When you pay peanuts....

Hi,

This week we finally got our landscaping plans organised and forwarded the same to Wisdom this morning. Wisdom in turn has already advised us that the plans have been forwarded to the design review panel.  Was impressed with both my Landscaping designer & Wisdom in the last week, for my LS designer to charge a minimal fee & to keep her word in getting the plans ready in the promised time frame & with Wisdom with their prompt communication.

But my big problem this week has to be with my Solicitor.  He charged us a minimal fee (much less than the industry norm) but getting in touch with him has always been a nightmare. On the day we were required to pay the initial settlement of 5% towards the land, I reminded my solicitor about the due date & asked him to extend the due date by a week. However he finally got the settlement done on the right time & date & forwarded me the entire paperwork for the same. On the settlement paperwork, I came across adjustments that amount to approximately $1500. While I was aware of adjustments for $750, I needed more info on the remaining amount & so I called the Solicitor and requested for an explanation but till date I havent received any.

If I get a chance to redo the whole experience, I would rather pay some more fee & get a solicitor who is more professional than my existing one. 

When you pay peanuts... you get Monkeys!

A cheap lesson learnt....

The cafe

The cafe
This weekend, Me & H went to meet our colour consultant to finalise our colour selection for the house. We wanted to choose a brick colour that is neither too light nor too dark. Moreover we didn't want to spend extra money to upgrade the range of bricks available to us from the builders inclusive range. Finally we zeroed in on a brick that was called "latte". A coffee coloured brick was just the beginning.

With the brick finalised, we went on to choose roof, windows, Garage doors, gutter, fascia, etc. H selected a roof tile to match the brick which is called "Chocolat". Then for window frames, the colour that we choose was a beige to match the brown theme. More coffee & flat white colours were chosen for the fascia & gutter. My decision to pet name my home as "the cafe" came after H decided on Kitchen cabinets & splash-backs as they were called Cappuccino & espresso respectively. Surely I cant choose a better name than the Cafe, can I?


With my landscaping plan expected to arrive this week, Wisdom will hopefully be able to submit our plans to the Design review panel @ Ponds for approval.


more to come on the cafe...

Hi,

Thanks for visiting my blog.

My name is Bala. This Blog is to share my experiences in building our first home, look back at it on a later date to walk down the memory lane & finally I' ll have a story to tell my grand kids!

Me & my wife, H decided to build our first house rather than buy it off the market because we thought the difference would be similar to the attachment that one may have towards a knitwear that was bought from the shop and the other that was knitted by oneself.

We paid deposit for a plot of land at the Stream place in the suburb of Ponds, NSW a few months ago. Then most of the weekends were spent on visiting display homes, calculating the building costs, budgeting...increasing the budget that is, reading & listening to all the horror stories of dodgy builders, crappy building practices, etc. Finally after a bit of research we settled with Wisdom Homes to build our house and signed a contract to build a 30sq double storey home at a competitive price. I have to mention that so far our experience in dealing with Wisdom has been a pleasant one. These guys seem to be quite professional in their approach and friendly to deal with.

With our land finally settled as of last week and the building contract signed, the next few weeks will go in choosing the colours, bricks, tiles, windows et al. Then the plans will be submitted to the Ponds estate for a review before submitting to council. Overall my guess is that the construction wont begin until late September09.

 Over the next few weeks I will try to post some photos of the land, building plans, colour selection details etc for all to share my joy.

More to come....