Sink and Tub

Today I decided to bite the bullet and just buy the sink and tub that I was trying to get the cabinet maker to find for me. It's much easier for both of us as I was able to see what the sink was exactly like and they were able to stop looking for something that would possibly suit me. I now have a kitchen sink and a laundry tub at home. More stuff to take up space!!!

Our plans have gone back to the estimator so that he can requote on the new work that has to be done, then they will go to the draftsman and finally back to council. With any luck it won't be a matter of weeks before they come back from council but we aren't holding our breath!

Some New Photos

What is a blog without photos? It can get a little boring if it's just text all the time..... so, here are a few new shots that I took today.

This is what I started off with today:



These shots were taking after I attacked it with the brush cutter:









The new view from our place to next door.

We Have Great Neighbours!

We have finally met all of our direct neighbours and can say with great happiness that they all seem like a fantastic bunch of people. It's very exciting to see that the people we are going to be living around all seem to be around our age (or a bit younger) with small children. Milly has three little girls and two little boys around her to play with and so far she's fallen in love with all of them which is great.

Matt and I can already see a lot of neighbourhood barbies!

The Fate

Our fate has been decided by the council and we are glad to be able to say that our problem has been solved with little worry other than we have been told that under no circumstances are we to touch another tree on our block unless having been given prior permission by council. They pin pointed a tree that must remain and unfortunately, that tree is also in the cut and fill area.

To solve this problem, we have decided to move our fill area back within the building envelope (which is exactly what the builder should have done in the first place) and save the life of the tree. It suits us fine anyway as we had no intention of removing that tree and now that council have said we can't we can make sure the builder do not remove it on our behalf.

In other news, we went for a drive to the block today to see the progression of our neighbour's house. What perfect timing we had, as our other neighbour turned up at her block not long after we got there..... to watch some men remove the majority of the trees on her block. All of the big ones anywhere near the house pad have gone. We let her know what council had told us about tree removal and she told the guys they'd better stop. Some people are funny though. The guy who was doing the job just did NOT understand that where we are building has strict rules about the environment not only from the developer, but from council who have been advised by the EPA. He kept saying "you can take anything that looks dangerous". After the week I've had and the conversations I've had my conclusion is that you can't take anything unless it is a) in the direct line of your garage from the footpath to your house where you are planning to put a driveway; b) along the fence line within 3 metres; c) within a ten metre boundary from your house to protect it from bushfire; or d) possibly if the RFB write you a bushfire management plan entailing that you are to remove trees that are deemed to be of risk. And even then, you still have to ASK!!!!

I spoke to lots of people on Thursday regarding this matter and everyone of them came back with the same answer: you are allowed to remove trees on your building envelope and nowhere else without council approval. It's in the DA, it's in the covenent, it's in our contract for goodness sake! It is very, very clear.

At the end of the day, we took a risk and were extremely lucky. Somehow, I don't think some of our neighbours will be as lucky.

It's Only A Problem If That's How You Chose To Look At It

...and that is exactly how I was looking at it yesterday!

I had a phone call from the builder yesterday telling me that they'd finally found out the reason why the plans were being held up in council and that they were trying to rectify the issue. They didn't pass on what the problem was but assured me that things were being done. Never one to leave things alone, I decided to make the call to council to see exactly what the problem was and what we could do about it. Realistically I was hoping they'd give me a little ammo to put a firecracker up the certifier's bum and get them to tell him to get on with his job. As far as I could see it was him that was holding us up.

Well, actually I was wrong (yes, I admit it, WRONG). Very wrong in fact. The council were worried that our cut was going to be too close to a tree that was just outside the building envelope as it would possibly affect the root ball of the tree. Happily, I offered up my new information that there was actually nothing to worry about anymore as we had removed that tree for vehicular access - something that we thought was ok due to the way the covenant was written.

BA BOW. (That's the game show sound for "you're an idiot" in case you're wondering).

It seems that our understanding of vehicular access does not match that of the council and the tree that we removed should really still be standing there. A lovely man at council was very understanding about what we have done and said that although he could see that we had the best intentions, we didn't get permission from council to do so.

So, now I am waiting to hear back from council as to our fate. Will we have to pay to have retrospective planning done? Will we be asked to replant other trees? Or will we be faced with a fine?

