The waiting game

Since my last post I have been a little distracted, we took a week and half off and headed to Queensland for a family celebration.  I got to jump out of a plane for the second time and loved it!  Perfectly clear skies and landing on Kirra beach made for an unforgettable experience.   If it is on your bucket list, stop procrastinating, GO FOR IT, you’ll love it! 

Being a confirmed obsessive when it comes to planning for the build I couldn’t let the Queensland holiday slip past without it intruding somewhere …. So, I took the opportunity to look at a few display homes and see what you get for your money up there.  It made me think that I should be advertising for a Queensland builder to come and have a working holiday in Tasmania!   It seems $800 a square metre is pretty common up there.  I know you are thinking you can’t compare their “quoted” prices; the actual builds are much more.  To try and deal with that I got brochure prices and then I asked how much for the display home exactly as built (which was a very high spec level).  They are still cheap!  For example: For a 240 sq/m home the list price was $168,400 ($701.66 sq/m), and as built it was $290k ($1208 sq/m).  I know the “project home” is a totally different animal and having read lots of horror stories on http://forum.homeone.com.au/ I think I would be totally frustrated with how inflexible most project home builders are, but I can’t help being jealous of what you can get for your money up there!

On the progress front, there isn’t a lot to report.  We have had the first plan back from the designer and she has done a fantastic job.  We made some minor tweaks to add some more storage downstairs and refine a few other minor things.  We are trying to be patient but in reality I am pretty anxious about getting our planning through council, getting quotes and engineering done and then getting the actual development/build application in and approved!  It feels like it is going to be slow going for while with little tangible feeling of progress until we get through all that. 

Just to ensure that Ange’s head hurts, I’ve made a spread sheet of every fitting and personal choice item, room by room, category by category.  I’m up 328 items and I am under no illusions, it isn’t complete!  It includes a description of the item, dimensions, any special requirements, our selection (that column has lots of blanks!), the budget, the actual spend, quantity, which room, what category and sub category, supplier, web links, and which construction phase it will be required for.  Being totally obsessive (and ensure Ange’s head really hurts) I’ll probably turn it into a proper relational database soon and start adding more to it as we research and select each item.  If anyone thinks this might be useful for them I’m happy to share, let me know.

There are a few other things going on too but I’ve decided to keep you in suspense for now!