ACE

Hi All,
I have just noticed that In Vogue are advertising on this site and we are building our home with them. We signed with them in January and have now completed all of the product selections, construction changes, shire approval etc. We did a great deal of research before we signed with them and although the majority of the reports were good there were a couple that were not so good. Anyway so far they have been superb, very efficient, totally professional and really flexible on the design which is our own (not one of their standard designs). They have also been very reasonable with product upgrades and in some cases cheaper than available in store and online for the exact same make/model. They have now gone to construction which is very exciting but I realise that this is a phase of the building process where things can go horribly wrong. So for those of you who may be considering going down the same route I will chart our home construction progress. Hopefully you will find this helpful and of course if you have any questions at any stage just drop me a line and I will help if I can.

Cheers
ACE

ACE

OK, here goes!

Having signed off the final plans our home was officially handed over to the construction department on Friday 20th June.

Now ours was a long and winding road between first signing and construction. Part of which was due to the following:
A. We are really fussy and kept changing things, getting parts of the plans redrawn and adding things we had previously taken out. In Vogue were really good as they didn’t charge for any of the numerous changes we made after prestart, estimation and drafting.
B. We really struggled to get the finance which had previously been guaranteed by Big Sky :curse: and so had to apply to Bankwest. Big Sky apparently got cold feet as a result of the dead housing market. Whilst they agreed that we could easily service the loan based on our income they under valued our land and house building cost by around $300K yes three hundred thousand!!! where as Bankwest valued it at $50K more than the project is costing us.

The site was cleared on 25th June which was very exciting. We went there on the 24th and our land was covered in small shrubs, grass and a few melons and the next day it was completely clear.

The following day, 26th June, the land was levelled and compacted. They actually raised our already elevated block by about another 3 feet. The kids loved it, they spent the afternoon rolling about in the sand and running up and down the neat lines playing a "Ninja in the desert" fighting game (Very amusing).

We went to the block yesterday, 28th June, and noticed that a pile of long planks of wood and several milk crates had appeared. We figured that the planks are to be used for shuttering but not too sure what the crates are for, sitting on maybe?

That’s all for now, I will post some pictures soon.

ACE

CDM

Good luck with your build. Hope all works out well for you :-)

The one thing that did strike me with your post was the above comment that I've quoted. I would expect that a builder would be getting wholesale prices for their fixtures and fittings and I would 'hope' they would pass most (if not all) of those savings onto the client they're building for. I for one would want to know why I'm not getting consistent and substantial discounts on retail pricing for any upgrades. Just a thought.

- CDM

CDM

Where are ou building? How easy was it to get the land in a location you wanted?

We're hoping to get a plot of land and to build (have built) a house on it. How easy have you found the process overall?

Also, did you have to put a lot of money up front?

- CDM

ACE

Hi CDM,
Thank you for you kind wishes.

On the subject of builders passing on savings they usually charge you more for upgraded items (about 20%) and this is accepted as part of their profit margin. They tend to disallow owner supplied or finished work thereby ensuring that you go through them if you want to upgrade the spa or rangehood for example.

ACE

ACE

We are building in Dawesville south of Mandurah. We fell in love with Dawesville when we visited about 6 years ago but there wasn't much there at the time. Since then there has been a great deal of development including a shopping center at Miami which is about three minutes drive from our block, a doctors, dentist, opticians and several restaurants.

We searched for about six months and did a lot of leg work. As fate would have it, I met and became very good friends with an estate agent who had relocated from Sydney, a lovely block of land came onto her books and she told us about it before it was advertised. We saw it fell in love with it and offered the asking price. We had most of the money to buy the land but we kept some back and took out a small mortgage for the rest.


I found the process fairly easy but this mainly because I did heaps of research before we embarked on our big adventure and I designed a Spreadsheet detailing all our costs and rebates and I kept notes and files on everything. At our first meeting with the selection staff they couldn't believe how organised we were and asked if I had had our file compiled professionally. The staff (including our salesman who had already made the sale) have been available to us at anytime including weekend visits to our house to sort out various things, I can't praise them enough. The best bit of advice I can give you is to research everything, make notes, make it clear to them that you know what you are talking about and anything you are not happy with let them know and if they are a good company they will sort it out.

Tiawamutu

Great I don't know if you know. I have a feeling you may have even posted on it (if you have sorry I forgot ) but I did the same last year with our house build. I took pictures and posted every single thing that happened from start to end. You may want to take a quick look:

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=429618

Although, saying quick, It ended up being nearly 80 pages long, not far off 1000 posts/replies, and went on for over a year!

I will be following this, and all I can say is, be prepared for a roller coaster ride
Ace

...and of course, enjoy it

ACE

Hi Tiawamutu,

Thank you for your words of encouragement.

I loved your thread and followed it with great interest. I found it really interesting and helpful as many things that were raised in discussions helped me enormously with my research and preparation.

I feel as though I am prepared for the roller coaster ride ahead but I don't think you can ever truly know how you will react to things until you experience them first hand.

We have a very good friend who is a highly sought after supervisor for Riverstone. He lives just around the corner from our block and has offered to do regular site inspections for us which is great as I know my stuff when it comes to admin but I know nothing about the practical side of things.

I will upload some pictures of the block before it was cleared and will add some after clearance shots this evening.

Thanks for you support.

ACE

ACE

As promised some pics of the block before and after clearence.

ACE

More pics.

Tiawamutu

Looks like a big block. What size is it?

You will have gorgeous views of the coast when it's finished.

You said you had chosen the design of the house yourself. Do you have a picture of the floor plan? These things really interest me you know

ACE

Hi Tiawamutu,
It is a good sized block 890 sqm. We love it up there, it is a really pretty spot.
We are living in Port Bouvard at the moment which is really nice but the available blocks are small around 350 to about 500. Although the views are lovely you are mostly looking over roof tops to the ocean and the estuary and a lot of the existing views will be built out.

My hubby went up to the block yeaterday and met the ground work guys, the plumber and the ducted vac crew. It is reassuring that they managed to get coordinated and turn up on site together. i am really glad that he took a selection of progress pics as I was at work and gutted that i couldn't be there. I don't know if you had this with yours, but the first thing I thought was that it looked really small and I suddenly had this sinking feeling that we may have got the sizes wrong.

Anyway here are some groundwork pics.

I will post some floor plan pics when I have fixed my scanner.

ACE

These are the ones where the house layout looks really small. All of these pictures were taken yesterday, Thursday 3rd July.

Tiawamutu

Lol, I remember thinking exactly the same thing. It's surprising how small it looks at this stage. It will all come together though.

ACE

I was hoping you'd say that, I feel much better now.


Just got in from a night out with the girls from work so I haven't fixed my scanner yet, I have print screened and pasted emailed plans into Word instead.

The attached floor plans are not the final plans just a set of working drawings. The most significant changes are rounded bench tops in the upstairs kitchen, an outdoor shower next to bedroom 3 and the addition of a shower to the guest bathroom. The draftsman was adamant the they couldn't fit a shower in so I redesigned the bathroom myself. I then got our salesman to check it out and resubmitted plans to drafting.