At this stage I do not know. What I do know however is that our builder cannot move forward until we have permission to remove those trees. Once again we are at a stand still.

I am so grateful that we rented a place that we don't mind living in... as this has taken way longer than we expected. We thought we'd be in our house by now and we haven't even started.

In other news though, all the time that this is taking is making our loan process all the better. I have been able to get quotes to the bank for things that we are doing ourselves and they have come back with a saving of $18k on mortgage lenders insurance.

They say everything happens for a reason, and usually I don't believe in that sort of thing, but with this house it has certainly been true. If our first builder had not been honest with us and told us that we weren't really matched as a builder and owner team, then we wouldn't have gotten a house the size of the one that we will be getting for the price that we are getting it for. If we hadn't have called the pool place on the day that we did, we wouldn't have gotten the great deal on the pool. And if our old lender hadn't have wanted to charge us so much in MLI, then we wouldn't have shopped around and found a fantastic mortgage broker who has really worked her butt off for us. Waiting is frustrating, but patience is a virtue and it's one I'm learning to cope with.

I'll let you know about the trees when I find out our "fate".

Just Another Manic Monday

It seems that every Monday, the day I used to keep as housework and washing/ironing day, has now become, fix up all the problems from last week for the house. Not that we have had that many real problems as such yet, but there is always something to chase up or find out about. So, every Monday I make phone calls for what seems like the better part of the day. Yesterday I had to liase with Coral and the cabinet maker about specifications for the sink and tub and also for our taps.

I also had to chase up the broker about the loan after everything went belly up last week. It seems that since we wish to borrow money from the bank to do extra stuff, like the pool and the shed, that the banks are classing us as an owner builder. Banks will lend money to owner builders, however only at 65% of the value of the house. Since we wish to borrow more than that, we've had to find a bank that doesn't consider us to be owner builder. We signed an application with one of the big four yesterday and still have Australia's biggest lender in reserve should it all fall through.

While we were out signing up for the loan, we also picked up our new taps. Not sure if they are the right ones though now as they don't seem to turn at the spout. Matt is taking them back today to see if they can be used in the kitchen and laundry.

In other news, our neighbour's places are coming along really well. The neighbours across the road will be in their place in a couple of weeks and our next door neighbours should have their footings completed by the end of the week. It's all quite exciting.

Hopefully ours will come out of council soon!

Thanks Dave...You're awesome!!!!

We are very blessed to have wonderful friends. Two such friends are Dave and Charmaine, who I first met when I started working with Charmaine in 2001. We parted working ways less than two years later but have always remained friends. When we were looking at blocks of land to buy, Dave and Charmaine were always one of the first ones to come and have a look. We value their opinions so much.

Dave has an earthmoving business and when we showed them this block, he said that he'd give us a hand levelling the pad when we needed it. Originally we were wrapped to be able to snap him up to do that, however, when we changed builders, Coral weren't able to let us use Dave unless we had a second set of soil tests and contours done. Since the progress was taking so long we decided to go with their plans and asked Dave if he'd give us a hand moving some mulch that the developer had left on the block and removing a few trees that were in the way of vehicular access.

Dave offered to give us a hand this weekend which was really appreciated. He is so good at his job and certainly made our block look so much better. We can't recommend him enough if you need work done that would require a drott.

Thanks so much Dave, we really appreciate it ... and thanks Charmaine, for giving up a Saturday with Dave for us.


Dave's business name and phone number. Make sure you call him if you're needing work done!
















Milly, just like her Daddy. She went over to the tree and started to "cut" it down. She was really disappointed when she realised it didn't cut.

Taps....they are so expensive!

Today I spent the morning making calls to try and get things sorted with the house so that it would all be ready to go when the council sends the plans back and the bank gives us the go ahead on the loan. The valuers for the bank requested a selections list from us so, due to the fact that I have no fax or scanner at the moment, I retyped the whole document and sent it to the loans officer before calling to find out that I'd have to get the original document to her anyway.

