Mitchell Alexander has arrived

Well as I mentioned earlier in the blog we were expecting our first child. Well he finally arrived at 4:10pm on the 14 January 2008.

Nicole and I are both ecstatic at his arrival and understandably our focus on the house project has shifted somewhat. Fortunately we are at a point where we are just waiting for things to happen!

About the house

I thought I would just give you all a bit of an idea about the house that we are planning on building.

Here are a couple of 3D images of what the house might look like from the front:

and the back

Downstairs we have the double garage, study/guest room, kitchen, laundry, dining, family room, media room/lounge, large deck (corner stacker doors from indoor to outdoor), and pool.

Upstairs we have 3 medium sized bedrooms, 1 large master bedroom with balcony, large WIR, and ensuite, second bathroom, sitting area.

How we got where we are now

OK, seeing as I was a bit slow to start this blog and we have been going through the motions for a while now, I thought it would be prudent to draw up a timeline of how we got where we are today.

Oct 2005 - Returned from UK to our small house in Chapel Hill which we had bought 2 years earlier. Immediately after getting back we had grand plans for a major renovation/remodel of the house.

Dec 2005 - Dec 2006 - We met with numerous builders and architects and looked at numerous display homes and the prices for our ambitious reno kept going up. We eventually decided that the costs involved were just not justifiable seeing as there were still going to be compromises witht the eventual build. So we decided to have a look around at buying an already established house.

Jan 2007 - Mar 2007 - Spent this time visiting many open houses and found one house that we really liked. Unfortunately we were slightly too late as it was just under contract. Anyway, during this time Nicole was also trying to persuade me to think about building. I was interested but it seemed like a lot of hard work and a lot of unknowns. After spending a lot of time looking at houses we realised that we weren't going to be able to get exactly what we wanted.

Apr 2007 - It was about this time that things just fell into place. We found out Nicole was pregnant and found the block of land within a couple of weeks of each other. As soon as we saw the land we knew we wanted it. So contract was signed and all went through without a hitch.

May 2007 - June 2007 - Settles on block and after looking at display homes we decided that we didn't want to compromise, so we found an architect.

July 2007 - Oct 2007 - Bit of back and forth with architect to finalise the plans to get something we are really happy with. When we started we had a budget in mind, which the architect designed the house to meet. It was once we started to review the plans that we started to chage things which increased the cost. I guess this is the danger of starting with a blank sheet! It was also about this time that we realised that when you are building you never talk in days, it's always weeks.

Nov 2007 - Dec 2007 - Time to source a builder. To do this we got in contact with our architects again to find out builders they had used in the past. They gave us a list of a few and we had some of our own. We sent off the plans to them and eventually got quotes back from 3! I guess a lot of them were just not interested or are too busy. Anyway, one of them was Kaha Homes who we were most impressed with.

Jan 2008 - Have met with Darryn and Melissa of Kaha a couple of times with questions and have now signed a contract with them.

Now we just can't wait to get started.

We have a builder

Well it seems like a fairly momentous occasion! We have signed a contract with a builder to build our house. We have decided to go with a group called Kaha Homes. They are a small builder and we were really impressed with the way the conducted business. They are very approachable and seem to share our vision for the house that we want to build. Check out their website at www.kahahomes.com.au.

So why did we go with Kaha. We contacted a few builders to get quotes and start times. Kaha just seemed to be the best and most interested in what we are trying to achieve. They had some great ideas for the project and were willing to spend the time talking about what we want and listening to what we wanted. They also have the added advantage that they only build one house at a time. This means that they are 100% focused on our build which should hopefully avoid too many delays.

So, we have a start date for early Feb. This is conditional on a couple of things. The first is getting the pool plans and engineering drawn up and then getting the whole thing through council. They use a certifier, so hopefully this won't be too much of an issue. I'm sure we will find out though.

It just finally feels good to know that we are starting to move forward again!

Choosing the house design

Well, now comes the exciting part. Time to decide what we want in this house.

This is somewhere we want to be able to spend the next 10-20 years together in. This means we want it to be perfect from the start. We had a look at a number of display homes and really liked one of the Adenbrook homes (can't remember which one). we had them visit the block to make sure the house would fit and we were pretty close to deciding on one. Then we started to add on all the extras to the house that we wanted and the price started to creep up. We eventually realised that if we went in this direction then we would always feel that we have compromised and not got the house that we really wanted.

That's why we decided to go with an architect. They came up with a great initial comcept that was about 85% of what we wanted. After a few changes and a bit of back and forth with the architect we got the plans that we are really happy with. I'm not sure if I can upload a copy of them seeing as they are copyrighted, but will see.

Anyway, that was between July to October. Who would have thought it would take so long. We started to realise that when building a house you never talk in days, you always talk in weeks! At least we got plans that we are really happy with. Now comes the tricky bit of finding a builder to help us realise our dream (without it costing a fortune!).

Our Block of land

Well as mentioned before we found this block of land by chance. Nicole came across it while doing a realestate search on the web and they were doing an 'open house' for the land. Basically we were allowed to view the block. As soon as we saw it we realised that it was just what we wanted.

The block is about 1400sqm with a creek running through the middle of the block. This means on one side of the creek we have a nice flat area to build on and on the other side we have a great area for kids to play. A lot of the block is conservation area which means that there will never be anything built there and we have complete privacy.It is in a private estate with only 4 other houses there currently and one other block on land to be sold.

Here are some pics:

Time to get started

OK, I have been a lurker for a while on the HomeOne Forums and have seen the good work that everyone has been doing there with their blogs so thought I might as well give it a go.

So the deal with us is that we purchased a block of land in Chapel Hill, Brisbane back in June 2007. It was a block of land we came across by chance, but immediately knew we wanted to live there. We actually already lived in the area and had done for a number of years. More about the block later.....

Nicole has always wanted to build and I have been somewhat resistant to the idea in the past. But after looking around for a number of months at houses trying to find one that we liked and wouldn't have to make changes to my way of thinking quickly changed. At least now we have the opportunity to create somewhere to live that we will be happy in for the next 10-20 years.

Just to add an extra degree of difficulty to the whole project at about the same time we found the block we found out Nicole was pregnant! Nothing like a challenge.

Hopefully we will be able to keep this blog up to date on a reasonably frequent basis, but I am notoriously slack when trying to do things like this. Anyway, here's hoping.