Last time I did an update, we were busy designing all the elements of the house, like floor plan, kitchen look and materials, bathroom look and materials and in general material choices for the floor plan we designed.
Well, since then, we contacted some custom builders to get an idea of what sort of pricing we were looking at to get our house build. Well, that was easier said than done... probably mostly because we wanted to build with eco-friendly material and use building methods that didn't fall into the "normal" cookie cutter sticks-and-bricks way that most builders in Australia use!
They also wanted some house plans drafted up (drafts with elevations etc.) before they even wanted to entertain giving us a quote on building the house.
So we ended up hiring a company that specialises in doing drafts of custom floor plans. While they were very helpful, in the few meetings we had with them about our plans, they kept stressing that because it was a "custom build", and because our plans included some "out-there" design features like raked ceilings in the living/dining/kitchen and double sided fireplace, and we wanted "eco-friendly" heating etc etc we should expect the price tag to be 30-50% more than a normal build...
On top of that, at the second meeting we had with the designer discussing the actual floor plan, there was issues with the raked ceiling we wanted (expensive price tag), and lack of hallway space between kitchen and bedrooms/bathrooms and our (according to them) MASSIVE bedrooms; their suggestions were we might as well use some of that bedroom space to make a hallway between the kitchen and bedrooms/bathroom as there would be issues with food smells and re-sale of the house (if we ever wanted to do that).
So after that second meeting, we looked at each other and went - what's the point? We will have to comprise on main features we like with our floor plan, we have to comprise on a lot of the materials, and we will end up spending 25-40% more than what we though was a generous budget!! If we can't build exactly what we want, we might as well look around the nice display homes and pick one that will work well for us - and stay within budget!
So we pulled the pin on our "Dream Home" plans, and started from scratch....
Luckily, Point Cook is still a growing suburb, so there were a lot of new display homes to look through. We ended up finding 3 homes which had some of the main features we were looking for: Raked Ceilings, Master Bedroom NOT at the front, and options to customise the floor plan to suit our needs a bit better! One of the homes we dropped straight away because there were just too many small rooms. We then had meetings with sales consultants from the remaining two builders, and one builder was just able to provide more of the features we wanted than the other at a more competitive price, so we ended up going with them!
As per our usual standard, we didn't waste much of the sales consultant's time (although we did take a bit more than the 1/2 hour we spent last time we bought a house off the plan ;-D), so after
- 3 meetings, and
- visiting 2 display homes (in Point Cook and Berwick - a 1 1/2 hrs trek to the outskirts of South Eastern Melbourne) and
- 2 visits to their colour selection office,
on Friday the 7th April the wife went out and bought a house! Well, Kasper would have come with me if it wasn't for another of Oscar's colds, so he stayed home looking after him.
We are really excited now the choice has been made. The home we are going to build is the "Dunedin 29" with Porter Davis. (CLICK LINK)
If you follow the link to their website, select Size 29 under Floorplans and then under "Design Options", select "Raked Ceiling". This will give you the base floor plan we are building. We are very excited as we will get one of our main features through the dining living room: the raked ceiling!!!
HOWEVER we have made some changes to this plan...
Here is OUR plan:
 |
| This will be our "Dunedin 29" floor plan |
- Lounge room at the front
- Master bedroom where lounge was originally
- We are merging bed 3 and bed 4 into one large bedroom for Oscar, but leaving both doors and robes in place, so in the future if we sell, we can easily put in a wall to make 2 smaller bedrooms.
- Re-jigging the WIP (walk in pantry) to be part butler's pantry with benchtop space for appliances (like coffee machine, kettle etc), space for microwave, drawer storage, and shelves the rest of the way around. The corner of the WIP has been turned into a "pull-out" pantry, where we can reach everything easily even if it's stored in the back.
- Adding some benchtop space in the laundry plus extra cupboards underneath. On the other side where we have deleted a linen cupboard, we will install IKEA broom and linen cupboards with pull-out laundry bags feature!
- Added some doors and deleted some doors!
On top of these changes, we will install electric panel heating and underfloor heating in the bathrooms to avoid any vents for hot air and dust particles being blown everywhere.
The house will be built in Hebel (which has better insulation features than bricks), and have double glazed windows and doors throughout. We are also adding sound insulation to all indoor walls, so we will end up with a lot of our original requirements we had for our own house plan.
If you would like to get an idea of what the house will look like, check the pictures on Porter Davis website (link above) under photo gallery section called "Bondi". I have included a couple here...
 |
| Entry / Hallway (we will have light timber floors throughout the house except bathrooms) |
 |
| Raked Ceiling feature in Dining / Living area |
 |
| Raked ceiling feature looking back towards the entry |
 |
| Kitchen with massive island bench! Plus a feature you can't see here: pull-out bin cupboard under bench!!! |
 |
| Kitchen seen from living area |
 |
| Laundry - we will do something similar with a long benchtop, but with high broom and linen cupboards on the right hand side of this image, plus we have deleted the door out to the alfresco. |
 |
| Rumpus room - this will be Oscar's play room (and his private "teenage retreat" when he gets older) ;-) |
Well, that's the update for now. Of course, we are currently still waiting for our block of land to be developed, so we don't expect to be able to start building until December 2017 (if we are lucky), or early 2018...
