Welcome

This blog documents our journey in building our house in Blackburn South, Victoria. We are currently living in this 65 years old house and have decided to demolish it & to build a new one on the land.

We have always wanted to build with Porter Davies Homes since mid 2000, however they did not build where we are. One day I saw a Porter Davies Home being built in our area and we decided to revisit the idea of building with them. They confirmed that they are now building where we are but we have to pay $5,000 distance surcharge.

After doing research on their website, visited their display houses, we decided to build a Camberwell 29. It is a perfect fit for our land.

We put in $1,000 deposit on 1st November 2009 and site start is going to be June 2010. We have about 1.5m fall on our land, the sales person (Daniel) estimated site cost to be $15,000 however, I estimated the site cost to be around $25,000 based on what I read in forums & from a friend's experience.

Next step we did was to walk through the house with Daniel & decided on what changes we want to the house. The biggest single item we added to the design was the Alfresco. We also combined the mud room & the laundry into 1 room & added a sliding door between the hallway & the laundry/mud room.

Tender appointment on 5th Feb 2010. Major costs:-
Site cost is just over $24,000.
Oakland Facade $2,500.
Extra distance surcharge $5,000.
The ultimate in luxury promo $5,000.
Evaporative Cooling $5,500.
Floorboard $5,320.
Brickwork over garage door $1,425.
Paid 3% deposit on that day, can't back out now.

17th Feb 2010 - National Tiles appointment.
Quick & easy, we chose Banur Earth for our ensuite, bathroom, kitchen & laundry area with Mocha Wall Gloss horizontal stack for the ensuite.

24th Feb 2010 - Hopetoun Interiors
Chose Kurrajong as brick colour. Upgrade to category 4, costing less than we expected. Felicity, the colour consultant was very helpful. We both are not good when it comes to colour co-ordination, so we relied mostly on Felicity's suggestions.

Electrical Selection followed the colour appointment. It was pretty rushed & didn't have much time to think. Didn't get much help/suggestions from the consultant. Was disappointed that they don't have CFL downlight on offer, so we leave the batten lights for most of the lights & will change it to CFL downlights ourselves once the house is done. Added at least an additional double power point for each room. We live in old house & we have to use lotsa power boards for all the modern gadgets, so we decided to put on more power points for future necessities. Total $4,600 for electrical upgrade, half of what I expected prior to appointment, however we do need to install our own downlights after the house is built.

26th Feb 2010 - We have a contract.
Category 4 Brick (Kurrajong) is $1,898.
Off White Mortar $529.
Upgraded Kitchen benchtops to 40mm stone $1,050.
Feature Walls $396.
Alfresco $5,732.
We asked the CSC, Kellie, to find out the cost for insulation upgrade, R3.5 Batts to roof & R2.0 batts to external walls. Foundation Slab to Alfresco is also not included in the Alfresco upgrade :(