I then rang our cabinet maker and they suggested that it would be better if we bought our own taps instead of them trying to source them for us. So, I found the tap I wanted and called Reece Plumbing Supplies to find out how much my dream taps were. Let's just say I am glad I was sitting down as the guy on the other end of the phone told me they were $995. I quickly said, "ok, what else do you have that looks similar?" He took me to a website that had other taps on it and we chose our tap. Matt, Milly and I went in there this afternoon and bought them. That's one more thing off the list that is done. Yay!


The taps that I wanted to buy until I found out they were nearly $1000 each.



These are the ones we ended up buying for the laundry and kitchen.

See, I'm not broken.....

... I do work! I got Matt to take this shot of me to prove that he's not the only one who does stuff on our block. Can you see the screw falling out of the muffler? I still haven't found it.

It's a sign! I'm telling you, it's a sign!

The new sign that our Coral sales guy has had put up on our block today. I LOVE IT!



The sign from across the road.

Today we saw a sign that our house will be started soon. A great big sign. Six foot in fact. A lovely lad came out and put up Coral's advertising sign this afternoon. So, now it really seems REAL. It's actually funny that he came out today as I had been talking to Matt on the way to the block this morning about how it doesn't really feel real that we are building yet. We go to the block every weekend and we "play" but nothing is really happening there. Now that we have a sign up it seems that things will be happening soon. Although it's taken over a year to get to this point, it kinda seems quick now. I'm sure that will change when the house is being built but at this stage it feels like things are progressing nice and quickly.



Milly and I relaxing before lunch.



The great big fires that died down after about half an hour of burning and became small fires. They look good here though.

Our focus for today was burning the piles we made yesterday. A nice easy day for us after all of the timber carrying we did yesterday. I spent some of the morning on the wipper snipper until it broke. Now, just for the record, I did not break it, despite the fact that this problem has never happened before in the three or so years that we have had it. As I was ridding our block of long grass, one of the screws on the muffler loosened itself and fell out. I searched high and low for it but couldn't find it anywhere. It was frustrating really as I'd wanted to get way more done than I actually achieved. Needless to say, the rest of the day was much more relaxing.

Tomorrow I meet with the cabinet maker which will be very exciting and next weekend Matt has booked a dingo to clear the fence lines. I think I'll be on the wipper snipper again to try and get rid of as much of the grass around the place as I can before we bring the ride on over. Don't really want to ride the ride on around the block until I know what's underfoot.

So Much Mess!

Matt, Milly and I made our usual weekend trip out to the block this morning to do some more cleaning up. Matt went earlier so that I could clean up the house and then I picked up some things for a barbecue lunch and went out.

When we had the block scraped a few months ago, they pushed everything back into the bushland. We had to get it done so that the builder could get the contours and soil test done. About three days after we'd forked out $600 the developer came in and moved the rubbish off everyone else's blocks. Of course, they've never been able to work out why ours got missed, but needless to say, they won't be able to do ours until there are more blocks that require it to be done. Since they're not currently selling any blocks, they can't promise when that will be. We, of course, can't wait now as we will have a house on our block soon and they won't be able to get machinery in then. Luckily for us, we have a very good friend with the same machinery who has offered to move it for us.

Today Matt chopped up some of the logs that were sticking out of the piles of rubbish to make it a bit easier for Dave to move it. He made piles and piles of timber and I got the illustrious job of moving it back onto the block so that we can burn it next weekend.

In other news, it seems the plans are nearly finalised and back from the certifier. I'm off to meet with the cabinet maker on Monday to finalise things with them and hopefully we'll hear back from the mortgage broker this week to finalise the loan. Hopefully things will start on our block soon. Our neighbours had their cut done on Thursday which was exciting to see. Can't wait to see their slab go down!

And Then There Were Fences.

Matt and I have had a bit of fun over the past two weeks, trying our hand at fencing. Now, believe me, we are NO fencers but, we did give it a good shot. One the first weekend we were clearly just having a go, but by the second weekend Matt had worked out more of a plan and the second line looked much more professional (as professional as amateur can look). We now have two fence lines from the front to the back of our property cutting us off from our neighbours. Now we just have to get in contact with the neighbours and find out what they want for a fence so we can put it up. Can't wait.

In other news, we're still waiting to hear back from the banks (yes I did say banks... we're shopping around) as to what their loan offers will be and also waiting for the council to approve everything. The builders think they'll be on the block around the start of September so that is something to look forward to.