Hopetoun Interiors

Last weekend we decided to visit the Home Show (on at Jeff's shed until the September 2), and also visit Hopetoun Interiors.

Hopetoun Interiors is a subsidiary of Porter Davis which assists with your colour and fittings selection and (for the Prestige range of homes) your electrical planning.

Hopetoun have recent moved to new premises at 32 Fennel Street, South Melbourne - and the facilities and people there are fantastic!

Even though our colour selection appointment isn't until the 6th of September, Porter Davis clients are encouraged to visit Hopetoun to get a feel for the range and the inclusions.

Everything is on display from brick samples, tile samples, basins, floor coverings, laminates, tapware.... you get the idea.

During the week it's strictly only for those people with colour selection appointments - on weekends you can roll up on Saturday or Sunday and one of the terrific people there will spend a half hour with you and show you the range of choice.

At the actual colour selection appointment you make the final decisions - and it's documented and put into your contract. If you choose non-standard items, they will be priced for you so you know exactly what you are up for.

The only negative comment we have about the new Hopetoun premises - the lighting there isn't great (perhaps it's us - we are not getting any younger!), and you'll spend quite a bit of time taking the samples across to the windows.

As far as the home show goes - we need a bigger budget! The big surprise was the cost of the fake grass - looks real, but it's priced at $80 - $90 per sq metre (laid). Ouch!

http://www.racvhomeshow.com.au/

It's nice to be able to walk through a home show and go straight past the things we are not interested in - cladding, windows, kitchen appliances and so on. Worth a look, and lots of great ideas.

They even had some landscapes set up inside which were just superb!!!

Tender Appointment

Woohoo! Tender Appointment today, and we are very happy campers.

Why? Because the Site Costs were under the estimate!

If you haven't been following this blog, then it won't seem like a big deal - in fact, it might seem kind of high. To those people, thanks for coming, and we hope you stay for the rest of the ride!

If you have been following the blog, you'll know that the site costs for the Hamilton 34 we were planning on building were in excess of $24k, which we initially swallowed. The day before we were due to sign the contract, PD found an error in the estimate - and wanted to charge an additional $10 - 15k. This killed the Hamilton for us.

Enough of the past - Today we were told the site costs for the Cremorne 41 came in at $12,166.

The difference comes about for the following reasons:

• The Cremorne 41 is a double storey home, with a smaller slab than the Hamilton. Smaller slab = less earthworks.
• The Cremorne 41 is over 3m shorter in length - remembering that we have an existing garage on the block, and a slope, the extra space means we don't need to have an expensive retaining wall.
• The Cremorne is narrower, meaning that we avoid the reach of neighbouring trees, eliminating the need for tree root barriers.

All in all, we are very happy as you can imagine. After the disappointment of the Hamilton, it's a great feeling to have a win.

As I like to include at least one picture with every blog entry, here's a scanned image of the site drawing. Click on it to see more detail.

The Tender Appointment wasn't without a glitch however. We though we were off to a really bad start when we were presented with a site drawing which had a 7.5 metre frontage - meaning that the excavation was under the existing garage.

It seems this came about because the site plan shows a neighbour's house with what looks like an 11 metre frontage, and another with about 5 metres - so in those cases a frontage in between is used. Only thing is, we specifically asked for a 5 metre frontage (and supplied a diagram at quotation time showing it), and the Hamilton we were going to build already had a 4 metre frontage.

The house on the site plan with the 11 metre frontage? That's the back of their house.... Needless to say, things were fixed, and we moved on!


Thanks to Sally for her patience as we went through our list of changes. I think she may have been somewhat surprised by our reaction when she told us about the site costs. it's great to deal with someone who really enjoys her job!

Colour selection should be pretty straight forward (famous last words) as we've been through it before. The bricks and roof tiles are a different brand, and we visited selection centres today and decided on those items. More info soon!

Married!

Hi All - Not at all related to home building, but I just wanted to announce that we are now married!

As this is the second time around for both of us, we decided to run away to Palm Cove (near Cairns) and get married on August 14th, 2007, without telling anyone!

We have many photos I won't bore you with - I've included a single picture below.

This time, I have a really good excuse for not updating the blog for a couple of weeks! More land and home building news soon!