We've been delayed again! We have now been given a settlement time of mid-may. I am not positive about it because it has all been for nothing every other month. It definitley looks like we will be charged extra for going over our contract time, so for every additional month after June 8, we pay $1000 on top of what we already owe.
I probably wouldnt care so much about the delays if they hadn't given us false hope every month! It is ridiculous that they have been telling us since September that it will be next month, next month, next month. It's a joke and a real flaw of the developer. Yes, we are excited to be part of the community, but we're losing money because they can't get their act together.
Are my posts getting progressively hostile???
I'm annoyed at our builder (CLO) at the moment. After seeing the display homes down here, we've realised the wardrobes in Beds 2, 3 and 4 are far too small! I want the kids to have room to play- not a room full of drawers and storage cubes. So I asked for our robes to be extended- I was told NO. I asked Matt to question their 'NO'... so I composed an email for Matt to send to the CLO. He replied and said that perhaps we can make the change.... however the builder reserves the right to refuse any variations after contract signing. Anyway, I called him to see what size robes we could get and if there were standard sizes. I also said that we wanted sliding doors. I was told that even extending to robes was a big ask, no way were we going to get sliding doors as well. Can you believe this? No one I have spoken to can believe that they're not willing to make this change (not even our original sales rep and his offsider)...
We are this week waiting to hear from the Operations Manager, who according to our CLO, is the person who will make the call on our wardrobe change. If he doesn't say yes, yes and yes, I will be furious.
We have been tossing up leaving the builder... but when we close our eyes we picture our MJH house and it seems weird to potentially not have that.
Anyway, fingers crossed it all works out.
In other news, we have decided (haha, so I say now) to build again! We haven't even started our first build yet... and I'm making these ridiculous claims, BUT we're not getting everything we dreamed of in this home. So, we'll do this build, hopefully the house will increase in value and we can start all over again. We're thinking of buying a couple of acres and building the real dream... possibly owner/builder... Stay tuned... I'll probably have news of another delay in a month ;)
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Monday, March 31, 2014
Start line in sight... Possibly...
We have a pre settlement site inspection booked in on Sunday morning... We will be driving in as we'll have the kids but it is exciting as it will be the first time we have been on our block! We'll be able to check out our outlook- finally...
Settlement is expected in the next 2 to 3 weeks.. Hurrah! Fingers crossed there's no more delays.
I called our CLO today to ask if we can raise a variation to increase our wardrobes in the kids rooms and he gave me a straight up no. I was pretty disheartened by the answer for many reasons:
1. The standard robes are so tiny - we only realised this after the display homes opened up here.
2. It seems unfair, we made our selections in jan to march 2013... A year ago!
3. Our land is unregistered... There's still time- we understood there would be admin costs.
4. We're stuck with these wardrobes forever :(
Apparently mjh aren't accepting variations for any homes in the next release. It's blanket 'no' doesn't take into account our circumstances...grrrrr... It makes me sometimes think it's worth losing our $3000 deposit and getting absolutely everything we could ever want!
Anyway, off to re-read our contract.
Settlement is expected in the next 2 to 3 weeks.. Hurrah! Fingers crossed there's no more delays.
I called our CLO today to ask if we can raise a variation to increase our wardrobes in the kids rooms and he gave me a straight up no. I was pretty disheartened by the answer for many reasons:
1. The standard robes are so tiny - we only realised this after the display homes opened up here.
2. It seems unfair, we made our selections in jan to march 2013... A year ago!
3. Our land is unregistered... There's still time- we understood there would be admin costs.
4. We're stuck with these wardrobes forever :(
Apparently mjh aren't accepting variations for any homes in the next release. It's blanket 'no' doesn't take into account our circumstances...grrrrr... It makes me sometimes think it's worth losing our $3000 deposit and getting absolutely everything we could ever want!
Anyway, off to re-read our contract.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Refresh...
Am checking my email a ridiculous amount of times per day... We were told end of Feb for settlement notification... Tomorrow is March :(
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Finally my colours...
Well the kiddies are meant to be sleeping, so I thought i would try and put up some photos of our colours and all our selections... The externals have changed completely since selections... So they're not included in the photos.
I will put a '$' next to items that were an upgrade to standard.
