View of land - PRE START

Here are the pictures of the land - now completed and now really ours. I really think the neighbour should do up his fences properly.... Our land is 1st house into the court, but we will "share" the road with neighbour the other street - on his side.

anyway, on our end, we have a lampost right outside our house, good thing is that it deters bad things from happening, or bad thing is that people might target our house! But the front bedroom curtains will need to be good ones to keep out the light at night!

Till 15th June, this will sit there peacefull till the fun begins!

BEAUT... Land title in our hands... for the weekend..

There it is..... our very own plot of dirt... we will need to hand this to the bank after the weeknd though.. but I didnt know the tediousness of going through it all just for this piece of paper! Trips to bank, cheques through express posts, phone calls and bank transfers later.... and today, a trip to the conveyancer to get this title. 4 days after land settlement, I must applaud our conveyancer ( Blue Bell Convayancers - they are GREAT!) whew... Step 1 done...

LAND IS OURS :)

Yipee Yieee, Our land has settled on Tues, 25th May and I got a call from the conveyancer to say Congrats - I can jump on that land now!

The title will be issued on Monday latest - 31st May and then its not ours anymore! I will need to hand this to the bank!!

Still, its good news, we would just make it for our site start..... *fingers crossed* that nothing else would go wrong; after rounds of running to the bank and getting paperwork sorted to everyone....

revival of a lost dream...

We're back in business... a little wiser of course!!

After the last blog, we decided to close shop on the Amberlea and build a single storey home... We spent the whole of last weekend looking at selected houses that we are after and came to fall in love with a house from Carslile Homes. The Atlantique 36 MK2 was beautful - it had a rumpus that you can look out to from the kitchen to keep on eye on the kids and an alfresco in the middle the house to break the same floor plan style to keep the house in one block.

We spoke with the sales staff and found out that if we got a site start in Aug- our $4,000 worth of extras would be free! That included caserstone benchtops in the kitchen as well as in the ensuite and toilets!!!! We need not pay extra for exhaust fans - they came with the house- for Simonds, we had too. The Spa bath that we had to pay extra from Simonds were given free from Carlisle Homes too - and the styles of the kitchen looked great -and we also need not pay if we go with them - whilst with Simonds, we had to pay for the extra top cabinents. It was great to know there are so many perks and I was ready to jump - we would save almost $50k in costs building single. This though, made us think if its worth it, in the end, Carlisle didnt provide the tiling for the alfresco area which we found strange.

Also, the model we liked did not have enough linen storage and we had to extend the house and place the extra storage in the lounge/ study which was really what we wanted.

We couldnt find a spot to put our pool table too and if we could do that in our currrent 17 square home, we couldnt do it in a 37 square home?


The main thing that was a big headache was that - the back was closed off - and the only way to get to the backyard was through the alfresco. And if we were to watch the kid play and run after him in the backyard - it will be really tough. We had 13 metres of backyard and we wanted to be able to access this easier. So after much discussion, and a very generous mom!! we decded to stick to the original plan and build with Simonds!

So guys, watch this space, like I said, we are back in business!


I must say that if I were to go single, I would really have loved the Atlantique! - take a look and you will find out why.
http://www.carlislehomes.com.au/affinityRange/atlantique.html

I AM ending this Blog - with sadness in my heart......

It is with an extremely heavy heart that I have to write this. After much discussion and consideration, David and I will walk away from this Amberlea dream. Believe me, it is awfully tough for me to let go of my cloak room and beautiful kitchen, but I think the mind and not he heart will prevail in this case. With this, I write my closing of this chapter and set our sights on something that’s single storey. Its back to the drawing board guys.

What I really find hard letting go is the fact that we’ve picked everything – from the colours to the powerpoints of every room; and could envision how this will look like. Sigh sigh sigh. Thats’ life, cant have what you want right...

The main factors that we weigh out not to have it are as follow:

1. Base price was not too hard to handle, and we thought we can max this out a little. The sales quote came out to $20k more which thought, hmm, a little steep, but we’ll make do. The crux came when we were presented with a $50k more as a final price – the sales quote wasn’t accurate at all. Most items were underpriced!

2. The bank came back on our land and gave us $10,000 less in lending money than expected – they prefer to undervalue the land and we paid more than that. That threw us out another $10,000 in cash. This was the final straw – if we don’t even have $10,000 of floating cash to but basic stuff for the house, its no point getting something that big.

3. Lower Quality of life - We do have the ability to pay this off; however, we would have absolutely no reserves. If we needed a new car for some reason, we could get one, but with the new house, we cannot. David says he’s done his time on a mortgage and I remember the early mortgage years; they weren’t comfortable, I couldn’t even go out for coffee or have heating for as long as I want. It wasn’t fun.

4. Loss of Income - With the new house, we would struggle when we are on a single income, and if I go on maternity leave for a year or if David has severe neck problems and cannot work for a while, we would be under a lot of stress.

5. Cleaning - In terms of cleaning a 45 squares home, it will be a lot for me to take on by myself if David has this neck problem still and cant help me out – and hasn’t been able to help me out in our current small home already, which is stressful to handle with me working full time and having a kid and 2 dogs in the house.

6. Education – Daniel would struggle to go to a private school and wanting the best for him, I think this $30,000 increase has given us the push to not go ahead with this project. Its only $30,000 but with a +6% increase with interest rates which will probably escalate in future, I prefer to have my son invested in quality education.

Pros:
1. Nice house with cloak room and ample storage
2. Big Kitchen – enough space to put all pots and pans / Big Pantry
3. Personal Space – Plenty!
4. Good Theatre room - away from all the bedrooms - single storey will not provide much of that.
5. No Balcony- I just love the wrought iron in Merinda agst the wooden rail!! Think it something special, haven't seen it anywhere before.

I must say it will not be more 1st choice of homes - and it will kinda sad to think I could have all that and didn’t. House hunting would be more of a chore and standards will be higher.........

Once we have settled on the 2nd best, I’ll post up another blog and of course – rename it. Hmmmm... wonder what i call it? 2nd choice home?