Masterton Homes Is Ready For A Pegout Survey

Masterton Homes have called up and asked me to have the land mowed so they can order the Pegout Survey.

This is where the Surveyor rocks up at the block and pegs out the location of the house so the digger can move on-site and start the earthworks. They cannot start the earthworks until we have signed the contract and building agreement, which will happen in around a month or so.

The light is at the end of the tunnel - very dim, but we can see it...

See ya...
John & Tarin

Yass Valley Council Have APPROVED Our DA ! ! ! !

Yass Valley Council has Approved our Development Application.

John had to attend the Council Meeting last night and answer any questions the Councillors had. Then they had a vote and Approved the Development Application - Yeeehaaa.

Where to from here?
Next step is for Masterton Homes to get the ball rolling on the Contract Plans, Order the Pegout Survey, we sign the contract, then the building can start in approx. 6-8 weeks time.

So, it is all systems go now...

Take care,
John & Tarin

OUR PLANS ARE IN COUNCIL...yippee

Good news...

Got a call today from Wendy from Masterton Homes to tell me that our plans have been sent off to Yass Valley Council - we are soooo excited!

Around 3 pm I took another call from Bob from Masterton in Goulburn telling me the same.

Masterton are soooo on-the-ball! It is amazing how quickly they move stuff through.

I suppose the next step is to make the trip to Sydney to make some selections, this should be fun.

The Updated Plans Have Arrived...

We have received updated site plans and floor plans from Wendy (our Customer Service Manager).

The Drafting dudes have made a couple of changes and some updates to some of the site information, such as the land contours and the 'Cut and Fill' (where the site will be cut in and where the fill will be on the site) information.

All going well we should be in Council this week.

Also, the Commonwealth Bank got in touch with Wendy at the end of last week to get details of the house and the land to check whether they are happy to give us some $$$. We don't need all that much but we would like to borrow enough money for the landscaping, driveways, paths, etc.

That's it for now...

Two Things Arrived Today...

Tender C has arrived - total price has increased around $6000, which is not too bad, very good in fact! We are happy with the final price.

Also,
We got a personal letter from Jim Masterton today wishing us all the best with our new home and thanking us for the letter we sent to him.

Masterton Homes never fails to amaze us...

Masterton Head Office Called With An Update...

Hi All...

Wendy (our Customer Relations Manager) called me today and gave the following update:

• Revised Tender is now complete and will be emailed to Bob & Renaye (our new-found friends at Masterton in Goulburn) - hopefully we will get this emailed out tomorrow and we can see the updated price (nervous :-\ )
• The Plans are in the Drafting area now and will be for 3 days or so. This is where the team do the full working drawings, the overshadowing diagrams (required for 2-storey homes), plus other stuff that I cannot remember.
• Then the BASIX (Building Sustainability Index), which is energy rating stuff, followed by the ABSA (Association of Building Sustainability Assessors) assessment. These dudes ensure we are building an energy efficient home.
• Then the Council Planning Team swings into action whereby they get the entire package ready for Yass Valley Council. Once this is done we will be in Council awaiting approval - which takes approx. 6-8 weeks.

That's it for now...will keep you posted...

John & Tarin

Masterton Is Onto It - They Have Swung Into Action...

Today, I received a call from Wendy (Masterton Head Office). Wendy is now working with us and keeping us updated. I haven't met Wendy, but she sounds cool.

Wendy was ringing to give me an update on the plans and where we were up to.

They have received our plans from Goulburn, they are making some minor changes to the tender (at our request) and then in few weeks or so we should be off to council...

Can't wait until this happens, getting closer by the day.

We have logged onto Pathway as well (the Masteron package for customers to track the entire process of building a home) - it is an amazing tool, I have never seen anything like it. You can veiw it at http://www.mastertonhomes.com.au/ (take the Pathway demo link).

Take care all...
John n Taz

On Our Way To Yass Valley Council.

Yiiiiipppppeeeee

Last Friday we drove to see Bob and Renaye (Masterton Goulburn) and we signed the plans and all papers to be able to send our plans and paperwork off to Masterton's head office. So, now we are almost back to the point where Beechwood Homes shafted us.

Based on our calculations, in less than 3 months our beautiful new house should start - we are soooo excited :-). We also went looking at houses that built with the bricks we have chosen. Now that we have seen them we are really impressed and really love the colour of them.

John bought a new printer last week and we now have pics of the new house everywhere in our rental house, our lounge room wall has a wall full of pics of the display house - he cracks me up LOL...

Huggles to all...
The Browns

A New Chapter - with Masterton Homes...

Thanks to Jim Masterton (Masterton Homes) we are now going to build with them and Jim is really looking after us!!! Thanks Jim, and Bob, and Renaye...you see, when Beechwood Homes went bust, Jim Masterton put his hand out to us to help us and even refunded the money we had already lost through Beechwood Homes. Also, Masterton are waiving the Development Payment for us so we don't have to come up with another $4000.

