End of Feb update

After being told our house had been submitted to council and checking there website twice a day not to find anything we were able to get a DA number. When we entered this number in on the council website a different location appeared ?? confused we contacted the council direct. Was told that seeing as our land isn't registered yet there computers picked up the closest street and put it under that.. She told me it has been sent for neighbour notification and after 14 days it will be processed.

Also this week we chased up land registration to finally get some sort of answer. Were told land has been submitted to land titles office last week, not sure how long it takes but it's getting somewhere

Council submission- Feb 2009

The same week as receiving approval from The Ponds Review Panel our plans were updated to reflect the small changes and it was submitted to council.

We are constantly checking there website to see our place listed on there, but not as yet.

Now we just have to wait on that and pray that the land gets registered soon. Preferable in the time whilst it's still at council!

The Ponds Review Panel

After Xmas once everything was typed up and ready to go our place was submitted to The Ponds Review Panel. Within a few weeks we got approved!!

Forgot to add, we completed our landscaping plan ourself just by using paint and following the guidelines. They were happy with everything just we had the letter box 0.1m too high!

One comment was made to protect the northern & western windows due to sun. They told us to get an appropriate shading device. On contacting Wisdom within that day we had a reasonable price to glaze the northern windows.

The other only comment was that our driveway was too close to the boundary trees which can easily be changed.

Our colour selection

Until I can get the images part of this blog working I'll just have to name our colours.

EXTERNAL
Bricks: Austral urban brick 'Latte'
Mortar: Off white
Windows: Anodic Off White
Roof: Charcoal
Fascia: Paperbark
Gutter: Monument
Garage Door: Paperbark
Driveway: Charcoal
Render: Taubmans Greenstead
Cladding: Taubmans Burlap Beige
Front Door: Taubmans Burlap Beige
Downpipes: Paperbark
Meter Box: Paperbark

INTERNAL
Kitchen
Bench: Caesarstone- Ice Snow
Cupboard Door: Polytec Slabaster in Satin Pencil
Kickboards: Brushed aluminium
Glass Spashback: Latte

Bathroom
Cupboard Doors: Peruvian Clay
Benchtop: Natural Quartz

Carpet: Forte in the standard Savino range
Flyscreens: Anodic Off White
Doors & Skirting: White Smoke
Walls: Taubmans Moon River

We are going to pick tiles closer to when required due to ranges changing so frequently

Waiting on land registration

It's now February and we were told that our land would be registered Feb/March 2009.. On contacting the developers to try and get a date.. or at least a week or month, we just got the same answer Feb/March. :(

Contract & colours

On the one day we met with the guys and went through the contracts. We were happy with everything, had a few little extras we added (which now I can't even remember what they were) and the plans were amended exactly as requested. After RSI from all the page signing we were done..

Next for our colour consult. We had pretty much decided on everything we wanted before we walked in and had our list written down. Our only issue was that the brick we originally wanted for the house turned out to be an extra $5000 on top, so we picked one that was within the standard range. It would of been nice to have that brick but an extra $5000 for bricks isn't going to increase the price of our house. Most of the colour consult went smoothly. Only issue we faced was that the laminate colours we selected from the laminex colour book Wisdom didn't have available. We found a close match with the cupboards but had to go with something different for the bench tops. And our consultant was extremely helpful.

L-R.
L-R- Doors & skirting colour, then wall colour

L-R- Back bench on island bench, bench tops & cupboards (second two are for vanities) Other kitchen colours in newer post

Floor plans

We received our floor plans with a few updates from Wisdom via email and were happy with our changes. Bit closer we are going to sit down with the electrician and go through the electrical plan as were adding in alot of lights, power points and aerial points.

Layout


2nd floor

1st floor

Floor plan place on our lot

Tender process with Wisdom

We had already decided on the house we wanted to build before we purchased the land. Wisdom Homes Aspiration 35 MKII.

We had a smooth process with Wisdom homes. From the minute we walked in to see them we knew all the changes and extras we wanted, and everything came back within the budget.

November 08

We arrived at the sale centre at 2pm Friday for the following days land release to find that we were second in line. We camped out overnight and had a great experience meeting all our future neighbours. The following morning we put a deposit on the block we were after.

Our lot is 540m2 in the Iris release of The Ponds in Sydney's west.

Our registration isn't due until Feb/March 09 so we have plenty of time to organise our tender etc with the builder before we have to start paying our mortgage

Hubby putting deposit sticker on our lot