Wow, I think my head is about to explode with information overload!!

We just got back home from our appointment with the Plantation sales consultant at Rochedale display village.  He was fantastic, very easy to talk to and to the point without any fluffing around.  One thing we both found to be very informative was that he took us both for a walk through one of the display homes and pointed out all the differences in inclusions between Plantation's standard "luxury" inclusions and the Breakthrough series inclusions.  Gotta say, not much difference at all, which is a huge weight off our minds.

There were a couple of things that we wanted included that simply could not be accommodated in the budget as they were a lot more expensive than we expected.  Extending the garage by 1m and fitting shelving was going to be close to 8k additional!! Changing to stained timber stairs instead of mdf painted/carpeted was another 3.5k and adding feature walls was another decent cost at around $250 per wall.  All those got axed off the list pretty much straight away, we didn't mind sticking with the alternatives and still like the look of the painted/carpeted staircase anyway (he had a pic to show us of one that had just been completed), and will get the feature walls painted after the handover to save cash instead.

We still managed to get a lot of the extras such as ducted air con added to our quote and still came in $25k under budget which was fantastic news.  Next up will be our first meeting with a finance broker early in the week to see where we sit financially.  Scary times are afoot!!

John & Kimmie

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.