It takes much longer than you expect...

We wanted to wait until we had approval for the house before we chose a place to rent. We did find a bargain, not overly convenient and very tiny but at least $100 per week cheaper than any other suitable property. We moved on the 29th of October. Our normal removalists were unavailable (I suspect they remembered the rather large and heavy furniture and chose not to take our job as a result). My dearest found a person advertising on a pole in the city and engaged their services. They turned up in a truck about the size of a HiAce van and took all day to move us to a house in the same suburb as we were already in. During the process they damaged almost every single piece of furniture and showed a total lack of common sense including putting heavy pieces of furniture with the doors and drawers facing the wall. Horrific day. Moral of the story - don't hire removalists you find advertising on telegraph poles.

The demolisher started on 2 November but took a while because they were overbooked. (They charge about half the price of other demolishers so no wonder really).

Everything was sorted out by 25th November which was still in time to not have to pay extra money due to price rises. The excavation and piering occured around the 11th of December, the slab was poured by the 20th and we received the first big bill on the 21st. The weather has been perfect for curing the slab and now we wait until the building company goes back to work after the Christmas holiday period. We're thinking it will be the 9th of January.

Finally signed on the dotted line

We are definitely building the Metricon Nolan 41 but have decided to skip building the pool for now. It's all too complicated for us, and expensive. Who would have thought that an itty bitty pool would cost about $70,000 including fencing and paving? We have decided to have carpet, tiles, window dressing, grass and a driveway instead. Seems like the most sensible option.

We had been planning to build two homes on our 1500sqm block but the State Government ruined those plans. Rather than leave our energy sucking high carbon footprint 1950's home on our unsustainably large block of land we will build the more energy efficient home on said unsustainably large block, stress about paying the mortgage on it and hope for a change in the rules to something more sensible than what they currently are.

I'm excited about building our new home but I have a hard time believing that we will actually get to live in it. In 6 weeks time we should have approved plans and approval to demolish this decaying hovel and we are at the business end of this journey. In 4 weeks we make our decisions on colours and finishes. It should be interesting to see how much that will add to the price tag.

Too many choices

Metricon isn't a cheap project home builder to choose but their quality seems to be above that of your run of the mill project home builder. They show so much attention to detail and they do what they say they will do during the tender process and when they say they will do it.

Apart from the surveyors and soil testers it's been crickets so far from the other company and it has been almost a month since we handed over our $1,000 to them. In the meantime we have gone off their design somewhat and are most enthused about going with Metricon.

Our problems with any home we build are the ever spiralling costs which have us nervous, a few technical difficulties to overcome and the incredible amount of choice we have at Metricon. Which is a nice problem to have really. Especially if you are Metricon.

When we went to our tender appointment we balked at the end sum, which isn't the end of the costs, just what we know so far. $63,000 odd thousand in site costs and then $27,000 to split the floor just was not what we were expecting.

This prompted me to go back to my spreadsheet. It looks like we might be better off going back to the first home we liked as it still fits the bill best for us with only small changes. Having come so far on the Phoenix, my husband is loathe to change now. I also quail at the thought of going back to our lovely sales consultant to tell her that we have changed our minds again for the fourth time and that we are going back to our first choice.

Although I would be happy with almost any home they have on offer I wish they didn't cost so much as it is scaring the living daylights out of me that the final cost including renting, demolition and interest will cost twice the base price of the house.

Who knew?

Let's start at the very beginning

My husband and I found a few blogs from people detailing the events as they built their homes. We were amused by this at first. As we start on our own little odyssey I am starting to understand their need to do so. We've often visited display homes as an interesting day out but this is the first time we are likely to actually go ahead and build.

Having visited Homeworld in Kellyville too many times to count we decided to try somewhere different. After a little research we decided The Ponds was going to be our next jaunt. I noticed that a new to Sydney company, Metricon, was advertising and they happened to be on the way. We liked the houses at The Ponds well enough but once we saw the Metricon designs, nothing else compared. Clarendon was also in the same area so we popped in there - their new designs were also very impressive. We came away from the day with two clear favourites. The Clarendon Sherwood 42 and the Metricon Nolan 45.

For anybody who has ever built you know this is only the beginning of the search and narrowing it down to the most perfect house. We certainly were more impressed with the Metricon house, but decided to downsize our idea to the beautifully proportioned Liberty 42. We came a long way to getting our tender application ready when we hit our first hurdle. We had hoped to live in our home out the front of our property whilst the builders were creating our new home at the back. Alas it is not to be. We will have to rent. Which of course adds $30,000 to the budget.

Back we went to the drawing board. We went back to the Clarendon Sherwood 42 - ignoring the black and white decor, it's a stunning home, a floor plan which suits our needs to a T and at much less cost. We start the tender process again, but we aren't done with Metricon yet, such a fabulous deal and such great homes, that we visited more of them and felt that the Phoenix 38 plus extras would also do. A second visit to confirm and a call to Metricon to change the tender to be for the Phoenix. It's not a perfect fit but we love the company, the house and the deal too much and don't want to take that iron out of the fire. Unfortunately it's still about $50,000 more than the Clarendon house.

Now we are being inundated with paperwork, samples, and a multitude of decisions to make. Don't get me wrong, it's very exciting but also terribly overwhelming. Except for our visit from the site inspector from Clarendon. That experience was rather underwhelming. It's only a small blip in an otherwise great time. The only problem is that at the end of all this we may have to sell what was meant to be our dream home. Unless we win Lotto. LOL