We have a brickie

The construction manager met us on site yesterday, to walk through all our questions. He was about 50 minutes late, and apologised about 5 times, which was nice. We probably spent about 30 minutes all up. We will be getting the family room windows moved as per display which is great, and he told us how and when other little things will be fixed up. Better news still, the bricklayer has been assigned and is starting tomorrow (now today).

So we drove past today, no bricklayer, but we did have sand and cement delivered. So its looking good for a start early next week.

Our previous site supervisor was "unfortunately let go". We should have a new one starting in a few weeks. We had a chat about a few other things, out of interest they are building at the new Kellyville Homeworld, but will be one of the last ones in, they want to have a look at the opposition first.

Today we also went back to De Lorenzo's to decide on the balcony and front porch tiles. We drove past 3 houses on the way, with the same BlackHeath (Boral) bricks to see what colours they went for. In De Lorenzo's we found one we liked, but they didnt have a bigger sample. So they are getting one ordered in for us to take home and have a look at.

No site supervisor

We received a phone call from the construction manager at head office, our site supervisor has "moved on". It explains why our phone calls to our site supervisor have gone unanswered, and why he has been hestitant to meet us. It could be a few weeks until we get a replacement, so in the mean time we have the construction manager looking after us. Fingers crossed things dont stall for the next few weeks.

Our bricks have been delivered, water and gas has been connected, and the landscapers have planted trees in the street. Progress has been good for the past few weeks, but now it looks like we have to wait for a bricklayer. Noone has been assigned to us yet, apparently there is a shortage of bricklayers at the moment.

We are hoping to meet the construction manager on site tomorrow to go through our list of issues and questions.

Frame completed and windows are in

The frame has been completed, the roof was finished off yesterday. And to our plesant surprise, the windows and sliding doors are in as well. Looking good, it was only a quick drive by today, we'll go out on the weekend and have a good look.

One very obvious problem identified between the main bedroom and ensuite windows. The front main bedroom window was frosted glass, the ensuite was clear glass. Very funny.

On a disappointing note, our site supervisor was meant to contact us yesterday in response to some questions, yesterday and today have passed and still no phone call. We are really keen to move the family room window positions, we'll give him tomorrow to get back to us, then we'll start chasing again.

It's raining

It has not stopped raining today. We travelled out to the display home at The Ponds, to measure the position of the 2 windows in the family room. And to our suspicions, the windows were 450mm from the corner of the room, but our plans (which are suppose to be the same as the display home) were 230mm from the corner. The guys at the display home could not explain this. So we have asked our site supervisor what we need to do to change this, we want our windows positioned as per display.

Next we dropped by the house to see the progress from yesterday and the 2nd floor is done, with only the roof to go. Hopefully we get a dry day tomorrow.

Then at 4pm in the afternoon, to our surprise we receive an email from head office confirming the completion of our frame. So I got straight onto the phone and eventually spoke to a bloke in the construction department. I said that our frame was not finish. I got the explanation that it was scheduled to finish today, so it was submitted into their system (which triggers the invoice), but obviously because of the rain it won't be finish until tomorrow. So I asked if we will get extra time to pay the invoice? The response was something along the lines of "yeah you dont have to worry about that, I'll make a note".

Slab completed

The concrete was poured early Monday morning (26th July - Traceys birthday). At lunch, the concreters were buffing the surface just over where the media room will be.

We dropped by for a closer inspection yesterday afternoon (Saturday 31st). Some thoughts:

* It was nice feeling, walking on the slab that will become home.

* The edges were very rough, chipped in many places. Looking at next doors slab, they also have an element of chipping, but just didnt seem to be as bad. Who knows if this really matters in the end or not?

* Where the slab drops off from garage to laundry, it looks as though someone has had a go with it with a pic axe. Definitely something to ask the site supervisor about. Not a great photo, I will try and get a better one later. The puddles of water would also suggest the slab is not level.  

