Saturday, July 18, 2015

Getting back into it

Well, it's been some time since I updated. That was due to one main thing - money.
When the initial quote came back and then some things happened in our life that ate up some of our savings, we ended up putting our build on the back burner for as long as we could.
The effect that had on me was that I was so disappointed in not being able to dive into the build side of things, I didn't even want to think about designs and colours and furniture. It seemed so far in the future it was almost out of reach again.

Things Change


Our builder sent an email last weekend asking if we were ready to get things started and at first we thought no, but after a lot of talking, doing figures and finding out it will likely still take a number of months of planning before we get started on site, then it turns out we can get started on planning now. Awesome!

We also ended up speaking to the bank this week and got pre-approval. It's one more load off our minds, that's for sure.

Meeting


We have a meeting with the builder today. I am expecting that we will go over the modified plans and updated quote. Crossing our fingers that the figure is reasonable, however I expect that we will have to go back and make more changes. A few things we asked them to quote on were things on our wishlist that we had no idea on the price.

We may also book in our colour appointment, so the research is on! I am hoping that we will be able to go and visit some of the suppliers to look at the different options in each category before our colour appointment. I want to take lots of photos for comparison so I will be sure to post them here too. The hubby is not too fussed on most of the colour options, so it's mostly on me to get it right. Yikes! :)

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Initial Quote

So a few months has passed since I last posted and not that much has changed, ha ha.
We did get a draft of the Ruby design before Christmas, changed to better fit on our block of land. I am really liking the changes they made. The pulled the garage and the ensuite bathroom out to the sides of the house, to better utilise the block width.

When we were shown the changes we were really happy but not completely satisfied. The changes to move the rooms to the side had left us with a 2m x 2m study, which would be ok if it was for one person but not big enough for both my husband and I to work in there at the same time.
So we requested that they move the study wall back to make it 3m x 2m instead. That pushed the kitchen and island 1m into the Dining and Living room, but it was a sacrifice we are willing to make. It also had the positive impact of making the Walk in Pantry (WIP) even bigger! Yay!

The other big plus in the shifting of those rooms is that by needing an internal access into the garage, the sales guy moved the Rumpus/Media room further forward and we've ended up with a hallway through from the garage to the middle of the house. We decided to get them to move the Media room wall out a bit more and instead of a hallway, we now will have a Mud Room where we will put in cupboards and a bench, to have room to store shoes, jackets, pet stuff and so on. It's perfect for us.

Extra Storage - is there ever too much?

We also had extra storage added, in the form of a linen cupboard that runs the length of the back hallway. On the original plan there was just a little cupboard at the end of the hallway and I know from lack of storage at our current house (and from the many comments we've had from friends and family every time we tell them about adding storage) - everyone says that you need all the storage you can get! Plus, it seems to be much cheaper to add cupboards and things now than it will be to even buy storage furniture. Of course, it's pretty permanent but I like the idea of storage being built in to keep the feeling of the house a bit less cluttered.

The Initial Quote is in!

We met with the Sales person from Granvue last week and he gave us the Initial Quote. We had to wait a bit for it since there was summer holidays and we had a few committments ourselves and couldn't make it to the display for a while. Eventually he came out to us!

Needless to say, as the quote had included almost everything from our wishlist, it was a little steep. There were also a couple of semi-unexpected aspects, such as a large fee for the difficulty in building in an established area, as well as site cost estimates being a little higher than I was expecting (and that's only the estimate - it could be higher).

Seeing the quote has made us put our thinking caps on again. We went to visit the display (again!) to get a better idea of what some of the items in the quote are and tonight we are sitting down to go through everything one by one. Then the next step is to go back with the changes.

The Future of Small Steps

On another note, since it's taking so long to get plans together and it will be some time before we start building (but that's another story), I'm going to expand the blog to start discussing some ideas that I have for designing and decorating the house as well. I'm working on some ideas now and I'm so excited!