Thursday, November 18, 2010

Hi - my new blog!

Hi everyone

Im creating a blog in order to remember the heartache and sweat that is and has gone into building our house. Particularly from my dad and brother,  but also for Dave and I too.

So here goes.

We bought the land 2 years ago - it backs onto a reserve and it is a funny shape - triangular and heavily sloped. And herin lies our initial problem - building a house on a slope that is not square requires alot of thinking outside the square!

So we bought it from a builder who had some plans put through council about 5 years back and used the outline of this house as a starting point on how to design our own version. David and I came up with a design ready to present to the draftsman.

And herin lies our second problem. The draftsman - maybe in hindsight we should have cut to the chase and gone to an architect for something so custom designed, but the process was a headache from the start.

We came up with a budget with them that would cover the engineer, the surveyor and the design fees for them. They then assigned a junior girl to cover the whole job and we hardly ever had contact with the person we were meant to sign up with. It meant problems with the council when lodging plans and her being unable to provide us with advice on some of the layout issues we had. My dad and brother as our builders had to step in but they had to do it on issues the drafting company should be able to pick up right away.

So two years later we have council approval but with window schedules that dont match the plans and changes requested but not made (and not picked up by us as they were minor). We were also running so behind wth the lodgement of landscaping plans that we put in what they designed but we were reassured we would be able to change them with no hassle. Wrong! We will now have to relodge and pay for someone else to do the landscaping how we want it down the track.

Anyway, the more exciting thing is that we have now completed the excavation of the block, and are ready to go with the concrete slab. As soon as it stops raining.....

Thanks for reading

Tina

PS If you need someone to build your custom designed home, ring Angelo at Zenith Developments on 0414 828 524. He will do anything to get you what you want :)