AND an added bonus - this week we received our plans from Masterton Homes.

We are sooo in love with our new home to be :-) We think Masterton are pretty cool right now too LOL. They have taken us in with open arms and we are so grateful to them for being so quick and understanding with everything. What took Masterton to do in a month took Beechwood Homes around 6 mths - We are just so impressed with Bob & Renaye from Masterton Homes in Goulburn... So now on to the fun stuff - pics :-) hehehehe

(ABOVE) OK, this is a picture of what the front of our beautiful house is going to look like, except the rendering will be different. We will have bricks on the facade, and the areas that are sticking out (the downstairs lounge room window, the balcony area and the garage that is sticking out with the iron work) will all be rendered in a light coffee colour.

(BELOW) This is is the ground floor to our house.

...and here is a similar floorplan to the first floor of our house :-)

Now you have seen the house, we will move on to a few more visuals such as bricks and roof tiles :-)

(ABOVE) These are the tiles we have chosen, they are from CSR Roofing and the colour is Barramundi, its like a grey colour.

(ABOVE) This is our brick and its from PGH and it's called Poa from the Spinifex Range.

(BELOW) Photos taken on Sunday, 22nd June 2008. John went up to the land and they have done some stuff it looks like they have done a soil test (or it's a bloody deep snake hole or bush toilet (YUK ! !) hehehe :-D

Looks like we are well on our way again, we have to go and sign the papers this weekend in Goulburn and then it's off to council for around 8 weeks :-(

Keep an eye out for more updates and news!

BYE for now...

The Browns.

Beechwood Homes Has Gone Bankrupt ! ! ! !

We are sooo ready to pack this whole adventure in!

We woke to the phone ringing at 6am this morning. It was John's Dad ringing to let us know that Beechwood had gone Bankrupt. John and I looked at each other in total disbelief and then I bursted into tears.

If there is any luck involved, we were due to pay our $17,000 deposit but hadn't...phew! Still upset though...

So we have Land....We have a drawing....We have no BUILDER.

I will be back later with more info, too depressed now...

Oh here is a web link to the story in the daily telly
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23696445-5014099,00.html

Its Gotta Be Close Now...

OK, we heard from Yass Valley Council 2 weeks ago.

They were after some information on the driveway gradient and the drainage diagrams. So hopefully it will come out some time this week or next. Once that happens we can sign the papers, John will probably be going down to do that on his own, we will just have to wait and see.
Last night we met our next door neighbours which was really nice as only last week I has said to John it's really wierd that we have never seen any one else who has bought the blocks of land, and low and behold, they drive up.

We have chosen our colours now and as soon as I get batteries in the camera I will take some pics of the stuff we have chosen.

Stay tuned...

Today's The Day - SETTLEMENT DAY

Today we are scheduled to settle on the old house. Today is a milestone we have waited for for months...

Today is the START of the next phase of our life. After 2 pm we should have a call from our solictors telling us its all over. Yahhiess. Fingers crossed...

We have less than a week 'til our new house comes out of council as well so that is the next thing that needs to be done...

MOVING Time, MOVING to the Country...

Weeeelll we have come to the end of our 8 week Settlement period. This weekend we are starting to really move. We have found a two bedroom house (I dont know how 6 of us will live there but we will be comfy LOL).

The kids are off on school on holidays now so I reckon that I will just stay at the old house for most of it as the kids have thier mates in the street to play with and their bikes and stuff. I also finished up at work, it still hasn't hit me that I don't have a job anymore yet i'm gonna miss the gals in my team, they have become such a HUGE part of my life and I dont think I will ever get anything close to that again.

Well the Beechwood house plans are now at Neighbour Consultation and will be finished on the 29th, once that's done we should be done with Council YAHHHIIESS then we can go to the Beechwood head office and start to choose our stuff OMG I cant wait :-)

Holy Cow Council, Here We Come :-)

John came home last night to tell me that he spoke to Beechwood Homes. He said that Geoff said that all our stuff has been packaged and sent to council YIPPPPPEEEEEEEEEEEE. So we now have 8 weeks wait, BUT Geoff said that Yass Valley Council is taking a bit quicker than 8 weeks.

John was saying that with our luck it will take half of this time, then we will have to go and talk to the bank as our $$ are invested :-S. But thats OK...

I can't believe we are off and running after 6 mths of crap :-) it's all good now...

CELEBRATING - We Sold The House.....

Well its over! We have sold our house Yippppeeee ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Finally we have sold our house, the new owners had to go to Hong Kong to see the people at the bank about some letter or something who knows but it was a hell of a long 2 week wait. They have asked for a 8 week settlement which means we will be moving to yass by the 30th of april. John and i are sooooo relevied that its all over. we can now move on to building our new house.

