Which house?

The first step in finding the house we will build was to go through as many online plans as possible and decide which features we wanted.  Fortunately, we both ended up liking much the same thing.
House criteria:

• Open plan kitchen/living area looking onto the backyard
• Master bedroom NOT at the front of the house (preferably at the back)
• Internal entrance from garage to house
• Walk in pantry
• Kitchen with lots of storage and bench space
• Walk in robe in master bedroom (not really a requirement, but every plan seemed to have this anyway, and it would be nice)
• 3 bedroom plus study, with the study not too far away from the living areas
• A second separate lounge/living area, preferably at the front of the house, with potential for a good surround sound setup that is difficult in an open plan living areas
• Minimum house length to give us as big a backyard as possible.

We have a preference to build with Simonds, as we have a friend who works for them, and having that extra point of contact would give me a great deal of peace of mind.  However, unless the house design (and price) was right, we would keep our options open.  As it happens, Simonds ended up having the two designs we really liked.
Initially we were only looking for single storey houses due to pricing, and because we didn't know how much we would have to spend on purchasing land.  Early on in the search we found the Como and went to look at the display home.  I loved the space and the flow of the house design, and the kitchen was great (this was when we added the walk in pantry to our list of must-haves).  The only concern was how open the master bedroom was to the main living space.

Como display home (they built their office in the garage on the left)

Como kitchen...

... and pantry

Once we had found our land, and had some confidence that we might be successful at the auction, we started looking into two storey possibilities and found the Elwood.  We visited the Elwood display home at Point Cook last weekend, and are quite happy with the house layout, but found the kitchen a bit ... disappointing.  It's a little bit small, and the pantry wasn't really a walk in.  However there is another layout option they have available (not online, but it is in their house guide booklet).  This layout potentially solves our problem, but without a display home we'll need to try to imagine how the space will be.

Elwood display home

Anyway that's where we are at at the moment.  Como has a better kitchen, and is 50k cheaper, but the master bedroom is an issue.  The Elwood is probably our favourite if we can solve the kitchen problem, but will be pushing close to the limits of our budget.  It also has the advantage of being about 2 metres shorter and narrower, giving us more garden space.

Week 2: Money, money, money

Two weeks in already!  Going by how busy we've been, I can definitely see this project competely consuming my life for the next 12 months or so. 
Part of the reason I started this blog was to keep track of all the different decisions and ideas as we go, and keep myself focussed on what needs to be done next, and not spending all my time thinking about things that I don't need to worry about for months.  The problem is that the one big decision that is facing us at the moment - which house to build - all comes down to one great big question: how much?  And that means trying to figure out all the extra costs that will come into play when we eventually make those decisions 6 months down the track.  Which just has me going around in circles!

What We've Done:
Found a conveyancer to sort out settlement of the property
Paid deposit on property purchase
Finalised home loan from bank - signed mortgage and home loan documents
Met with P from Simonds to discuss first steps, and what deals they have

What We Need To Do Next:
Sign documents for conveyancer
Figure out ballpark figures of 'additional' costs
Find out if the bank will lend us the figure we have in mind
Visit display home for kitchen ideas
Get quotes for demolition/removal of existing house

And So It Begins...

Ideas are funny things.  How do ideas begin?  Is it like a bolt of inspirational lightning in the brain, or is it more like a mixture of various fairly untasty ingredients that, cooked for exactly the right time at exactly the right temperature, becomes a delicious chocolate mud cake (mmm, mud cake...)? 

You can often point to a particular moment in time and say 'that's when I had the idea', but if you really think about it, there's almost always some irritating problem that's been stewing away in the back of the brain for some time.  At least that's how it was for us.  There was definitely a moment when we decided to build a new house.  And before that there was a decision to move from our unit to a bigger block with a good sized backyard.  But before that there were four years of failed attempts at growing vegetables due to insufficient sunlight and an overabundance of starving possums. This prompted more and more 'creative' solutions, from semi successful aquaponics on the paving outside the backdoor, to discussions of a spiral staircase in the garage leading to rooftop raised vegie patches.

And so you could say that Operation Sweetcorn has been a long time coming.  But for the sake of this blog, it began last Saturday, May 14th, when we bought a house...