Building Our First Home

Standing in the position of the kitchen bench and with all the windows and side sliding door in, it wasn't hard to imagine living here. Many people avoid buying a corner block because of the extra landscaping and for some estates the covenants for a corner can add $20,000 to a house.

For us, we are very happy we bought a corner block; the thought that we won't be boxed in on all three sides is great. We will never be built out, and the homes across the road are single story. So we have perfect, unobstructed views across our estate and to the mountains. Beautiful!

Of course we will have a fence taking some of our view, but not all of it. And we'll only ever have neighbours on two sides. The fence will be high enough to give us privacy from the road and neighbours, but low enough to still give us a spacious outlook.

I did a drive-by our house today to see if there were any new additions; and I found all the windows had been added.

Last Saturday when we walked through the frame the windows had all been delivered and were sitting waiting in the Alfresco area.

With all the windows in today the house looked surprisingly tidy; I guess it will look like that till the next lot of building materials are delivered.

Meanwhile Porter Davis were in a frenzy trying to work out how the wrong plans were given to the building manager instead of the modified ones we had previously signed off on.

Apparently someone within the borders of Porter Davis had got confused and sent the wrong plans to the builder.

Important as a customer to keep your eye on the building process and raise any issues as quickly as you can.

Because we found the incorrect fridge position early when only the frame for it was built, it has been very easy to change it at this early stage. Much easier than if they had gone as far as putting the kitchen cabinets in.

Tuesday just gone I went out to take a peek at what they had done, and the builders were only just marking out the walls on the slab.

Four days later and this is what we find. Not only is the frame up, but also the roof trusses.

As we were driving up the hill today to take a look, I could see the frame and started getting excited, Jose was like, "no, that has to be the house next door!" But it was our house.

It's a beautiful sight sitting all nice on the corner!

The only issue we had after walking through the frame, is the kitchen. On the final plans Porter Davis sent to us, they had put the fridge hole next to the pantry instead of at the other end of the kitchen next to the hallway. We got them to change it back to the original plan, which they did.

But somewhere between the drafters and the builders, they have put the fridge hole on the wrong side. So we will have the fridge opening to the pantry door, and will block access to the pantry when open. This will be an almighty pain.

So Monday Jose will be calling to find out what they'll be doing about it!!

On the upside, our house is really taking shape! Exciting!!

Today was going to be slab day.

Our building manager had informed us that today the slab would go down. As it has been raining heaps in the past weeks, we were a little worried the weather might dampen our plans, but today was sunny and dry, and being the only day in this week rain is not forecast we were very thankful.

I've heard a lot of people say that when they see the slab they wonder how their house will fit in that space it looks so small; well we were shocked at the size of our slab. We knew our house plan, the Camberwell 29 didn't give us much yard and was a big plan of 32 squares including garage, but we were amazed how big it actually looked on our land.