so how did yours go if you dont mind me asking snappy. your fairly close to me so your probably the best chance ive got to get the info i would like.

i know. in the ideal world i would just like to do the electrical and ac and then just turn the key.

Bit of advice forya then for free...

If your doing tile, do sarking ( felt ) also !! The bloody light created in roof space from your downlighters attracts the bloody midges come dusk. You can get shades to go over the downlighters tho, but a tad expensive.

Fit weep hole guards to your weep holes, cost about 30 bucks from bunnings, stops bloody mice getting in your cavity

advice taken but it will be a tin roof for me. i enjoy the sound of rain on the roof especially when im in the hammock on the patio. i will be putting gutter gaurd in though. not really bothered about the rats or mice but the birds piss me off when you here them in the roof in the middle of the night.they sound a lot bigger at 3 in the morning.

ALl you need is live and neutral attached to the zincalume... works a treat, dangerous when wet tho !!

Mmmmm still ongoing but ours isn't a straight forward kind of house, it is timber framed on 1.2m off the ground on steel posts, with some block work, some concrete work, two separate buildings with a massive outdoor undercover area in between so it is hard to compare to what the bank gave us.

We went with the Bendigo bank in the end and could borrow 65% of the money, the man that comes out to value the work is way out of touch and even though we have currently spent $300K on it has valued the spend as half this. This in turn has caused us some problems getting the next payment to come through. The other thing is that list is based on a normal builder that has the facility of overdrafts and get the payment at the end of each section but as an owner builder you need to be thinking ahead all the time. A good example of this is that we are at the moment close to lock up but due to the design we have had to virtually finish the internal parts of the house yet because we are not up to lock we can't progress to the next stage. Now we have the materials there in place to get it up to lock up and at the moment I need cash to order the kitchens etc to be built yet we will now be delayed to fit the kitchens due to having to have to concentrate on the final lock up stage.

For suppliers you are laughing up in Cairns and if you want any good names the ones I can suggest is Dynamic Timbers for timber orders...great timber everything has been just top quality. Personally though if you know what you want and have the time I would go direct to some of the saw mills where all the timber merchants in Cairns get most of their timber. These happen to be actually down South in Gympie (there may be a few up North but these are the ones that have top quality timber) you could order your timber directly and organise yourself for a back load or transport up for a huge saving.

Things like your kitchen look at Proform Tops even though they are flat packed kitchens they are very well made - thick cupboards walls etc, they have all the laminates colour range and they will design your spaces to your dimensions. Very helpful and has cut down our bill by about a third.

Bathroom things I've gone to Reece Plumbing not because they are the cheapest but the range I wanted was exclusive to them. The other one to try out is TGT in Mareeba - these I have found to cut down the cost on a lot of building materials. One bit of advice is open an account with Mitre 10 as they will (or at least they do down here) send you a monthly bill and if you pay it within 30 days you get a discount (I think around 7% on average)

How much are you spending on blocks? As there is a firm in Silkwood that is supplying a lot of Cairns due to shortages costing around $1.90 per block.

Get quotes on everything for the bank to agree a loan as they are a pain in the behind for this but then take your time and shop around afterwards. I also found things like swimming pool equipment was half price if it was sent from NSW up to us than if we bought the same items from Cairns....that does depend on the type of equipment you are after.

Trusses - we got ours through a middle man here but they came from Garbutt MDTM Pty made them so you may be able to go direct and save yourself something there.

When it comes to windows watch what you buy if you are looking at louvres there are cheap versions around but opt for CDM ones if you can that are stronger and will last. Also shop around for louvre blades as the windows places will charge you a small fortune for them but I managed to get them down to $7.5 per Linea metre (timber ones) and event hough we have had to spend days sanding, sawing, varnishing the things we saved ourselves $5 per louvre blade which is what the local painter charges. Now we have around a 1000 blades so that is a pretty good saving!

The other thing is spend a bit more on the fixtures such as door handles and fans (although you would most likely know this one anyway) and ensure everything that is stainless steel is 316 stainless steel which won't corrode as quickly.

If you ever want to pop down and have a chat then please feel free as we are at the new house most weekends. We made sure that all the contractors know they are not to clean up as that is our job which saves us paying someone a small fortune for sweeping the decks so that is our weekend job!

cheers for the post snappy. sounds like a bit of a crib . a bit more than the average house me thinks. im looking at a pretty ordinary block home.