Thursday 18 April 2013

So, being that this is our first post on our first ever blog site I guess we should start off by introducing ourselves.  We are John & Kimmie, a recently married couple from Brisbane who decided to do things the hard way and go down the construction route for our first ever home.  We are currently living with Kimmie's parents while saving like crazy for our dream home.  Both of us came into this with absolutely zero knowledge of the construction industry and with family who had never built a home before.  Obviously we are suckers for punishment!

Our experience so far has been both incredibly rewarding and extremely stressful at times.  Luckily we are yet to have a significant blow out at each other, though I'm sure it is on the cards before the build is finished.  As of this date we are pretty much 90% set on the home design, namely the Madison 4 by Plantation Homes, part of their Breakthrough series.  We decided to go with Plantation after falling in love with their display homes and although we know that our house won't be anywhere near as impressive as those show homes, we will do our best to kit it out as nice as possible.

The hardest part we have had so far is that Plantation don't offer any of their Breakthrough series homes as a display home, so it's hard to judge exactly what the inclusions will be vs their standard homes.  Luckily we have an appointment over the coming week with a sales consultant who will go through the difference in inclusions etc with us.  As far as the block goes, we have fallen in love with a little estate at Logan Reserve (yes I know it's Logan, no we aren't bogans) called Stoneleigh Reserve, the biggest selling point for us was that there was only going to be a total of 500 homes in the estate and it's easily within walking distance of the local primary school for our future rugrats.  Plus the price was incredible!!

Everything is still a little bit of a pipe dream at the moment, but one that we think could be achievable.  We are meeting with some finance brokers and what not during our holidays in the next week, so hopefully that will give us a bit of an idea of our potential to make this dream come true!!

I've uploaded the floor plan below, though there are a few changes we will make to the standard design.


Here are a couple of the changes and additions we are wanting to make to the standard package
- Ducted air con
- Solar power 3.5kw
- Add door to study
- Remove door to ensuite toilet
- Recessed shelves to shower in ensuite
- Sliding  door to ensuite
- Extend garage by 1m to the side + add shelving
- Timber stained staircase
- Add driveway / turf / clothesline / letterbox
- Slate paving to alfresco
- Timber stacker doors to alfresco
- Rendered facade with bag & paint to sides and rear
- Taps in bathroom, ensuite and kitchen removed and replaced with L.E.D waterfall taps (supplied by us)
- Shower head removed from ensuite and replaced by rain fall shower head (supplied by us)

Think that's the lot, I'm sure we'll end up adding more and more to the list as we go!!

And finally, a pic of the facade we like.


3 comments:

  1. Fantastic, look forward to watching your build. Good Luck

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  2. Think long and hard about the things you NEED to do during a build rather than the things you WANT during a build. And allow for a shed somewhere. You're going to need one hahahahaha

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  3. We're just starting our first build journey too - its amazing how quickly you pick up the lingo... Here we are using words like 'Elevation' and talking about 'land titles'.. Two weeks ago we were like.. So we need to do what now? Look forward to watching your blog!

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