Much progress

Slab, tick

Frame, tick

Roof, tick

Windows, tick

Pipes & wiring, tick

Moving rather quick!!!

Clay & Plastic - We have pipes

Well, things have started moving and not only is our block cut, but we now have all out sewerage and stormwater connected. Slab to come this week.

Due to the slope on the driveway and Brisbane City Council regulations of maximum 1:4 slope, we have a sunken garage with a drop edge beam. Was a bit surprised they didn't excavate for the whole thing, but I'm assured by the Site Super that the slab guys will do it themselves.

To my pleasure there's a large pile of fill at the front. Am hoping it gets left on site as we'll be putting retaining walls at the front - the less fill I have to buy the better.

Lines & Colours

So I though I'd share colour & stuff, as it's the part of the whole process that I enjoy the most.

Our last place was rather beige and we wanted to avoid this so we've tried to keep things crisp and clean.

Floors & Walls

For the walls we've chosen Taubmans Snowy White with dark timber-look laminate (Embelton Lemon Scented Gum)

We're doing laminate through all the bedrooms and kitchen as we have dust allergies in our family.






Kitchen:

The whole crisp and clean thing we're trying to extend into the kitchen. So it's more white here with a pale blue-green splashback. Benchtops are Quantum Quartz Luna White, Cabinets are Polar White (silk finish) Laminex:
















Bathrooms

Still a bit of white in the bathroom with Gloss White tiles on the walls and Polar White on the cabinets, but we've gone for a QQ Mocha benchtop and a grey tile:

Tap & mixers. These are different between the ensuite and main bathroom.

Outside:

We're planning on rendering later on, but it's probably one of those things that we'll procrastinate on it and do it 5-10 years down the track, so we had to be happy with the outside in the interim. Bricks are PGH Perisher, Woodland Grey roof, gutters and Monument fascia








Front Door & garage:

And finally here's our actual house plan:

Blank Canvas

Well, here's a bit of background on our build.

My wife and I had built back in 2002 with Hallmark Homes in an estate not far from Ferny Grove. We liked, nay, loved our home. Although we had a couple of kids as is prone to happening and as they grew so did both their voice boxes and their sense of entitlement. And they're not even 7 yet! Basically, the design of the house was lacking a few things, plus it back onto a road that was virtually untrafficked, but was getting busier every day.

I had a friend nearby who had bought in a new estate half a kilometre from where we were, and it got us thinking that we could up and move (for what we would like to consider our last move for 20-ish years) and not extend ourselves too much. More on that at a later time though...

We missed the boat on the first stage of the estate we had our eyes on and the second stage was taking forever and was probably out of our price range, we started looking elsewhere. We stumbled on a block that was an acreage block that have had a few blocks subbed off the front. We made an offer and now own a  chunk of land.

As you can see it's flattish, with a bit of a rise at the front. It's a smidge over 600 square metres. The tress you can see are on the remnants of the acreage block which now sits behind on a battle-axe configuration thingy.

All this time while looking for land we had looking at house designs. We had a wishlist that we wanted to get, otherwise there really wasn't a great incentive to move. These were:

• Separate area for the kids
• Big pantry
• Better Kitchen layout
• Separate TV room
• Kids room not directly opposite each other

So we really went the opposite way that's recommended - we chose the house then picked the land to suit it. We'd actually narrowed down the house to 2 or 3 designs before we'd even sold our previous place!

In the end we plumped for Plantation Homes' (also known as Henley) Retreat 18m Q2. The only changes we made to the design was to make the walk-in pantry larger.

Well, that might do for a first post.