were going to slug us. im paying cash for my land at settlement and told them this numerous times. this huge mistake should have been picked up by my broker obviously they wernt double checking.

moving and loan document signing

moving next week to the rental house as existing house settles around that time. good bye old house.. kind of sad):. but thats life .. time to move on. not very happy today went to sign my loan approval documents .the broker has either made a big stuff up or the bank has put us on a different type of loan. not happy jan!!!. yes its pds choice home loans. they gave us a first option home loan rate at 7.49% with westapc. i find out that westpac has drawn up a loan contract for their rocket repay homeloan 7.67% which seems to have all the bells and whistles included but nearly a $400 fee a yr 4 the life of the loan. works out to be a total of $16 grand in fees by the time i pay the loan off. no thankyou... someones got this whole thing wrong i didnt sign the contracts told choice to negoiate the original quoted loan rate with westpac.

pd price rises

went looking at the display home today .pd have a new promotion going and they have lifted the price of their houses. im sooo lucky i i signed my contracts before they lifted their prices. my house has gone up by 6 grand or so. house and land packages you cant find much under 300 grand any more. their promotions i dont think are as good this time around. so ppl will have to find more money. also found pd have altered the design of their heywood range they have put a study on. reducing the size of the master bedroom. the ensuite is at the front of the house in line with the study... weird i reckon .

loan approval

july 18th 2007 got a call from choice home loans today. yippee.. our home loan has been approved.:))theres no stopping it now...

contract signing

had our contract signing with megan from pd .everything went well with a few added extras upgraded mortar, bricks extra phone and tv points power point on kitchen bench plus the extra five star rating costs added an extra 2 grand. the only error was a feature wall colour so everything else seems fine sooo far

the next leg of the building journey

had my 9am appointment with national tiles in port melbourne yesterday to pick my tiles for the bathrooms and laundry. took me 2 hrs to drive... there bad weather and traffic. my sales lady wasnt very happy actually quite snooty but she calmed down pretty quick when we were able to pick everything quickly..then it was back to hopetoun in dandynong to pick the laminates bricks tiles and colours for the house.what a relief thats over. tomorrow friday is contract signing.. now i have a better idea of how much everything will cost .. thats been a major headache because you fear of going over budget and not having money to complete everything. one concern was the addtional costs related to the five star rating. i had visions of this costing thousands because i have the grand alfresco. i sent a email yesterday to my sales consultant at pd requesting the cost. i held my breath ..shut my eyes . i opened the return email $684 phew.

our new home

Hello everyone welcome to our new home blog.we have been following others blogs on here so have decided to make one of our own. So here goes.. After careful deliberation , sleepless nights, questioning wether we are doing the right thing. we put our 14 square shoe box, (house)on the market in March this year sold it phewww..and decided to build again for the second time..we started looking at displays last December and decided on a house and land package with Porter Davis,the poor sales consultants remained calm...between the chopping and changing of land estates and deciding between their Access and Lifestyle range of homes. but i guess they be used to that.
So we have decided to build the Heywood 28 Lifestyle Home in a very nice estate South East of Melbourne, have lived there the past 14 yrs.We have discovered that we need lots of patience because our site start is late Dec2007 possibly Jan 2008. Have done our fixed price tender (flabbergasted at the amount of gst that johnnie howard takes $17.000 just think what you could spend that on.. makes me sooo mad) and going to choose tiles and have an appointment at Hopetoun Interiors next week. then it will be the signing of building contracts.. Waiting on the outcome of the five star rating as they think we will be up for extra cost due to the alfresco, ceiling height ,and the garage access door that we added. any way think thats all at this stage keep you all informed