Not quite plumbing

Of course those pipes on the truck weren't for plumbing! They were they piers, everyone knows that ;) Plumbing begins Monday.

One thing that has always surprised me on the plans was the size and the amount of 'voids'. I understand the need for voids but there just seems a ridiculous amount of them and a lot of them are not small. Well we have just been told that plumbing want yet another one. It is in the store room which is good, but I cant help thinking it's over the top. I can only presume they are making it very easy (read-cheaper) for themselves by putting in this many.


Here are a couple of the piers

Plumbing Underway!

It's lucky I drive past the old house on my way to work as I get to check in on it easily. Low and behold this morning a truck was out the front with pipes on it and a guy marking everything out. Good to see the exact ground floor marked out room by room even if it was just with blue spray paint.

Said hello to the guy working, who just completely ignored me?! Could have taken offence at this but there was no need to, I just took it as he was concentrating on an important job. To be honest I would prefer him to ignore me and get it right than to chat to me for 10 minutes, get distracted and do something wrong

Plumbing next

We have been told the slab should be done by the end of next week, so that means the plumbers should be due on site pretty soon

My wife has spoken to our site supervisor and he seems very friendly and pretty relaxed.

He has told us frame will be up by Christmas and he is pushing to get the roof done by Christmas! Holy smoke, that would be amazing.

We just booked in our 3 private inspections with New Home Inspections which will be good piece of mind. We decided on Frame stage, pre plaster and pre handover.

Here are some better shots of the site cut

Why wait 'till Monday?!

After being told a couple of days ago that the site cut was booked in for Monday and that if it rained this week it may be delayed a day or so, I was amazed to be told by my wife that a digger was working there yesterday doing the site cut!!

Went by this morning and had a chat to the guys, who were very friendly. Seemed to be doing a great job and it was interesting to see a very rough layout of the ground floor. It looked smaller than I expected, although I know we are building a big house and have been told be numerous people that the house will sometimes look small and sometimes look big depending on what stage the build is up to.

Got a bit concerned that the cut for the alfresco area seemed way too big and too close to the back fence as we are putting in a pool as well, but the digger guy informed me they dig out a much bigger area than needed which was a relief!

Very exciting to see the process start though.

Block ready to go!

Our block is flat. Soil test done. Engineering done.

Site cut begins next Monday. We should also be finding out who our site superviser is. Hopefully we get a good one!

Introduction

I will attempt to blog our custom house with Carter Grange. I am not a 'blogging' type person and don't think it will be as well written and informative as some of the other blogs that have really helped me but hopefully it will be of benefit to those thinking about signing up for a new house.

My first piece of advice if thinking about a new house is to read the home one forum thread on things to remember, that was really helpful to us. homeone thread

The other thing to do is find and read the blogs especially the people who have used the company you are thinking of.

We were very impressed with Carter Grange from Day one. They seemed more transparent and more helpful than any of the other builders we spoke to and quite honestly it was an easy choice to make to sign with them.

Apart from normal expected things like inconsistencies in plan updates, costings and updates taking a bit longer as well changes coming in at more then they estimated it has been very much smooth sailing so far.

Having said that the important part hasn't started yet and that will start with our site cut next Monday.

We have based out house design off the Bentleigh 48 which for whatever reason is not on their website. Maybe because it is a new design, it is in fact a variation on the Metropol design. Our house is a fully customised design. We literally have changed every room and I think even every window believe it or not. We seemed to have upgraded every option as well, which has cost alot of money but we are very happy with the design. Hopefully the reality lives up to our dreams

This is our old house being demolished