Here is a picture of our house.. well the plans any how.

We have passed basiks wahhhhhhooooo we are so excited. we have to double glaze the windows in the study, rumpus and dining. and put saver light bulbs in. We also payed for it to go to council so we are off and running 8 weeks in there and then building can start.



well thats it for now :)

And Now Christmas Is Over.

We haven't written for a while as heaps of stuff has been happining. Christmas, New Year etc. We thought we had a buyer for the house just before Christmas but it seemed like Go Gecko just pulled that one out of a hat. Me and John are so pissed at that company that we have moved the house to Independant Real Estate and once again they have amazed us.

This weekend was the first open house for Independant and apprently we had 83 groups through the place 83 WOW we were getting excited over 9 or 10 with Go Gecko LOL and yes we have a buyer. Apprently she is over the moon with it and loves it. The feedback we got from the real estate agent was that that it was all positive and if this lot fall through its ok because we have others waiting on the list.

As for the new house, the drawings are going through now. John called Geoff our guy from Beechwood yesterday and asked him about it and he said they should be in by the 21st. we decided to go for a layout called the Ascot Sands and we have changed it. It will have 3 car garage as well as a cinema and an extra bedroom. The kitchen I have chosen is called a York style kitchen and its gonna look so groovie with the style of house :-D it also has 2 alfresco dining areas with sliding stacker doors out to them.

So if all goes well we should be out of the house in Canberra by the 2nd week of Feb and all the exciting stuff should start :-P

We Are STILL Here.

Well here I sit VERY down hearted.

My life is on standby again. NO bites NONE no one wants our house and i'm QUITE QUITE pissed off :-(

Each weekend I put my heart and soul into making the house beautiful in the hope that someone will fall in love with it, just as we have.

I want to start looking at bricks and tiles and carpet. All that CRAZY stuff.

Why why why is it so bloody hard THAT is the question of the day!

And Then There Were Markings ! !

We went and had a look at the block yesterday. Just to make sure it was there LOL, and low and behold as we walked around through the scrub, there were markings of the house footprint. The first real evidence that OUR NEW HOUSE is going to be on this land. Going by the markings there isn't going to be a lot of outside room to move, well, the house is 42 squares... but then again when we built this house that we are in right now, it was the same the back yard looked like nothing.

We also had open house and yesterday we had 8 groups through with a couple that are coming back to day. I JUST WANT IT OVER now :-( I hate the whole open house thing, why couldn't we just have one person come in and fall in love with it, and take it there and then?

I want to do all the fun stuff picking the bricks and colours and all of that stuff but this can't happen until some one takes this place.

Anyhow, until next time...

What's It Going To Be ? ?

Today we are suppose to hear from the builder about how much this is gonna cost. Verrry nervous...

OMG I hate selling houses, it takes forever and John and I are the sort of people that WANT THINGS now! I have to say, places around this area are taking around a month to sell. But I think after our last adventure with trying to sell the place (and we bombed out) I just have this fear that its gonna happen again. Hopefully not...

P.S Go Gecko is crap - NEVER waste your time with them! It's true, you get what you pay for...

The Land In Yass Is Now Ours (and we own it too)...

We finally exchanged on the land today.

That is soooo exciting we are definitely moving to the country now :-D

AND we own the land too...

Day 1

OK so today is open house number 1

I do have a great feeling about this, I reckon we are gonna get some sort of interest today.

We have had 600+ people view the house on AllHomes.com.au. So there has to be SOMEONE out there that wants our house :-D

Our House Is Now On The Market

Yippee, our house is now on the market -very exciting stuff, we have out first open house tomorrow.

I have a really, really good feeling about it! So cross fingers, Toes any thing you can cross for us :-D

As for the other house, we are still waiting on the land to exchange it hasnt happened yet :-(

We have received a new plan for the house which I will scan and put up over the weekend.

Have to go now,
Tarin & JB

Strike two!

Beechwood Homes have yet again knocked us back on a design that we like.

Choices choices choices :-( At least we aren't in a BIG rush to build something.

Today the guy came to take pics of our house so that it can be put on the market :-) and apparently he was quite impressed (of course, he is a real estate agent).

Anyhow, I gotta go and do shopping and then come back and sit down and try again to look for another design.

We bought our land

Yahhhooo we have done it we bought our block of land out in the country. It is 1039 sq metres so it's 1.5 times bigger than what we are on now. So now the fun starts, we are currently waiting on a call back from the builder to let us know if we can have the house we want on the block of land. Now we have to get the house up to scratch to sell it. I just hope that we have better luck this time, will probably have to ask my guiding angels to help!

Here are some pictures of our wonderful view:

Hubby has 2 work mates also moving in to the same street which is gonna be a challenge LOL but they are both great families and we are very lucky to have them to become our neighbours, one has bought across the road, the other at the end of the street.