About Me

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EDIT - Now a 'work at the local school' mum a few days a week while juggling the job of parenting 3 teenagers! I am a SAHM who does work from home occasionally, dedicated to raising 3 Godly, independent, healthy children. Loving the home building process though it is not without challenges. I have fairly free reign over the creative aspect of the project...just not the financial side!

Sunday, December 23, 2012

One man's junk.....

.....is obviously another man's treasure! I posted on FB yesterday afternoon offering things from our house that will be taken with the demolition company in early January. Well, I was bombarded! In 24 hours, we have had curtains, blinds, security door, air conditioner and vanity taken with someone returning to take a gate & dismantle the carport. Oh and roof tiles might disappear if they somewhat match someone's roof! One guy wanted to take the windows if he could work out how to take them home with him (visiting family for Christmas)
Really glad that others can get something from our house rather than it all going to recycled waste. I felt a little like Santa!

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Gardens

My dear friend, Lucinda, and I took a stroll around the garden this afternoon to try & work out what can stay and what can go! The demolition company will lop whatever we want and we have permission from council to take down anything on our land. Pretty much we have decided to leave the palm tree in and 4-5 camellias for privacy along one boundary fence. Everything else can be lopped so that we can start from scratch with a more uniform look. Happy with that.....

Friday, December 21, 2012

Some more bank requirements needed

I received an email from my Mortgage Angel (sweet, eh?!) this afternoon to say that CBA required a further 2 documents and then they would release their Authority to Commence Construction. CBA need.....

1 )     Builders Contract of Works Insurance, showing:-
        Insurance amount equal to or in excess of the Building Contract Price.
        Name of property owner and / or the Building Company
        Construction site address or stating `Anywhere in Australia'.
        Expiry date of policy.

2 )    Builders Public Liability Insurance, showing:-
        Minimum $5 million.
        Expiry date of policy.
        Construction site address or stating `Anywhere in Australia'.




Now of course, the timing of this was not great. EBH were not contactable at 3:30pm this afternoon via phone or email so I can only suspect their well deserved break started before COB today! We will now have to wait until EBH are back on deck on January 7 to forward to the bank. At least we know, CBA will send the Construction advice to us as soon as they receive these documents.


Saturday, December 15, 2012

Santa brought me a present!

My lovely Santa bought me an early Christmas present today  - a new camera to take loads of house photos with! A camera shop had an unbeatable price on a Canon 650D so I am about to delve into the world of SLRs.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Site start appointment made

I received a call from Rania, our CSA, today to schedule our site start appointment. I was hoping for one before Christmas to finalise everything but the earliest time they had was Friday January 18. EBH, from my understanding, then have 21 days to start building or at least the contract period starts then. All the final plans & documents have now been ordered and will be checked over for us to sign on that date. We are still waiting on our loan documents to come through from our mortgage broker and be signed before the Authority to Commence Construction letter can be given by the bank.
Looking forward to demolition & the start of the build in 2013!

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Boring update

Nothing really exciting happening just yet but thought I would post whilst watching Grey's Anatomy.
Silly me mentioned to a few people this morning that I didn't have much to do today. Work is finished for the year, children at preschool or school, Christmas shopping under control, gym workout done. Well....from the time I got home just before 11am until school pickup time, I was on the phone bar a 10min break to eat salad.
Started off with the most frustrating call to Energy Australia to try to organise gas disconnection. Being the owner of the property I have no right to any information as to who supplies gas to the property (I am not the account holder, the tenants are!) I asked questions like how I was supposed to organise disconnection if I can't know who supplies it. The answer was 'I can't comment on that'. After nearly 2 hours on the phone, I have set up an account and I am moving into the property on December 24 AND I want the gas disconnected as soon as possible after that. OMGoodness, I cannot believe it is so hard. Tears were nearly flowing at one point.
Next call was to the temporary fencing company who I have emailed 3 times but never heard back from. Under normal circumstances, I would forget them but as this company is the one EBH use, I was getting a discount as there is no need for them to come & disassemble & reinstall between demolition and start of building. All sorted though there was a hiccup as they close down for Christmas on December 21 but the tenants don't move until December 23. Hopefully they can get the fencing installed before the demolition company start in January 7.
Miscellaneous calls to the mortgage broker to follow up on the loan documents, from my mum and a friend followed.
I have been having issue for the last 6 months with Telstra and internet drop outs. Countless hours & a fair bit of money has been spent to try & rectify the issue. Yesterday's call of hour duration left me very hopeful that the issue was finally fixed only to have more dropouts today. I needed to call AGAIN. This time, I asked for the same technician I had yesterday to try to shorten the call. He worked out that the modem I bought from Telstra 2 months ago in an effort to fix the problem is faulty. Please repackage & return it with a receipt to the place you bought it from. Hmmmm....this is where I wish I was more of a hoarder!! No box kept, no receipt kept. Oops!

Anyway, even though the day turned out to be much busier than I thought, it was productive with a few important tasks dealt with.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Unconditional approval

Music to my ears! The new house has been valued, our current house has been valued, we have attended to a special condition placed on the loan and it has been rubber stamped today. Still waiting on the paperwork to complete (loan offer) and to send to EBH but good as done.
From what I understand, we are waiting on a construction certificate and then our final construction drawings, colour documents and final variations. A site start appointment will herald the end of the admin stage and the start of the construction stage.
In the meantime, I am desperately trying to find out who our gas provider is??? I am on hold to every company I try. I am also attempting to get quotes from fencing companies to get temporary fencing for the very short phase of demolition.
Soon photoless posts will be a thing of the past....