Fireplace

Bought our gas fireplace today.  Will be going in between the two windows in our family room.  The lovely people at "Impressions", Castle Hill are going to store it for us until we need it.  They have such a big range of fireplaces to choose from and their new display makes it easier to choose what suits your needs best.











In the meantime, the slab has been curing.
Has been good weather for that as well since
it's been raining on and off for the last few days.
Fences will probably go up soon.

Girl's Rooms

Trying to come up with some good design ideas for the girl's rooms.  They have their own ideas of course. Pink is out of the question now that they are much older.   Here are a few of their colour preferences.

Ashtana likes this sort of thing for her wall.

Sandrika's Room Inspiration

"We have a slab"

So excited today when we went by the land and saw them working on the slab.  By 2pm the guys were finished and they did such a good job of it too.  Looks really smooth and so big.  Can actually see where the patio and alfresco etc. is going to be.  The guy working there said that frames should be delivered and completed by early next week.
Got an email from our CSR, Sara today and she gave us the name of our site supervisor, Stephen.  From other blogs, we hear he's pretty good.  Lets hope we don't have to complain to him too much.

The guys working on the slab at 10 am.

Slab progress

Pods installed Monday 28/03/11, ready for concrete now.

Decorating Update

Well, I've started to buy some stuff for the house now.  We needed a new dining table.  Decided to buy a square table as it seems to be the best option for our meals area.  Been debating on a few options and finally decided to buy this table from Domayne.  Thankfully, they agreed to store it for us until we need it.

Also bought this really nice mirror.  We have a really large alcove adjacent to our media room.  Tossed up putting a book shelf there or a nice picture.  The bookshelf will end up collecting junk and the option of the picture sounded so boring.  So we saw this really nice mirror at Vast, almost 2m by 2m which will fit our alcove perfectly.  The nice guy at Vast agreed to store it for me as well.  

Framework and plumbing completed.

Piering being done.

Speeding Along

Well, things are really moving along now.  The piering, formwork and plumbing was completed today.  Ben spoke to the concreter who told him that we should have a slab by Tuesday.  Lets hope the weather holds out until then.

Today with siltration fence.

Some pictures of the excavation.

SURPRISE!

We've been patiently waiting for our CSR to tell us that our plans are now with construction.  Heard nothing all this time and on Monday she told me that they were still waiting for the final Engineering plans.  Well,  since I had a day off today to recover from last nights Lionel Richie concert, Ben and I drove over to the land to check if anything was going on.  I could not believe my eyes when I saw that the excavation of our block had been done.
Must have happened this morning cause it's been raining for last few days and today the weather was fabulous.
I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, our file must be with construction now.  Still no update from the CSR.

Update

Still waiting for our file to be handed to the construction department for construction to officially start.  Every morning I wake hoping it will be today....so far we haven't heard anything from our CSR. Hoping it's soon.

My Favourite Part- Colour Selection

I loved this part of the whole process.  If you ask Ben, he'd probably say it was his least favourite.  Dragged my teenage daughter to Di Lorenzo and Home Option Gallery to get her help with my choices.  She will tell you that whatever I chose was all her ideas.
I was quiet impressed with Di Lorenzo's tile selections and realized from experience that it was well worth paying the extra money it might cost to upgrade tiles as when selling your home, prospective buyers have bathrooms and kitchens at the top of their lists.  We were also quiet happy with the choices shown by the Home Option Gallery, they cover so much.  Visited the PGH brick display at Schofields very hurriedly one Sunday.  Ben and my daughter weren't too keen on looking at bricks.  We immediately liked the darker bricks and when we asked about the upgrading, we were quoted some ridiculously high amount.  Made our decision to stick to the standard brick very easy.  In hindsight I wished we could have chosen from Australs range of bricks.  They seem to have more variety.  The only two dark bricks that PGH seemed to have were Espresso and Apollo.  We chose Espresso, it was the cheaper option.

Here are our exterior colour choices:

Brick - PGH  Alfresco-Espresso
Roof tile- CSR Monier - Sambuca
Windows- Airlite- Woodland Grey
Garage Door - Steeline- Paperbark
Gutter - Woodland Grey
Fascia - Paperbark
Driveway- Stencil concrete - Sandy Beige

With the interior we pretty much stuck to the black and cream theme.

We had our colour selection appointment on the 7/09/10 and between 9 am and 12 noon, we had pretty much finalised all our colour selections and the kitchen selection.
With the kitchen, I did go a bit overboard, but then again I do believe the kitchen needs to be impressive.  I chose to increase the size of the island bench and upgraded to the Night Sky Caesarstone.  Also added two sets of pot drawers and a pull out spice rack, need the space for all our Indian spices.   Also fitted out the Butlers pantry with a sink and moved my dishwasher under that sink.  Of course I had to have the soft close doors as well.  Tired of listening to my teenage son slamming the kitchen cupboard doors.  The majority of my extra cost came from these kitchen upgrades.
Since we were finished so early,  our Colour consultant checked to see if Di Lorenzo could fit us in that afternoon for the tile selection.  Normally it's a separate appointment.  Luckily they were happy to accommodate us. This is when my husband made a graceful exit and left me and the daughter to it.
We had a basic idea of what we wanted.  Just stuck to the standard tiles for the main tiles and upgraded to mosaics for the features in the shower niches etc.  Our biggest dispute was the kitchen splashback, she wanted a mosaic, which was going to cost about $3k , I wanted a very nice large glass tile with silver flecks through it,  which was only going to cost about $500.  I won.
The only thing left to do now was meet for our electrical appointment which was scheduled for a week later.
Ben and I met with the electrical consultant and pretty much completed that within two hours.  We stuck to the basics in the hope that our electrician son would fit our down lights in for us when the time came.   I did get the ducted vacuum system though.

The Looooonnnng Wait

Our land was finally registered on the 18/01/11.  While waiting and waiting and waiting for the works and registration to be finalised.  Eden Brae had received the Developer approval with the landscape plan that we did ourselves and then submitted the plans to Blacktown Council on the 05/11/10.
We also signed off on our numerous Post Contract Variations (PCVs).  We had a total of 10 PCVs by the time we signed off on the final plan with Eden Brae.
Blacktown Council finally approved our plans on the 09/02/11.

Taking the First Steps

On the 23/05/10, we paid our initial deposit for a full tender.  Within 2 weeks Eden Brae called us to to make an appointment for our tender presentation.  We viewed our tender for the first time on the 12/07/10.  We were pleasantly surprised that our mountain of changes hadn't costed us the earth.  The initial plan also looked pretty much like the home we wanted.
Finally signed our contracts on the 26/08/10.  At the same time we were booked in for our colour selection appointment with the Home Option Gallery.  I already had a pretty good idea of what I wanted in the house but we were advised to have our exterior selection finalised by the date so that we did not delay the plans for submission to the Ponds Developer for approval.