I knew it was too good to be true!

We received a call today from the plumber who told us that we are not going to have water hooked up to our house unless we pay about an extra $3000. Typical......I knew things were going too well and that it couldn't last!

Apparently our contract says that Coral will hook up our water tank and HSTP to the house, but not to the water mains supply. Who has a house contract that doesn't hook up water - WE DO!!!

This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard of and can't believe we are just finding out now! WTF!!!! I am not sure what to do because the price that we have been quoted by the plumber seems expensive. Unfortunately we have to make the decision by Wednesday whether we are going to get the Coral plumber to do the work for us or get someone else in because it will cost us more if the plumber needs to make a second trip.

Anyway, just needed a bit of a rant. I am sure it will all sort itself out in the wash :)

Lucky us.....again

I just thought I'd share some more good news. Spoke to Beaumont Tiles today. They are doing our wet area tiles and since we didn't choose much that was within the Coral Homes range we were told to expect a quote for the extra charges.

We did our selection back in early July and we were told that the selection would be sent to head office and we should receive a quote in a few weeks. I have chased them up a couple of times and was told on Saturday (26th Sept) that the purchase order for our tiles had been made. The guy told me that as we had not received a quote we would not be being charged any extra for our selection.

Yay!! Another win for us! Keep 'em coming.....

Tanks and HSTP installation

We were due to have our water tank and HSTP installed this Friday 25th Sept. Because we live on acreage and don't have full pressure town water we need special tanks to cope with this. The water tank is 31,500 litres and is what they call a trickle feed town water system. This means that the only place in the house with full pressure town water is the kitchen sink. The rest of the taps are run off the tank water and topped up overnight by the trickle feed. The HSTP (home sewerage treatment plant) treats all of our waste and sprays the effluent on our land which is a good way of watering our plants.

Anyhoo.....on Thursday J received a call telling him that if they hit rock it was going to cost us $190 per hour to use a rock breaker. Almost all of the blocks in the street have hit rock. The guy next door to us had to pay for 7 hours of rock breaking. So we decided that J better take the day off work to make sure they didn't rip us off. We weren't prepared to pay for their lunch breaks etc. and J wanted to make sure that they really did hit rock if they were going to charge us.

In the morning the truck rocked up with the excavator and rock breaker on board. The guy starts digging the holes for the tanks and hits shale but no rock. Luckily for us this means no extra charges, but I am not convinced I would be telling the same story if J hadn't been on site.....

Then the truck showed up with the tanks. The water tank went in first. It is in 2 bits because it is so big and sealed together with bondcrete.

Then in went the HSTP.


The the excavator dug the trenches for the effluent hoses that will water our plants.

A water truck arrived that afternoon to half fill the tanks with water so that they don't start to float.

All in all I think we have been very lucky. We didn't hit rock so no extra charges and we had a good operator so our tanks are sunk the lowest in the whole street. The HSTP is pretty much flush with the ground and the water tank is only high enough so that the pumps and pipes are just out of the ground (these will be installed later so they don't get nicked!).

Lighting dramas

Well, we went to Beacon lighting on Monday (21st Sept) after work because we heard that they had a sale on and we were hoping to save money on the light fixtures we had chosen. When we got there we were told by the very sweet sales girl that the entire range of lights that we had chosen, the ones that we had based our entire colour scheme on, had been discontinued.

J and I were a bit stunned and unsure what to do. We wanted antique brass fittings, which is kind of a dull browny brushed brass look. There are a number of light fittings in this style but unfortunately most of them are designed for old colonial style homes and are therefore old fashioned looking. The lights that we had originally chosen were quite a modern style and they were a good price, about $15-$30 per fitting. The only other lights in the store that we remotely liked were $130 upwards per fitting. You can probably see our problem now......

We discussed our problem with Jaymee-Lee (the very sweet sales girl) who suggested that the best way would be to do the entire lighting selection again. Anyway, after a couple of hours and a couple of arguements (thankfully no tears) we had redone our lighting plan with quite a few modifications from the orginal plan. We have reduced the amount of ceiling fans (about $250 each) to save some money and cover the cost of the expensive brushed brass fittings. We have left bedrooms 2, 3 and 4 with a simple lightbulb in the ceiling (no fixture) as we couldn't find any we liked in the store. This means that we can do a DIY light fixture later - more things to do after handover!

Anyway, we received the quote back by the end of the week and thankfully we came in just under budget. I still preferred the old plan, but I reckon once the lights are in the ceiling we will never look at them again - except to clean them. Just a little hiccup on the road to building a house......

Surveyor pegs to mark out where the house is going to be

J and I went to the block on Thursday (24th Sept) and saw that some surveyors had visited and put little white pegs in the ground where the house is going to be. It was very exciting as we could see the front verandah and where the front door was going to be, and the lovely sunroom was all marked out too.

