Negotiations Continue

We met with Rawson’s GM on Saturday and it was…underwhelming. No apology made (unfortunately they were that slick that I didn’t realise this til after the meeting) and when given details on where their issues lie and what I and others have found to be areas for improvement in their process, I was basically told “Well, that’s your opinion.” And finally the truth came out & they (finally) confirmed that our roof doesn’t meet guidelines and won’t be approved. SO, where does this leave us…we asked that they re-draw the façade with a roof that meets guidelines and to give us a reduced costing.  If we are satisfied with what they get back to us with, we will then meet with their draftsman to go through our plans room-by-room and tell them exactly what we want and the price we want it done for. IF they can meet this, and guarantee our tender price, then we will continue with them (which would mean paying the $7k for council submission).

Later that day we also met with Fairmont Homes. They have great reviews and their sales staff, as with all builders, were helpful and I have no doubt that they could provide us with a quality home. We’ve left them with our site plan and a spec for what we want from a home based on their existing design called Dominico 37. We also did the same with Cosmopolitan and their Ecco 35. We are definitely leaving our options open! Though at this stage, it is unlikely that we will build with GJ Gardner. They have been lovely to deal with but their homes are not really designed for our estate and their quote they gave us for a design based loosely on the Cosmo home we like is much too expensive.

I’ll be drafting up changes to Rawson’s Check Plans and Tender to include everything we can think of that we want for our home, so we can be prepared for the sit-down with the draftsman if/when we come to that.

On the home-front, we have been too busy with work to have packed up much of Mick’s unit and whilst we have had one quote for re-doing the bathroom, we need a second. Then we need to pick a tile and vanity and arrange for the work to actually get done. Then we need to have the kitchen re-tiled, some spot-paintwork done and the carpets replaced. Then we need to put the unit on the market, hire a storage bin and removalists etc etc…*sigh* still a long way to go yet. All of this is a blessing in a way because the money spent on re-doing the bathroom and re-tiling the kitchen will be well worth the increase in value to the unit and speed of sale, especially with insurance and strata pitching-in.

Block-update: we drove past yesterday and the rubbish from the building site next door is slowly growing on our land (if anyone wants some discarded bricks we have a small pile for you), so I can already see me donning the gloves and throwing it over our neighbours’ fence if they don’t clean it up soon. On a positive note, the red-hot pokers on our block are flowering, and let me tell you, if they can survive the conditions they’re in now, I want to keep them. They look great and are obviously very hardy! This reminds me, we have found a landscaper on the web that looks promising. We like their designs and they offer a full service at a reasonable price. When we are sure about our house design, we will arrange a meeting with them. I have a pretty good idea already on what we want; I just need some finer design ideas and professional muscle to do the more laborious tasks. Click here for a link to their webpage, and we will keep you posted on how we get on.

You know, I’ve never heard of anyone having a smooth time of building but this ordeal has been much more “epic” than we expected.