Exterior:
Bricks - Gertrudis Brown $
Render - Taubmans 'Coffee Cake'
Roof - Colourbond 'Woodland Grey'
Gutter and fascia and windows - 'Woodland Grey'
Tank and downpipes - 'Woodland Grey'
Garage door - Contemporary 'Caoba' $
Front door - Newington XN5 - 920mm - Stained $
Laundry Door- JST1 - Stained $
Timber feature above front porch - stained
Front door lock - trilock 'Satin Chrome' $
Fly screens throughout $
Interior:
Bathrooms:
Semi frameless shower screens $
Hated towel ladders (hard-wired) $
Shampoo nook in both $
Bathroom bench top - Essa Stone 'New Sable Luxe' 20mm
Cabinets - Formica 'Silver Strata Velour'
Sink - Manooga 70mm
Bath - Caroma 'Newbury' 1700
Floor tiles - 'Hemp Brown'
Floor grout - 'Charred Ash'
Wall tiles - 'Tempo Ice' to ceiling $
Wall grout - 'Ultra White'
Bank of drawers in vanity $
Laundry
Tiling - same as bathrooms
Bench top - 'Stipple Seal' $
Cupboards - Formica 'Silver Strata Velour' $
Overhead cupboards - Laminex 'White #200' $
Doors
Standard Flush -Taubmans 'Illusive White Gloss'
Handles - 'Amelia Lever in Satin Chrome' $
3 sliding doors - Lin1 translucent glazing 'clear lacquer' $
Pantry door - Lin1 translucent glazing 'clear lacquer' $
Pantry handle - horizon 520mm satin chrome $
Painting
Entire house - Taubmans 'Tombstone'
Roof and Cornices - Taubmans 'Illusive White'
Skirting, doors and architraves - taubmans 'Illusive White' gloss
Kitchen
Bench top - Essa Stone 'White Truffle' - 40mm $
Underbench - 'Stipple Smoke'
Over bench - 'White #200'
Sink - Clark under mount 'Monaco double bowl'
Mixer - 'Saracom sink mixer'
Water purifier - Square neck to match mixer
Pot drawers - either side of oven $
Splashback - 'white metal' on starphire glass
Bin - Hettich pull boy bin $
Water point for fridge $
Oven - 900mm smeg standalone (gas cooktop)
Rangehood to match
Dishwasher - Smeg $
Extras:
White Shutters throughout $
Flooring - Genesis 'Sandy Beech' Bamboo $
Carpet - Balieu 'Pumice'$
Tiles to Alfresco - 600x600 Porcelain 'Beryl' $
We have included a driveway... but we might decide to remove that from our contract $
That's all I can think of now, but here's some photos to get an idea of the look (very neutral) that we're going for.
Bathroom/Laundry Tiles and Grout
Our Kitchen colours
Bathroom and Laundry Colours. I am having second thoughts about the cabinets..
Carpet- Bedrooms and Theatre
This is our outdoor tile (alfresco)
Almost the end of February...
It has been a while since my last post... But with any luck, things will start moving along a little quicker. We are hopefully settling on our land in the next week, unfortunately it hasn't had all services connected but that should be completed in March. Our builder has told us from settlement it will take about 12 to 14 weeks to get started (6 weeks of that is council) so we're looking at starting in May or June. Really hoping to be in by Christmas.
Googong township has finally opened- 11 of the 12 display homes are open. There's a mix of homes but most of them are quite large... Some great and some that are not our taste.
We went to a welcome event on Wednesday night, we were running quite late but met a couple of future residents and some googong staff. Also got a nice bottle of Moët which we will have to keep keep to celebrate moving in.
Hopefully I'll have some good news within the week!
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Still waiting...
Well, we're still waiting. It's crazy to think that we actually thought we might be midway through our build by now... No such luck! The latest we've heard from the developer is settlement is to be around the end of February. I am skeptical as are many others!
I am feeling a bit down about the waiting unfortunately. I think it's because I really like researching and working out everything to do with the house and now we're just sitting idle. I think I am finally almost 100% happy with all of our selections. We had a few more variations- one which was pretty major. If budgets weren't an issue I could very easily go all out with upgrades :)
1. We received notification that we'd need to change brick because ours had been discontinued. We decided to go with an upgraded brick- Austral's 'Gertrudis Brown'. To go with this we changed our roof, gutters, fascia, down pipes, rain tank and windows all to 'Woodland Grey' and the render to Taubmans 'Coffee Cake'. We also upgraded to laundry door to a stain instead of painted.
