Planning, Planning, Planning

Now that the PWC was checked off our list of things to do, we need to start getting organised for our holiday.

We have a 6 week trip to the USA planned.  The main reason for the trip is to visit D's family but also hopefully to get a little bit of relaxation and rest in... We'll see!

So onto the list writing, with two adults and to children to pack for there was definitely a long list- we are also trying to fit everything into just a couple of bags so that we can come back with plenty of shopping.

Not to mention making sure that we had car seats, car rental, travel insurance, transport to and from airports etc.  We are having three different stops- so we needed literally everything.  Bathers for Hawaii and winter coats and boots for snow in Chicago

In the meantime everything was going along smoothly with our land settlement.

We had also advised Boutique that we were heading away and that we would be looking at scheduling our colours and electrical appointment for February.

PWC Signing

Today we finally signed our PWC.

In fairness to our sales consultant and Boutique Homes we were quiet particular about what we wanted and hence the reason for taking our time signing.

The process went very smoothly, the sales consultant had already emailed us a copy to make sure it was correct- so the version I signed was exactly the same as what I had already seen.  He met 'D' and I at D's office so it was all very convenient.

We also wanted to be close to the settlement date for our land, just for a bit of piece of mind.

Our land is due to settle on the 22nd of November, we are looking forward to that milestone.

In the meantime we are getting ready for a big overseas holiday.......

Personalising the House

Now that we had chosen the house we needed to think about the personalisations we would need to make the house a home for us.

This is what we came up with:

• Double glazing to all window
• Refrigerative cooling
• Additional thermostat for heating and cooling to be placed upstairs
• Double doors to study (to be play room)
• Make alcove in hallway (opposite laundry) into coat cupboard
• Open up pantry to create a butlers pantry
• Wide kitchen window over bench top in lieu of splash back 
• Extend living area and alfresco by 1 metre
• Increase width of island bench by 0.5 metres
• Additional cabinets to rear of island bench
• Balastrading to stairs to be wrought iron
• Bamboo floors to ground floor (except laundry and powered room- tiles and study and lounge- carpet)
• Extend bench top in laundry to go over dryer space
• Extend rumpus room by 1 metre
• Add rain water shower head to master ensuite
• Create walk in linen next to bedroom 3
• Convert existing wardrobe in bedroom 3 to a walk in
• Increase ceiling hight and hence door/window heights
• Extend width of garage by 2 metres
• Add a colorbond roller to door to the rear of the garage
• 10,00 L water tank to be plumbed to toilets and laundry (as per land covanent)
• Exposed aggregate driveway
• Upgrade to grande facade

We also considered removing the bathroom to bedroom 4 but decided the credit back wasn't really worth it.

So as you can see from our list above we had a lot go over with our PWC but our sales consultant was very accommodating and helped us get to where we needed to be.

And the Winner is.....

Boutique Homes!!!

After visiting both displays a number of times we decided that the Montpellier 43 by Boutique Home is the way forward for us.

There are a number of reasons we chose the Montpellier.  Firstly, the layout seemed to work best for us.  Each time we walked into the house is felt right, we could see each room being used for a certain purpose.  The house would work beautifully on the land and our views would be maximised. We also liked the idea that we would be working with a smaller volume builder and figured the experience would be slightly more personal.

This is the Montpellier 43:

As displayed at Williams Landing.

Finding the Right House

Whilst we were looking for land and negotiating on land we were also looking at display houses.

We wanted to get an idea of what was possible within our budget and I also liked the idea of walking through a house rather than just looking at plans on paper and imagining the design in my head.

One of the things that concerned me was that our children were too young to have stairs in the house, but we also wanted a house the we could grow into.  We also had to remind ourselves that the children would be at least a year older by the time we would move into the house, so their capabilities would change.

We made a list of what we wanted in a home:

• 4 bedrooms
• At least two bathrooms, maybe three
• Separate toy room, with a door to close away the mess
• Study/office
• Good size master bedroom
• Open plan living/kitchen/dining area
• Large kitchen
• Lots of storage

We ended up with two designs that we liked.  The first was with Porter Davis.  The Marbella 42, with the master bedroom on the first floor.

Here are the plans:

With this house we liked layout and spacious feel of the house but were unsure of the living area.  We weren't sure about the dinning table being located the the middle of the room and not off the side.  The master bedroom also wasn't as big as we would like.

The second house we liked was with Boutique Homes.  The Montpellier 43.

Here are the plans:

The first thing that stood out with this house is the massive master bedroom, the whole front is windows and we would get amazing bay views.  The stairs were also great because they weren't one long staircase by the front door, there was a landing halfway up that was a full landing without there being actual turns in the staircase.  The kitchen was a generous size and worked well with the living and dinning area.  The only thing that we were't sure on was having so many bathrooms.