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 :)