2. There was a heap of discussion on the homeone forum about the dreaded ugly cooker switch. We found out at our electrical appointment that the cooker switch was mandatory in all new houses and it needed to be clearly visible. We had to pay for it $150 and pay for a cut in the glass splashback ($70). Originally I wanted Saturn switches for the splashback but when I found out about the switch we just made the switches slimline white. Anyway, it came up on the forum that there is a Saturn cooker switch so our amazing electrical consultant edited our electricals for no admin cost and worked out that we could upgrade to Saturn switches too... Amazing :)
I also made an Enquiry about getting bifold s onto the alfresco but our CLO ruled that out pretty quickly. Such a shame but with all the admin costs it just doesn't seem to be worth it... Also you can't have fly screens on bifold s which isn't very practical here.
Well Christmas is only a week away now. Little miss 10 months' first christmas. Very exciting :) we're off down the coast for a beach trip on the weekend, then back for Christmas and up to Newcastle for New Years and more beach. I plan on forgetting all this house stuff while we're on our much needed break.
Merry Christmas xx
I am feeling a bit down about the waiting unfortunately. I think it's because I really like researching and working out everything to do with the house and now we're just sitting idle. I think I am finally almost 100% happy with all of our selections. We had a few more variations- one which was pretty major. If budgets weren't an issue I could very easily go all out with upgrades :)
1. We received notification that we'd need to change brick because ours had been discontinued. We decided to go with an upgraded brick- Austral's 'Gertrudis Brown'. To go with this we changed our roof, gutters, fascia, down pipes, rain tank and windows all to 'Woodland Grey' and the render to Taubmans 'Coffee Cake'. We also upgraded to laundry door to a stain instead of painted.
2. There was a heap of discussion on the homeone forum about the dreaded ugly cooker switch. We found out at our electrical appointment that the cooker switch was mandatory in all new houses and it needed to be clearly visible. We had to pay for it $150 and pay for a cut in the glass splashback ($70). Originally I wanted Saturn switches for the splashback but when I found out about the switch we just made the switches slimline white. Anyway, it came up on the forum that there is a Saturn cooker switch so our amazing electrical consultant edited our electricals for no admin cost and worked out that we could upgrade to Saturn switches too... Amazing :)
I also made an Enquiry about getting bifold s onto the alfresco but our CLO ruled that out pretty quickly. Such a shame but with all the admin costs it just doesn't seem to be worth it... Also you can't have fly screens on bifold s which isn't very practical here.
Well Christmas is only a week away now. Little miss 10 months' first christmas. Very exciting :) we're off down the coast for a beach trip on the weekend, then back for Christmas and up to Newcastle for New Years and more beach. I plan on forgetting all this house stuff while we're on our much needed break.
Merry Christmas xx
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Update and electrical...
It's been a while since my last post... Things have been happening but now that I've returned to work after 8 months maternity leave, life has become a lot busier with a lot less time to contemplate everything that's happening.
Update on land- still no settlement, however we have a curb and gutter and maybe a road... We definitely had road base the weekend before last! The site is still closed to the public but the display homes are meant to open next month so we will get access then. Still looking for a late January/early February settlement.
Update on house- whilst reading another blog it came up that the everyday life bricks had seen some changes. I called austral who confirmed my fears... Our bricks were only temporary due to a shortage of new bricks... So we contacted MJH and they told us to select new ones... We've picked Gertrudis Brown from the Bowral range- a premium brick which is not often used in the ACT according to the sales guy at austral. With the change in brick, we've also decided to change everything else to do with the exterior. We're still waiting to hear from our colours consultant on this but we're thinking Colourbond "deep ocean" for roof, gutters, fascia and windows, surfmist render (or similar) and unsure of down pipes and tank. I really want a beautiful house!!! I have honestly been dreaming about bricks lately... I hope my colour choices work. Also, as we're getting shutters, I'm really worried that white shutters will look odd with blue windows.
Bank update- we've found a great mortgage broker and the paperwork is in progress. He doesn't like the variations that MJH does and when I asked our CLO about this he was rude and now I never want to deal with him again! Matt can have that job from now on. I just don't understand why a CLO would be rude... I worked in customer service roles for many years and I always ensured my phone manner was excellent. Matt and I feel our CLO is not suited to the job, but anyway...
