Contract all final!

We finally have got our designed approved & have all our finally drawings! They have changed all our first floor windows to awnings with no cost to us. Yay finally we didn't have to pay for something!

Ryan likes to keep updated on the Homes One forum and found that the colour we chose for our cabinets in our kitchen and bathrooms had been discontinued. I contacted our BC who had just got back from leave who confirmed that it had been. This meant another trip to Porter Davis's World of Style to chose a new colour.

I had a look online before we went and I had a pretty good idea of two colours that I wanted to look at. We compared a colour that was slightly dark than the original colour and then a pattern that has grey tones instead of the brown. I've decided to go with the grey tones as most of our colours are grey, black and white. I'm quite glad that the originally colour was discontinued as I think the new colour will work better. As they as everything happens for a reason. :)

 This is the new colour for the island bench, over head & bathroom cupboards (its a lot lighter & greyer than the picture shows):

Some other great news - we have surveying pegs on our block! This means that all things should be a go a head for the first week of September. Its been a long time coming and I just can't wait to see it built!!

One step forward, two steps back

So first off good news as we all prefer good news right?!

We got our facade approved yay and got a better valuation done on the build so will  not have to pay LMI at all on the new build yay!!

Below are the drawings for the new facade and just an idea on colours, as well as the changes that had to be made to the privacy screening due to development requirements (the changes ended up being cheaper than the option they gave us originally which we never liked anyway, so slight win for us!) We also had to add an awning window downstairs to the living area, the finally changes all meant we had to pay more (seriously everything cost you money when you build!)

Now for some news which I got tonight which may turn into not so great news and again may jeopardise whether we do build. We just got advised that we now need awning windows to all of the upstairs opening windows (developers request). As I have previously mentioned awning windows are not cheap these changes could be upwards of $2000 and we're already at max budget. I think its about time we win the lotto, hmm might just go buy a ticket now and while I'm at it will water my money tree :P

Hopefully when we get our finally PCV in the coming days it has better news than what were expecting. In the meantime we will be enjoying a lovely evening tomorrow night at Porter Davis's new World of Style show room watching a cooking demonstration by Guy Grossi.

Doubting our decision

Unfortunately with stress of building it causes you to doubt whether you have made the right decision. Due to the area that we're building in the valuation of the build did not come back that great meaning we will have to pay more LMI than what we wanted to. This combined with the knock back from the developer just made us question whether it was all worth it.

After much thought we decided it was as we love Eynesbury and really want to live there. With this in mind I spoke to the developer to try and make a case as to why we thought the facade should be allowed. The lady I spoke to did not give much guidance apart from that if we had a balcony it would be allowed.

We had advised Porter Davis that this was not an option and that they needed to come back to us with more suggestions & options as we would not be making the living area smaller as it would effect our valuation and it would be worse than what it currently is. It got to the point where I was giving suggestions and just getting told no we cannot do that - I then asked for a meeting with our BC so that we could get it all sorted face-to-face as over the phone/email did not seem to be getting anywhere.

I also continued to put pressure on the developer and turned their guidelines against them - they had informed us that parapet walls were not allowed yet no where in the guidelines did it state this, also in them it states that there should be many different facades in the township - yet telling people to have a balcony is making everyone have the same facade. I also provided the below picture to give an idea of our colour scheme as when I spoke to one of them over the phone she mentioned us having a stoned entrance - yet we don't.

While the developer still didn't allow our facade it seems that the pressure coming from me to both the developer & Porter Davis to help come to a resolution seems to have worked! I got to my meeting this afternoon & our BC had good news. They had just been on the phone to our developer and got a verbal approval of slight change to the facade. All that they did was remove the parapet wall on the left (to just having straight bricks) and raise the parapet walls on the porch to make it look like a balcony, adding some wooden panels to the front of the porch and it should be all good to go!

They need to do the final drawings and send them to get properly approved and we should be all good to go. Once I get them I will update with the new pretty facade! Sometimes we need things to not go smoothly to make you realise how much you truly want something.