We have a slab......

Yes its true, we are now the proud owners of a huge slab of concrete (approx 80 cubic square meters of the stuff...) The slab was put down on Friday, the day after Emily (5) broke her collarbone at school. Poor kid, at home in some pain and her mum drags her to the block to see concrete trucks... to which she replies "mum, it hurts to walk, turn my head or breath really, can we go home now".

Here is a copy of the house plan and a photo of the slab. Its difficult to get a good picture of the slab as the block is on a slight rise from the road level. The photo is taken from the corner of the garage looking back towards bedroom 2 in the far corner. I will endevour to take a better photo, perhaps from the back of the block.

Awaiting site works to begin.

Well its March 2008 and we are so close to starting site works that we can almost smell the freshly turned soil and freshly laid concrete, except that we are experiencing a heat wave here in Adelaide and they wont do a slab in temps above 32 degrees (which have been forcasted for the next 9 days at least...) So for now we have to be content with the cut and fill they have done...

Engineers report

Hi there everyone. Received a call from our builder today... Seems our soil is classified as ED - extremely reactive with moisture changes. To cut a long story short, footing will cost $19,646.00 (a bit over budget...)

After much discussion between hubby and I, including whether or not to go ahead with the brick upgrade or kitchen upgrade, or any upgrade really, we have decided to stick to our original plans and get the upgrades. We figured that if we didnt, we would regret it in the end and end up with a house with impressive footings but the exterior and interior not what we wanted. So thanks again to our mortgage brokers (the best ones ever) we are going for it...

We have our selections appointment in a few weeks so will know the final bill then. We will keep you posted on our selections and stuff.

Flooring, at last...

Hi everyone,

We have finally picked flooring for our new home. After dragging the kids around numerous flooring places and endless bribes to be good, and finally resorting to threats of vegemite sandwiches for lunch (which they don't like...) we decided on slate flooring.

As we will have a large area with heaps of natural light, we reckon we can get away with the slightly darker floors. We also picked out the carpet. Its looks a little grey in the photo, but its more 'coffee' and grey.

Just to get you up to speed, we put a contract on a block of land in March this year in the 'Bayswood Estate' at Aldinga Beach SA, and have been waiting for development. It looked like a paddock when we bought it,

then looked like a pig pen for a few months thanks to the much needed rain,

and now looks like somewhere we want to live. We got curbs on the 13th September 2007 (which we vandalised quick smart) and are hoping for settlement at the end of the month.

Welcome to our blog spot

Hi all, and welcome to our blog spot. We hope to share our building experience, be it good or bad with you. A special big hello to our family all over Australia, including Alice Springs, Tasmania, Melbourne and Queensland.