DA Approval

We finally got a DA approval late last week. YAY!!

This week we received several more paperworks to sort out such as the DA papers to the Lender, glass splashback to be signed etc.

We want to give a big shout out to our CSO who has been nothing less than excellent to deal with, communicative, prompt, accomodating to our needs. Always returning our email as simple as saying 'Thank you' that she received our email.

I even gave a last minute variation that I forgot to signed 2 weeks ago and her response was assuring. It's nice when someone assure you and you know that she is in control.

BAL-19 to BAL-LOW

We got a feedback from Council last week about our land in the Bush Fire Zone and asked for the requirements.

Let's move back when we got the land. We are aware about this when we purchased the land. However there were mixed information about the land. One paper says no BAL at all, one says the land has BAL rating.

Apparently in the contract of land sale the land has 88B instrument that is showing BAL-19. After a discussion we went ahead with the purchase. The reason being that our land is next to a Reserve.

So we had $8K in the tender to be provisioned to comply ourself with this Bush Fire rating.

Now fast forward back to the council stage. I checked out our land in the Council Bush Fire Prone Are Map and found out that our land is actually outside the Buffer Zone (100m). This means No BAL or BAL-LOW. This also means we do not need any extra requirements. To challenge this apparently we possibly need to get a Bush Fire Assessment report.

However, after a short email explaining this with screenshots of the Council Map, this week the council officer finally agree that our land is BAL-LOW and now we have the $8K off the tender ..  YAY!!

So moral of the story, if your land has a Bush Fire Rating, check our your local Council Bush Fire Prone Area map. You might be in a surprise like we are. :-)

In Council

Finally I got a word from our CSO that our case was submitted to Council. Our Council is Blacktown Council for anyone who doesn't know The Ponds area.

Let the waiting game begins.

Our Electrical Plan

We find it that not a lot of people sharing their electrical plan. So We'd like to share ours.

I'm a techie guy and I'm interested what other people's doing with their electrical. Please let me know if you came across any electrical plans on people's blog somewhere. I'd like to check them out.

I've also requested to have DATA cabling everywhere because The Ponds is NBN estate and I'd like to distribute all of our media from one place. I came across HDBaseT standard that appears to be using DATA cabling CAT5e to distribute Audio/Video.

I also go a bit over the top on the Ground Floor because a lot of tips from Homeone Forum that it's hard to re-wire the Ground Floor once completed.

Our Colour Selections

This is our colour selection:

Bricks: Austral - Symmetry Earth
Roof: Bristile Coal Classic Shingle
Fascia/Gutter: Dune/Monument
Garage Door: Panel Lift Profile - Contemporary in Dune
Driveway: Bluestone
Moroka Finish: Coffee Cake

Kitchen:
CaesarStone: Snow
Cabinet: Poly Laminex White on top and Laminex Nocturne Oak on the bottom

Bathroom and Laundry:
CaesarStone: Urban
Cupboard: Laminex Burnished Wood

Window: Pearl White

Wall: Taubmans Martini
Stairwell Wall: Taubmans Woodland Grove

Carpet: Redbook Green - Natural Haven - Stairs and First Fl
TimberFloor: Timbernate Brushbox - Most Ground Fl

we chose the middle silverry one

Welcome to Our Home Building blog

One of our friends recommended us to start a blog for our home building journey. So here it is.

We put a deposit on our land at The Ponds back in March 2012. After looking out for builder from Sekisui, Eden Brae and Metricon, we decided to build with Wisdom Homes.

We particularly like the designs by Wisdom. After many2 visits to the display homes, we decided to go ahead with Aspiration 35,

While waiting for our land to be registered, we started the process with WH.

When our land was finally registered in September 2012, we also just finalised the tender and requested the contract.

We're currently waiting for the final approval from the bank CBA before we sign the contact with WH.

Below are the ground floor and first floor plan.

As you can see that we made quite a a few changes with the ground floor and the first floor when you compare with original WH design. We have a butler pantry, larger living area, larger walk in robe and few other changes.

We are excited to have a chance to build our home from scratch. Considering we're currently living in Eastern Suburb, Sydney, it will be quite a change for us to move to The Ponds.

For some reason we like having corner lot but not a lot of people like corner lot.

Anyway...