* Some concrete has been laid for where the air conditioning unit will sit. This was a nice surprise.

* We knew the alfresco wasnt going to be apart of the slab (it will be a stenciled concrete later). But this is not something we really knew too much about when the contract was signed. Seeing it now, we would have liked for it to be part of the slab. Definitely something to discuss in your plan and design phase.

* Looking at our neighbours, we can see where the sewer line is, it leaves no room for a pool unfortunately.

Keeping a close eye on progress feels like Im learning how to build a house. As we progress, Im looking up Google and learning lots. Who knows, I might even put this into practice one day in the future (kids cubby house, a man shed, who knows haha).

My guess is the lower edging is where the bricks will start to be laid. I'm curious to understand about the flashing and weep holes, on the high side the slab finishes at the same height as the land, but there is currently an 80cm gutter (full of water at present from the rain). I would like to fill it all in with dirt, but I'm not sure how high I can go until I see where the flashing and weep holes finish up.

Good progress this week, all is done ready for the pouring of the concrete slab on Monday. We did a few drive bys this week, the concrete piers were completed by Tuesday, plumbing Wednesday, and delivery and installation of the waffle pods Thursday and Friday. The guys on-site confirmed the concrete would be poured on Monday.

Front view, garage in front, porch, study, home theatre to the right.

Looking across the step down that divides ground floor into 2 levels

 

Back view with alfresco in front (which won't be part of the slab).

 

Another from view overlooking the entrance, study and home theatre

Finally.... we have a start.

Tuesday 13th July - drove by and still nothing had started. This was 8 days after the supposed: "will start in a week". So I got on the phone again, but they couldn't provide me an answer because everyone was in training. Later in the afternoon, I received a call back with the same old explanations. One of the points made was the time to complete orders can vary depending on the complexity of the order. I asked specifically if there was any issue causing delay with our orders with the response something along this lines of: "I'm not sure, it's done in the ordering department". I don't know why I bother.

5 minutes later, I received a call from our site supervisor. He confirmed he would be on-site on Friday for a start. He seemed like a decent bloke and was happy for us to give him a call anytime. From this point on, we hope we don't have to call head office again. They can improve alot!


Friday 16th July - 4 weeks to the day since the benching was completed, and we have lift-off. A couple of guys were measuring and hammering in the wooden frame.


Saturday 17th July - We dropped past this morning with the family. We had 2 guys with their kids spray painting markers for the pier holes. The kids were doing the spraying (with guidance) which was a little un-settling. But a least dad was concentrating on the plans. They confirmed that the piers were going in on Monday.


It gives us our first sight of how the house will sit on the block. The backyard is to our expectations, but the front of the house looks alot closer to the street then we thought it would. Can't wait to see how high the slab finishes up to see the gradient of our driveway. At the moment it looks short and steep. We can also imagine sitting in the alfresco on a nice winters day with the sun shining in.

An interesting development, our next door neighbours (the site in the background of these pictures) are building with Claredon. In one day, they had their benching, slab frame and pier holes drilled and concreted. While we have been teased for 6 weeks with little progress, our neighbours are in front of us after 1 day.


2 doors up we have a single storey Eden Brae home, which started with their benching and within 5 working days had their concrete slab poured. 2 examples of what can happen in little time.

22 days since benching - still no progress

Yep, 22 calendar days since benching with no further progress. They will have to re-do the fill that has eroded away. You can probably tell, we are getting very frustrated. We just want to see a start! The homes around us are all progressing nicely, with 2 concrete slabs completed last week (on properties benched after ours).

A 2nd email was sent to Wisdom on Tuesday, at least this time we got a response:
"Please be advised that the estimating have 20 working days in which to place all the orders for your house. The benching of the property is generally done in the first 2 weeks & then once the orders are finished your Supervisor is given the file & will start on site. I believe we will be on site in 1 weeks time as per the estimating manager.".

It has been 8 weeks since our plans were approved at council. So why does it take another 3 weeks to submit orders, and another 5 for the orders to be completed?

