Contracts Signed

We got approval on our loan last week. We signed the loan contracts on Friday afternoon and the building contracts on Saturday. The bank requires an invoice from Coral before they release the funds for the deposit. We asked our sales consultant for this on Saturday. I'm a little disapointed that she made a note of this and sent it with the contracts snail mail. The bank is asking us for it but we have to wait until the contracts arrive to head office and someone gets the message to send the bank the invoice. Just wish she had of emailed them asking for the invoice. It could have been emailed to the bank on Monday and they would already have their deposit and we would be one step closer to being in council. Oh well at least contracts are signed.

Contracts Have Arrived

Very exciting to see a package from Coral on our door step yesterday afternoon. We are very happy with the detailed drawings and are getting very excited to see it come together. We are still a little in shock with all of the information sent. Just trying to sift through it all and figure out what needs to be done.

We are currently waiting for our lender to give us approval for our loan. Hopefully sometime this week so we can sign papers before Christmas.

Colours, Colours, Colours

We went to visit the colours consultant today. Wow there is a lot buzzing through our heads. Thankfully the tap fittings that come with the eclipse inclusions are great. We love them so no decisions there. Bricks, garage door and gutters etc weren't too hard to choose. We were a little put out when we decided we don't like the white ceasar stone benchtops we thought we wanted. This has now changed to black which throws us completely in a spiral on cupboard colours. We have no idea what we are going to do. We are thinking about upgrading the carpet. For an extra $800 we can get much better quality carpet that looks and feels a lot better. We are thinking it might be worth it. Ahhh decisions, decisions.

Tender Has Arrived

We had our tender meeting yesterday. Well bad news is they struck rock. So another $20k later and we have ordered the contract. Everything else looked good. Now we are just in the mad rush to hopefully get drawings in to council by Christmas. I know I am really going on a hope and a prayer with that but one can only dream right.We are just waiting on the contract to be drawn up and finance to be approved.

Getting Started

Well it feels like it has been a long road already. And we haven't even started. I am 24 and my husband (Jason) is 31. I am an accountant so very much on the searching for value for money side. My husband is part owner of a joinery and a retained firefighter. So he is all about quality and has very little time for pretty much anything.

We ummed and ahhed about wether to build or buy for a very long time. Then the new first home owners grant was announced that gave us $15,000 if we built and nothing if we bought. We had always wanted to build but wasn't sure how feasible it was cash wise but with this grant it really made the decision for us.

We had been keeping an eye on a couple of blocks we really liked. We were a bit short of choice as hubby needs to be within 5 mins of the station for work. We also really wanted a decent sized block and an estate that was on the quiet side. Thankfully we found exactly what we were looking for at Bolwarra Heights. We settled on September 20th on our perfect little block of land. The land is 1300m2 and is a corner block. Exactly what we wanted.

On October 1st we had finally decided on the house design we wanted. We went and saw Coral homes and asked for an estimate. The estimate came back two weeks later in our price range with Eclipse Inclusions. We then paid the initial deposit for a fixed price tender. At this stage we are still waiting for the tender to come back. Hopefully it will be in on Friday.

We have been to look at tiles and bricks. So far we have agreed with no arguments. Big sigh of relief. We are having white marble floor tiles, whitish/grey stone tiles on the bathroom and laundry floors, black gloss tiles on the bathroom walls and a mirror mosaic strip of feature tiles in both of the bathrooms. We were really happy with the choices that were available from Coral. The quality and colours are great. We were expecting to pay extra for gloss tiles but they are included. The only extra charge we have to pay so far is the feature tiles. If we can get out of building with just that extra cost we will be very happy.

Block pics....