Garden update- we have been slack and still haven't submitted our plans to MJH... Will do so in the next 2 weeks... We did however buy our hedge (photinia robusta)- we are desperately trying to grow it to an advanced size before we move in. We also got a quote done for our retaining walls... One large wall which spans almost the width of the back fence and all the way down the side of the house with a set of stairs and a low stone wall with letterbox pier to the front... All done in beautiful blue stone. The quote was under what I thought it would be (before the quote came back I was stressing it was going to be above $25k), so we're excited about this...
Hmm, electrical appointment went well. It was very very clear and organised. We definitely walked out with a sense of happiness and relief- we got everything we wanted. The time went over but I'm not surprised... 3:30pm appointment is a bit late- we didn't leave until 6:30.
Okay, so we got pretty much everything from my previous post...
Down lights throughout home (LED warm white with white casing)
Tastics in bathrooms (4 x heat)... We didn't get the $900 ones as I read a lot of bad reviews on them- they did require an extra circuit
Spotlight for above garage
Spotlight in backyard
Dimmers to media room
Sensor pantry light
Fluros in garage 2 x double
Ducted vacuum hills cyclonic
Vac pan (white)
Extra power points
2 x tv bracket combos
Outdoor lights for laundry and back of house
Slimline switches throughout
Pre wire for outdoor fan
3 pendants (concrete ones)
2, 3, 4 and 5 gang switches
2 way switches
... And I think that's all...
All up we spent $13.5k on extra electrical but we just wanted it all to be done and sorted before we move in.
Hmm... I don't remember doing a colour selections blog! That will be next! ... And photos too!
Update on land- still no settlement, however we have a curb and gutter and maybe a road... We definitely had road base the weekend before last! The site is still closed to the public but the display homes are meant to open next month so we will get access then. Still looking for a late January/early February settlement.
Update on house- whilst reading another blog it came up that the everyday life bricks had seen some changes. I called austral who confirmed my fears... Our bricks were only temporary due to a shortage of new bricks... So we contacted MJH and they told us to select new ones... We've picked Gertrudis Brown from the Bowral range- a premium brick which is not often used in the ACT according to the sales guy at austral. With the change in brick, we've also decided to change everything else to do with the exterior. We're still waiting to hear from our colours consultant on this but we're thinking Colourbond "deep ocean" for roof, gutters, fascia and windows, surfmist render (or similar) and unsure of down pipes and tank. I really want a beautiful house!!! I have honestly been dreaming about bricks lately... I hope my colour choices work. Also, as we're getting shutters, I'm really worried that white shutters will look odd with blue windows.
Bank update- we've found a great mortgage broker and the paperwork is in progress. He doesn't like the variations that MJH does and when I asked our CLO about this he was rude and now I never want to deal with him again! Matt can have that job from now on. I just don't understand why a CLO would be rude... I worked in customer service roles for many years and I always ensured my phone manner was excellent. Matt and I feel our CLO is not suited to the job, but anyway...
Garden update- we have been slack and still haven't submitted our plans to MJH... Will do so in the next 2 weeks... We did however buy our hedge (photinia robusta)- we are desperately trying to grow it to an advanced size before we move in. We also got a quote done for our retaining walls... One large wall which spans almost the width of the back fence and all the way down the side of the house with a set of stairs and a low stone wall with letterbox pier to the front... All done in beautiful blue stone. The quote was under what I thought it would be (before the quote came back I was stressing it was going to be above $25k), so we're excited about this...
Hmm, electrical appointment went well. It was very very clear and organised. We definitely walked out with a sense of happiness and relief- we got everything we wanted. The time went over but I'm not surprised... 3:30pm appointment is a bit late- we didn't leave until 6:30.
Okay, so we got pretty much everything from my previous post...
Down lights throughout home (LED warm white with white casing)
Tastics in bathrooms (4 x heat)... We didn't get the $900 ones as I read a lot of bad reviews on them- they did require an extra circuit
Spotlight for above garage
Spotlight in backyard
Dimmers to media room
Sensor pantry light
Fluros in garage 2 x double
Ducted vacuum hills cyclonic
Vac pan (white)
Extra power points
2 x tv bracket combos
Outdoor lights for laundry and back of house
Slimline switches throughout
Pre wire for outdoor fan
3 pendants (concrete ones)
2, 3, 4 and 5 gang switches
2 way switches
... And I think that's all...
All up we spent $13.5k on extra electrical but we just wanted it all to be done and sorted before we move in.
Hmm... I don't remember doing a colour selections blog! That will be next! ... And photos too!
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