A sign of hope, the Wisdom Home opposite had 2 blokes on site today hammering in the frame for the slab. This site also has seen no progress for 3 weeks, so it was good to finally see workers on a Wisdom site.

We will be very disappointed if we dont see a start in the upcoming week.

15 days since benching

It's now been 15 days since the site was benched and there has been no signs of further progress (very disappointing). The only thing to change is the graffiti tag on the portaloo. The weather has been great, so there really are no excuses. We don't know what they are waiting for?

What's worse, an email we sent on Tuesday to administration@wisdomhomes.com.au, has not been responded to. It was simply an email asking for a status for when things would kick off. How hard is it for the head office to check into a file and respond back? We get better service from BIGW on a $50 sale!!!

A Huxley home and a Platinum home in the street are moving along nicely (the Huxley looks like they are ready for the pouring of the concrete slab on Monday). Us, and another Wisdom Home in the street have both not moved for over a fortnight.

Our guess is either they have over-committed on jobs and cannot keep up with the demand. Or they took too long to get the orders out.

Rain is forecast for Tuesday, so who knows when we will get a start?

Another week down

We now have a perimeter fence, that must have taken them all of about an hour to put in place. Apparently you need to allocate a week for this, because nothing else has happened. 
Lets hope for some movement next week.

Benching

There was activity in our street Wednesday, we had trucks and tractors lining our street. It was lunch, and the guys had just finished benching another Wisdom home across the road, and at the time had the tractors parked next to our block while conducting some surveying. So I drove past Thursday lunchtime to check out the results, and nothing!!! Not even anyone around. It left us wondering why they didn't do both on the same day?


So we checked again on Friday lunch and they were back, this time in full swing on our block. We dropped in this morning (Saturday) to take some pictures of the end result:

Front view, you would think the block is flat from this view, not so!

Here we have the step down. The top level is benched at 19.50, the bottom level benched at 19.15. This is looking towards the front low side (where the cut is meant to be 0.11 metres). It looks alot more than this, especially the temporary vehicle access. We hope this is far from what the actual driveway will be (the garage floor will finish at 19.80, with the front street at 19.88, so we are expecting a relatively flat driveway.

Looking across to the front high side corner, the natural height of the land measures 20.80. So with the benching at 19.50, we have a 1.3 metre cut which falls away to about a 0.5 metre cut left of picture.We'll need a retaining wall here, but hopefully not 1.3 metres high once the slab and landscaping is done. I'm wondering if the toilet will survive some wandering teenage kids tonight haha! 

This is the back right 0.55 metre fill, looking back towards the front left. The back already falls away to the drain, the fill makes the fall even greater. So we are already thinking about our landscaping options here.

In the background of this picture is another Wisdom home under construction. This site was benched Wednesday and this morning (3 days later) they were drilling the pier holes. Pending weather, there is no reason why ours won't be done next week?

The loo has arrived

Our block sits up on a hill, which can be seen from a road we often travel. And yesterday we spotted objects! A quick u-turn into the estate identified the portaloo had arrived, Wisdom Homes signage, and we think the sediment control fence (in this corner, the land will be filled by 550mm).

We are 6 days (weekdays) into the communicated 5-10 working days for the benching to occur, but last week was virtually a write-off with heavy rain, so we are expecting a slight delay. Fingers crossed for next week after the long weekend.

We have pegs

The first sign of progress (how exicting), 4 red pegs. We took these photos on Saturday, apparently they were done on Monday. The front 2 are marked "3M TO INT (PORCH)". The back 2 are marked "3M TO WALL" which is referring to the retaining wall at the perimeter of our block. Not sure what the go is with 3 metres, on our plans it seems to fall in line with the sediment control fence at the back, and the temporary security fence at the front.

