Getting closer to lock up...

Back of the house, doors leading to back yard.

Side of the house, this is where we will put the water tank and hot water service. Laundry exits out here as well.

Other side, this is where we will set up an outdoor entertaining area with decking, pergola, bbq etc. The other pic is the kitchen window above sink; it will be a lovely servery window to the outdoor bbq area.

Looking out from the kitchen to the open living area and vice versa. Guttering on the floor to be installed next week! It is Colorbond Ebony.

Recessed shower bases; we went to look at tiles last week - there are so many to chose from, it's going to be a hard choice to make!!

From the entrance looking down the hallway. The large window is in the formal lounge which will be known as "the christmas tree room"! NO tv, NO home theatre systems, just a nice quiet chill out room for reading or enjoying a cup of tea & a chat!

Front of the house with portico complete! Main bricks are Selkirk Blue Rain and portico bricks are Selkirk 50mm Tawney Heritage.

busy busy busy

We have been flat out trying to make things happen, so have not had a chance to update blog at all, above are some pictures I took throughout the past couple of months....Since then we've had the roof trusses and plumber rough in completed, and the windows installed as well but I haven't taken those photos yet!

Next step will be to get the roof plumber to do his bit, get the brickie going and the roof tiles on. Once the roof tiles are on, the electrician will do his rough in.....hope all of the above is done by end of jan when we can officially have lock up complete!

Busy times for us, but all is going well!

We have a SLAB!!

Here are some pic's of our lovely slab - it has been curing for a couple of weeks now and is looking fantastic. Our concreter did an excellent and very professional job, in fact he was so accurate that when we measured for our frame the guy was very impressed - he was virtually spot on!!

We have progress - a lot of progress!!

Well the old house is gone and we officially have a block of land!! The action happened in July and if anyone is after an excellent demolisher in north western suburbs - let me know, our guy was great!! And very reasonably priced!


The preliminary stages and planning has been done and we are glad to be going OB as we have such flexibility in what we choose and how we go about it. We have done so much research to date and most weekends we go to a display home or showroom or something similar!! The downside is that it is taking up considerable time and I am missing out on things like reading a good book or just veggin in front of the tele - most evenings are spent researching (on homeone.com.au) or googling everything! The past couple of nights I have been doing up facade options so we can tell what our house will look like!! Next post I will put up what I came up with.

Basically prelim stages were:

Complete final drawings inc engineering
Demolition (inc permit)
Owner Builder permit
Arrange finance
Appoint Surveyor
Get Building Permit (inc council dispensation due to setback issues)
Arrange Insurance
Get Temporary Fence delivered
Site signs
Arrange Portable loo
Site Set out
PIC concent from the water authority (to tap into sewer)

All of the above of course involve $$$, so we are in for a penny now!!

Anyway...the plumber started a couple of weeks ago and we now have sewer drainage complete. The electrician laid the electrical trench after the plumber kindly dug it out for us (for a slab of course!!) We were a little unlucky to hit some rock throughout the process, but it wasn't too bad, we were out by around $1100 for rock removal and disposal which we think is reasonable compared to our poor neighbours who hit 40 cubic meters!!!


Pictures of our site so far:

Update for the new year

Things have been pretty quiet on the home front for us, towards the end of 2007 we decided to go with a draftsperson to develop our working drawings based on our sketch design so we can take them to local builders for quotes. At this stage, we are still waiting on those drawings, we expect to have them by the end of Feb! Hopefully we can then get a building permit & appoint a builder.....

Here is the most recent sketch, as you can see I have caved and moved the laundry to where the other wet areas are, but in return I get to keep the study which Luke wanted to delete!



Will keep the updates coming along, however it is proving to be a bit of a slow process for us and we don't expect much to happen over the next month or so...in the mean time, the old house is still on the block & the back & front yards are horrendously overgrown!! Oh well, have to wait a while before we can knock it down!!