Meter Box and Recycled Water

Not a great deal has been happening given the recent rain. Though if this keeps up, we may just get that lap pool. It was good however to see our building permit and Metricon boards up as well as the meter box and what appears to be the recycled water tap (purple one in pic below). Not sure why it's positioned where it is, right in the middle up front of the land, and wondering if it will be relocated after construction.

First Works

Since the site start date, we've been doing drive bys when we can. Some pics of early excavation work but nothing too exciting.

Picnic and Site Start

Should mention that before any work started on our land, our fantastic parents helped on a working bee to clear weed, grass and debris. It was a gorgeous day for a working bee and we worked the folks hard :) We celebrated with a picnic on our land.

A couple weeks after that we were advised of a site start date of 31st May... and so the countdown began.

Developer Approval & Building Permit

After all the permits, the most important approval was still yet to come. The mountain of paperwork that formed our Contract must now get submitted to the developer of The Range estate to approve that it complies with the similarly impressive Design Guidelines for all homes built at The Range.

Having consulted them on various occasions since we first engaged Metricon, we were not expecting any major objections... however, waiting is never fun. For 3 weeks we scratched our heads over what the developer could possibly be pondering over. Eventually we received a response with two main items that had to be altered to comply; 1/ colour of downpipes (?) and 2/ the stainless steal frame for our balcony. The latter turned out to be rather costly change which we begrudgingly accepted as we did like the look of glass but wasn't planning on the extra spend.

So after signing off on yet another post contract variation, we received our blessing from the developer and sought the coveted building permit which would kick start the actual construction of our dream home.

Permits and Finalising the Contract

One of the most time consuming and frustrating building tasks is applying for permits. Mainly because once submitted, its no longer within your control and turnaround depends on the workload, red tape or mood of the relevant governing body. It took till mid April to obtain all the required permits to enable construction to start.

An important permit included the one to remove our problem trees. We made good use of the mountain of mulch that resulted in the felling even if it took us about a month to relocate.

It was only when we saw our vacant block for the first time without the trees and mulch that it really hit us that our home will be a reality. A definite milestone.

April was also the month of finalising contracts with Metricon. There's final and then there's variations after the final. The flexibility is great but the paperwork isn't. In the end, you do need a good document filing system along with a great memory to ensure everything you requested is accounted for. The process certainly puts the responsibility squarely on the owner to remember and approve every item. Not so unreasonable really but when the process takes 6 mths to finalise, it amounts to a quite a task.

By early May, our contract was finally finalised. We signed away endless pages of documents and just hoped our lack of enthusiasm by this stage wasn't going to come back and bite us in the butt.

Designing Our Home

Having settled on the land, we couldn't wait to start the build process. There's a million things to do but the most exciting was always going to be the design process. Interior colours, style and type of cupboards, fixtures, doors etc etc. We were booked in to a 3hr session in Feb at Metricon's Studio M which is basically where they have samples from all the suppliers they use. The idea of finalising all design details within 3hrs, even after doing our research prior, seemed impossible no matter how decisive you are.

So for most of February leading up to Studio M, we discussed colours, styles, and skimmed a variety of home magazines. Metricon's online visualisation tool helped a bit but with a number of limitations it was difficult to get a good 'visualisation' of exactly what we wanted. Design is such an art and we were simply overwhelmed by choice and the importance of each decision. We prayed that the experts at Studio M would be able to help us otherwise it was going to be a painfully long session.

The big day finally arrived and thankfully the Studio M consultants guided us through rather efficiently. We still had our indecisive, frustrating moments and the appointment did go overtime but we got through 85% of the process so was pretty happy and exhausted. It was a great milestone though. Our home was coming together nicely.

To Settle or Not to Settle

We were initially advised that Settlement on the land would occur in September 2009. For various developer and council issues, this was delayed till January 2010. It was a frustrating wait with a particular issue regarding trees which almost resulted in our withdrawal from our contract with Australand.

Basically, the land was sold to us with the understanding that existing trees on the lot will be removed. Shortly after signing the contract and only after Metricon's preliminary drafting of site plans did we discover that this condition was no longer true. Apparently council had reviewed the site and changed their original assessment of our trees, flagging them for protection. This meant bar building a tree house, we would not be able to fit our dream home on the land we've purchased. Photo on the right shows the collection of trees.


Now we chose this estate for it's leafy green quality so it was a difficult situation to find ourselves in. We had large trees with canopies that branched over a great portion of the lot and the only way to build our home was to remove these trees. So unfortunately for a month we had to pursue the removal of these trees. We put our case to council, we debated the technicalities of duty of care and misinformation with Australand then finally instructed our conveyancer to advise Australand of our intention to withdraw from the contract due to misleading information presented in the contract. Funny enough Australand then informed us that they had resolved the matter with council and trees can now be removed with a permit. We were happy with the outcome but disappointed that it took so long to resolve.

The land finally settled in January 2010. Sceptical after the whole experience, we held out celebrations till the trees were actually removed.