The story so far

Well, we are a little late in starting this blog, with building about to start. The site was pegged last week (apparently, we are about to head out today for a look), with the benching to be done in the next 5-10 working days. It's very exciting to be starting. Let us provide you with the details of our journey to date, it feels like it has been a long one already.

Build or not to build?
We are a family of 4, with 2 boys aged 4 and 2. We lived in a small 3 bedroom house, but found space was becoming a problem. We browsed for established homes, but just couldnt find the right place for us. For the price, there was always something not quite right, either the location or something that needed changing. At the same time, we walked through 100's of display homes, and began a dream of building our own place.

It was the Wisdom Impression 38 MkII on display at The Ponds that we loved over all others (with Eden Brae and Metricon close behind).

We liked:
* The study and home theatre (in place of the more traditional formal lounge and dining that rarely gets used).
* The open entertaining areas (leisure, family, kitchen, alfresco).
* The colours, carpet and tiles.
* Standard inclusions over other builders.

There were only a few minor dislikes, which we will get into later.

We had not heard of Wisdom before, and wanted to know more about them. We did some research online, thanks to others who have blogged with their experiences. But it wasn't until we drove past a house that was just completed, and the owner was out the front doing some work, so we stopped and chatted for a while. It was the 3rd time he had built and it was his best building experience. He had nothing but compliments, with only some minor issues along the way. That was the moment that gave us the confidence to proceed with Wisdom.

The land:
We had been circling a new estate for some time, and quickly moved to secure one of the last blocks in the current release. It was effectively off the plan (long grass and no roads), we secured it on the 11th October 2009, knowing it wasnt to be registered until April 2010. This gave us the time to sell up and move in with the parents. Over the months we watched the landscape transform into this (our block).

First unexpected cost:
When we placed the original holding deposit down on the land, we went straight over to the display centre with a draft contour report. At a glance, they pretty much said we would be up for an additional 20K, for additional earth works (cut and fill) and structural additions to the home. The block sloped by a total of 2 metres from front/right to back/left, so it was never something we thought would cost so much extra (naive maybe). So for any first timers reading this, we would recommend you get your builder to give you a rough estimate of additional site costs (if you can, before you commit on the land), its definitely something you need to factor into your budget.

Tender process:
We added quite a few extras. Without fail, the lifestyle sale and the kitchen package are must haves. The rest went on ducted air, doors (upgraded internals, extra stacker, cavity doors), electrical additions (security reed switches, down lights, additional tv and power points) and the biggest surprise to us was the kitchen (all overhead cupboards & microwave shelf were extra, even with the kitchen package... who would have thought? Although I see they now include the overheads in the new lifestyle package).

We went with the Advanti facade (extra). Not for the views as we are on the low side of the street. But it is a cul-de-sac, hence it will be good to watchover the kids on their bikes with a coffee, paper and the morning sun in future years.

After tossing up various cut and fill options, we settled on a 700mm cut front right and a 340mm step-down opening out to the dining/family room, which left a 550mm fill back left. It took a couple of goes for the guys to draw it up, but we got there in the end.


The only other structural changes made was within the ensuite, deleting the column and deleting the study nook in the upper lounge giving a little more space in the ensuite. We moved some air conditioning ducts around to give more space in the built in robes.


Probably the only thing we struggled with was the kitchen pantry. I'm sure everyone who has seen the display home would agree its a shocker. We looked at several options, but in the end through indecision, we left it as standard. We will probably regret not coming up with something, we have deleted the wire shelving and will do the shelves ourselves when we move in.

The tender process was a little frustrating going back and forward several times with constant mistakes. One one occasion our requested changes were missing, while things we never asked for suddenly appeared. You do need to double check everything!


Bricks
The standard range of bricks are good if you are planning to render them. The bricks you will end up choosing will be an upgrade. This was no surprise, as we had budgetted for this up front. We probably changed our minds on the bricks about 5 times, in the end we went with Blackheath from Boral (picking up a sample on the way to the colour appointment). They were an "A" range upgrade (1st upgrade level of 4), so well within our budget. Get a list of houses from the brick place, seeing the brick built is the only way. Watch out for the off-white mortar which is extra.