After a couple of minutes we both started to freak out. IT LOOKS SO SMALL!!!! I am guessing this is because the house has no depth at the moment and when you are walking around the pegs it seems to take no time at all. We have since chatted to a number of people who have built and they all say that when you build you will go through stages where the house looks small, then big, then small, then big again. So we got over ourselves and got excited again. YIPEE!!! We have house pegs, nah nah nah nah nah nah nah!!!!!

Now here is a picture of some white pegs in the ground that we are very excited about, but don't expect anyone else to be. This is Willow and me standing at the front door .....

Retaining Wall - cut side (19th Sept 2009)

Just after the house pad was cut J and I met the retaining wall man up at the block to help him set out where the second retaining wall was going to go. You would think this would be relatively easy but because the wall is right on the edge of the building envelope it needed to be pretty accurate. It took the three of us 2 hours to work it out! J was getting a little frustrated but I am just happy that it will be in the right spot otherwise the council would make us tear it down and build a new one - definitely don't want that!

The following day the posts went in......

And the day after the wall was completed and J and I gave the retaining wall guy a hand to do the backfilling. Here is the finished product...........

Site cut 17th Sept 2009

The day has finally arrived when we are starting to build our house. J and I were super excited and met the site supervisor up at the land at 730am. He went over the plans with us and answered some questions that we had about the process. He then gave us a construction key so that when the house is in lockup stage we will be able to go in at any time to look at the progress. This is one of the reasons that we wanted to go with Coral - as far as I know no other companies do this.

They put up a sign which very exciting as we never got a sold sign on our block :(

Then the drot started its work and it took from about 730am to 4pm for him to level the block. We took about 70 photos over the day because we were so excited, but here are a couple for you to look at. The block looks so different now and the house pad looks really big, but I am sure it will feel much larger when the slab goes down and the frame goes up. The site supervisor said that the slab will go down 5th and 6th of October - not long at all!

This is me just after doing a little dance on the house pad after it was finished being cut. YIPEE!!!

You know it's serious when there is a loo!

We have a portaloo on the property. YAY!!! Ordinarily this wouldn't be exciting in any way, but for us it means that we really are building. Here is a pic for those of you that doubt me........

Retaining Wall - fill side

Well, things are starting to happen. Very exciting! We have a retaining wall for the fill side. After a bit of a false start - the contractor was not happy with the first lot of wood delivered, so had to get another lot which delayed us a couple of days - we now have a retaining wall so Coral can cut the block on Thursday. Here are some pics.....

Pretty cool because now we can really see where the house is going to go - and stop guessing! The house is actually a bit further forward than we thought. This meant we had to get some tree stumps ground out that we thought were going to be clear of the house. J got us a good deal though - $150 for 4 stumps - Bargain!

We have a start date!!!

We have a start date......finally! It seems to have taken such a long time to get to this point. We have been told by Coral that they will cut the site on Thursday 17th September (weather permitting, of course). Coral are going to send us a whole bunch of documents with all sorts of info in them. Hopefully there are no nasty surprises......

We will have the fill side retaining wall in by then, and we have booked to have the cut side in on the 18th. Fingers crossed everything goes to plan. Will keep you posted :)

Nearly starting (fingers crossed)

Well, we were told last Friday (it is now Wednesday) that the bank was giving us the Authority to commence construction (ACC). A simple little form that you would think would take about 2 minutes to complete has taken them about 10 days. In frustrating beaurecratic fashion, the bank only just issued the ACC this morning (not sure what took four business days, but anyway?!). And, of course, they sent it via snail mail instead of faxing it to Coral as we asked. Anyway, I managed to get our mortgage broker to email Coral a copy which they said they will accept.

Unfortunately, when I spoke to our customer service person at Coral I mentioned that we had not been notified of them raising a credit for the plumbing and drainage application that we lodged with the council. This, although it was not our fault, must be signed and sent back to Coral before they can issue a start date. I am sooooooooooooooo annoyed. I was unable to speak to the person who was supposed to generate the piece of paper that we need to sign and my customer service rep went home sick half way through the day. Needless to say we did not get a start date today, nor was I emailed the piece of paper to sign......I feel horrible ringing and emailing Coral all the time, but this is a really difficult part of the building process - so close, yet so far! It's not easy knowing that one piece of paper is all that is standing between us and our start date!

Anyhoo, hopefully have some good news tomorrow.....there's better days than these!

Retaining walls....

So, not only do we have to build one of our retaining walls BEFORE they cut the block, it seems that building a retaining wall is not as easy as you would think.......

We have to pay for a surveyor to set out where the wall should go because there is no point of reference for the retaining wall guy to build from. This is, of course, at extra expense to us. Thankfully, I think we have found the most enthusiastic retaining wall guy in Brisbane. We really like him and hope that he does as good as we think he will. It is the surveyor that seems to be the problem....

He needs to have so many bits of information and when we give it to him he just wants more! I am wondering why we are paying him - shouldn't he be paying us as we are the ones doing all of the running around. Anyhoo....hoping that tonight we are going to give him the last piece of paper that he needs and that will be that. Fingers crossed and keep you posted :)