19/01/2013 - Slabbed!

So we got the news this week that the slab was being poured, so of course, we took some more photos and it was so nice to actually see the size of our house for real.

Here's the usual front view.

And now some shots from around the perimeter. 

Looking down at the Garage/Laundry side.  The far side of the house is the main bedroom with the pipes for the en suite.

In this one, you can see the size of the living room.  The pipe in the left bottom corner is where the Laundry wall will be, in the middle are two pipes that are for the sink in the island of the kitchen.  Then in the left corner is the start of the Alfresco.  So that whole are is open living area.

Here's our nice big, north facing, Alfresco area.

This is from the back corner of the house - Amy's bedroom.

And a wider angle view of the side of the house (lucky for us the neighbours aren't building yet)

12/01/2013 - Piers in

So here is the first of our weekly photos for the year of the progress of the site - each of the front photos will be from the same location so that it can be tracked nicely.

And here are some photos showing some of the 30 piers that were sunk prior to 12/01/2013

It Begins!

So our land has titled.  I hold the "Confirmation of Change in Ownership" letter in my hand.

Our site started 3 days ago.  And already they've started leveling the land.  Unfortunately, due to the slope, they're going to have to put in 30 piers, and thanks to the 6-month late completion by the land developer, we've been charge a 'delay penalty'.  Not quite what you hope for, but at least things are moving.  Well, kind of moving... they're on hold until next year.  But it is great to see the fencing up around the land and to see the earth excavated where the garage and alfresco areas will be.

We signed off so many documents in the last week it's crazy.  But glad to see some people at Urban Edge are very, very thorough.  I'll be taking snapshots from the same spot for the next few months, so watch this space.

2 Weeks to go

So here we are, less than 2 weeks to signover of the land.

Urban Edge has done their soil sampling already, our conveyancer and bank are sorting out all the documents with us in a mad dash - how ironic that we've waiting 1.5 years for the land to be ready, and now it's a suddent rush to get everything sorted for December 4.

There was a hiccough of course... Nobody sent the bank updated copies of any of the contracts, and having told the bank back in July that the lot numbers had changed, and having so many delays in the land titling, our case was not updated and the staff forgot about the change...so our valuation was done on the NEW lot 11010...whereas ours is now 11035.  So there was another rush to get the valuers out there again to get it right, and to get all the contracts, etc. updated to the correct lot number.

Having never bought land+house in Australia before, we weren't really aware of the entire process that takes place, so didn't get a conveyancer early - why would you when the titling date has been pushed out month-by-month for 6 months?  Even the staff at our bank changed in that time.

Going to have a bit of a crazy few days getting all the documents sorted out.

Looking forward to actually getting the construction underway.

Getting closer

So with the estimated title date fast approaching (ETA end of September, but more likely sometime in October), I went out to see how things are looking.

Here's a video from the main road of Stage 11 (St Arnaud).

 

And here are two photos of where our house will be, and looking down the road towards the direction of the future school.

And time almost stops...

So 3 months to the day since we took those last photos, we went our again... hoping that much had developed.

Sadly, not much appears to have been done other than removal of rock piles.  I'm sure there's a number of changes underground that aren't visible, but it is disappointing to see our stage so far from completion.  The latest estimate sent our by Eynesbury is early September - 4 months late.  After seeing the state of affairs, I'm a bit concerned that they might not even make that date.  Below is a picture taken from the edge of Stage 9, looking up towards Stage 11A1.

 

Time moves on...

So we've been out to Eynesbury again to see what's happening.  Stage 10 is basically ready for the builders to get going so I'm sure the people in there are going to be looking forward to their houses going up.  Last estimate I saw on Eynesbury's site was that there were around 350 houses up already.  Stage 9 has the roads in and they're going well.

If you look back at the start of the blog, I posted a video clip of the area of Stage 11, well, here's a photo and video of how things look now.  Things are going slow due to the rocks it seems.