Colours
The colour appointment went well, with the colour & design manager providing good guidance. Taking our ideas and tweaking them, largely reassuring what would and wouldn't work. After the appointment, we still looked around the streets for inspiration, but pretty much stuck to the colours selected in the appointment.


Council plans and construction certificate
Plans were lodged to council 21/4 and approved 13/5. We monitored the progress on the councils DA website everyday and contacted Wisdom as soon as it was approved to find out what was next. We can still see others in the street that have been waiting for over 6 weeks already, so it was fantastic to be out in 3!!


We then went through a very frustrating period with Wisdom head office.
(1) We received an unexpected phone call from the kitchen place requesting an appointment. We were not advised that this would be part of the process, as far as we were concerned the kitchen was done as per the tender. In the end we didnt need the appointment (after some run around), we only had to sign off on the kitchen layout.

(2) Next we were sent an electrical plan, which specific instructions to mark anything new in red, and any changes in black. The problem was, it wasnt a standard plan nor ours, so we didnt know where we were up to, and started to worry that they had missed things from our tender. We found it very odd that this was not done over an appointment, and when we finally questioned this (because another friend was building and just completed his electrical appointment), they said they do do appointments if the customer asks. By this stage, we had it all done ourselves.

(3) Next we were told we need to build a retaining wall before they commence with the slab. We always knew we needed one, but we had visions of doing it once the house was finished. So we started looking at our options, and about a week later we questioned it. Turns out it wasnt a council requirement, the construction manager at Wisdom ordered it. Upon questioning, it turned out to be fine to leave it until after construction. While it might be easier to put the wall in now, we dont really want to deal with any of the landscaping until we move in. We learnt that the only issue is we are liable for any damage to neighbour fencing/property, which at the moment is a vacant block of land with no plans in at council as yet.


(4) Next we asked about stamped concrete to the alfresco (instead of stenciled). It took 2 weeks and follow up to get a response that due to the slope on the driveway, it wasnt an option. We never asked about the driveway, so asked again about the alfresco. The response was something along the lines of 'no, not an option' via email.


(5) Next we were advised that we need to pay another $400 for stenciled concrete to the alfresco area. From day 1, we observed the area was 23.8m square, but the allowance was 15m square. We questioned this, and while promised at the display centre that the concreted area would cover the entire area, we asked for it to be written into the tender. They wouldnt do this, (can't remember the reason why), we didnt think anything more of it until we were asked to pay more! The explanation was that 15m is standard for all their homes, but the Impression 38 is bigger than standard. This was very mis-leading!!! In the end we had no option but to accept the additional cost.


(6) Next we received a final variation with 3 changes to sign with no explanation. After a phone call, we learnt we were up for an additional $400 for frosted windows on upstairs bathrooms (that were missed from council approved plans). You would think these days that frosted glass in bathrooms is a standard council requirement and should be in the standard inclusions of the house builder. We also had 2 windows with different codes (note only). One of these windows was for the kitchen, which we deleted from day 1. After discussion, turned out it was actually for the walk in robe in the main bedroom. The window codes in the tender were different to the ones submitted to council. We had to change the windows in the tender to the ones that had been approved. In the end, no big deal, one window is slightly bigger, the other slightly smaller.


(7) Next we learnt that they had mis-counted the reed switches (only because we added upstairs as well and came back with an unusual cost). It would help if they put the units and unit price into the tender so the customer has the ability to check it (which they promise they do now).


So as you can see, a very frustrating period. Maybe this is something every customer goes through at wrap up (no matter which builder you are with). We can say that overall, they have always made themselves available via phone and email and have always been responsive. But only when you as the customer initiates the contact. Otherwise they come across as being happy to be left alone with minimal contact.


So that is the story so far. Fingers cross for smooth sailing and good weather. We'll get some photos up as soon as we see movement.

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