CONTRACT GOODNESS!!!

Since writing the last post Mike and I have continued the progress on our house, plans, banking and maintaiance of the section.

On the 8th November we were finally happy with the plan, spec and price and had convinced the bank to extend our mortage price so we could afford the 5k increase that we really couldn't live without. Craig came over knocking on the door with a bottle of wine and at least a 20 page document to sign thank god he brought the wine it was a long hour, but very exciting at the same time. We painstakingly signed at the bottom of each page, took the bank account details and forked over our first payment ouchie and thats not even the expensive one!! The next few weeks will require keeping the faith that work is actually done on our plans by the head office in Tauranga and Wellington engineers and that they get sent to council before Christmas so that we might have them back for our start date of January 2013.

So this is our final plan......

These are the outside elevations....

Over the weeks following the 8th we have recieved the flooring samples and I have been trying to figure out colours for the kitchen that will go with this. Here are some pictures of the flooring and some of the colours we have to pick from. There are also some of the ideas we have been coming up with, with regards to kitchen doors and bench tops. These have changed since meeting the kitchen man today. When looking at the colour samples in the last of the three photos in this row the white-ish one is now the cuboard colour and the darker grey is similar to the bench top.

 

 

 

 
Mike meanwhile has been busy using Google Sketch up to create 3D versions of it to help me visualise what it might look like. I think it was more to help me try and realise that its not going to be too small and dark which is still my biggest fear. I also think he did it to stop me bugging him constantly about my worries with the kitchen. Having said that he did a fab job and i'm very impressed with this skills.

Michael's Kitchen

Today Mike took the day off and we had another trip over the emerald hills (which they are and I love the lush greenness of them) to meet the joiner who will be making our kitchen. Talking to the kitchen man, Richard, really helped us to understand the space and helped me with the colour/light/darkness issues I have be worrying about. I (we) have decided on a  light grey floor (pics to follow) off white cuboards and a dark grey/light black bench top with my peacock splash back. Michael has convinced me that we need an over head cuboard on the left hand side to hide away our tea, coffee, sugar etc which will house LED lighting (which may help) ..... I'm not convinced as it adds extra cost and also brings in the darkness worry again.... but we ill wait and see what it looks like once Richard had drawn it all up and the inevitable price comes in.

We still haven't had our second brick sample sent to use so I got our building man Craig onto it today and we should have them next week. We still have to meet the sparky, colour consultant and the flooring person to finalise our choice of planking and carpet. Exciting times to come and I will keep updating the blog as we go. Thanks for reading :D

Ngaio dream edges closer and closer....!!!

What is this a blog entry? Just to prove we have actually been doing stuff but too busy to write it i thought it was about time to give you all an update. (When I say “We” I still mean “Me” as I do all the writing and Mike just reads it to make sure I’m not telling fisherman truths……) So here is the update….

From the last blog we have had to make some cut backs. The price really did come in way to high and we had to make some hard decisions. We had to get rid of the 4k shower… sad yes but necessary. We went back to a 900x1200 ‘normal shower’ with opening swing door. To make it all fit in therefore we had to shift around the ensuite and do space stealing from the master bedroom. We also took off about 20cm from the living space and the above master bedroom to help keep the square meter rate down. We also changed some of the tap ware but not all around the house to also save pennies. All in all our efforts were well worth it and we now have a house price and plan we are happy with. Now comes time to finalise it all, value it and talk to the bank before signing the building contract and finally “start” the process of building our first dream home in order for us to Live the Ngaio Dream…. Watch this space for the next blog which will contain all these details more in depth. For now here is everything else we have been working on since the last post.

Choosing our roof tiles

So a few weeks ago Mike and I were in Christchurch visiting our families. While there my awesome and clever mum suggested that we drive around the new suburbs to check out the roofing that is currently going up. Thinking this was a brilliant idea we hopped in the car and headed out to Kaiapoi, Rangiora and Northwood/Styx’s Mill. It kinda took a while to get into the groove of staring at roofs and picking the model we would be having or potentially having then realised that there are were soooo many styles, textures, shapes and colours. We started changing our minds around every corner at every roof. It was all too much. Mike then remembered that one of the manufactures has a link on their page which shows you in your local area addresses with certain roofing tiles on!!! HANDY I hear you say yes very. So opening it on the inevitable smart phone goodness we followed the map and found ourselves looking at our original exact tile! Convenient! And by the way loving it!

So decision made!

Looking back, at the time we didn’t really think about how it might look driving slowly past people’s homes and taking photos of them. I even managed to snap a few with people staring right at me…. Awkward!  Even now writing it down it sounds creepy!! But we really did need to see it in the flesh sort of speak and if they didn’t want to be “peeping tom’d” then they shouldn’t have allowed their roof to be used on the website. All in all our actions found our roof tile, shape and colour. We chose the satin tuffcoat tile angle trim in a dark grey.

While back in Wellington we visited Craig and he gave us samples of the roof tiles. It was awesome to actually see it up close and personal rather than from a car seat! It only affirmed more the one we had chosen. Yay for us one thing down only a million more things to go…..

 

The colour range in our selected style

 

Speaking of which…..

Flooring

A few weekends ago Michael and I went on a flooring exploration around Wellington. We visited carpet court, flooring extra, carpet one and the home ideas centre to try and find our spec’d planks and carpet. I can highly recommend seeking out these things and seeing them in person just like anything else you are planning on putting in the house. It helped so much to line them up with each other to make sure they match and look ok. We have preliminary picked the opus range of planking in a grey range and a dark grey almost black for the carpet. The thing we have definitely got sorted is that we are going to have 100% SDN and something we noticed is the weight how much actual “carpet” we are getting per m2.

We have a sample carpet at home and have ordered from the Karndean website some of the planking we like. Will update when they arrive!!

 

 

The grey carpet sample

The outside look of the house….

After much back and forth with the Jennian/Milestone consultant Craig we finally decided we would have a half and half house, brick on the bottom and Linea board on the top, this really came down to money. It was cheaper for us to do it this way and all in all I think will add an extra dimension to the house especially with the eaves and extra detailing around roof line.

Bricks….. Where do I even begin…? Nearly everything we can afford is either bright red, yellow or brown, ick ick and more ick.... We think we may have found some so will see what happens when they arrive… Explanation below J

The bricks!

 



So if you have lots and lots and lots of friends you could build a brick house by ordering free samples online!!!! We ordered 3 different bricks from Monier and within 3 days they arrived on our door step. It was brilliant, if a little weird. The colours we are still unsure about but again it gives us hands on visuals on the colour, size and texture. We are still waiting on the Austral bricks to arrive so will update the blog once I have these. This is what we have so far…. Pretty cool!

Ownership, Mortgage and Plans!!!

Since my last post Michael and I have taken ownership of the section and have started paying our mortgage. The scary part was that this month our rates were due too!! Reality has really sunk in and we are grown ups... no going back!!

The 2nd of July came and went, August arrived, stayed and went too and without really knowing where the time went realised we were in September. Though the time has gone past we have actually done quite a fair amount of work and research. Before I get into the deatils of what we have been doing I feel I have to point out that although we have been doing work at times it has felt very slow and painful. This was due to other people we were working with fannying around and generally being very slack! I struggled some days with just how slow it was all going until I finally lost my cool and sent a few strongly worded emails kindly suggesting that if they wanted to keep our business they needed to get a hurry along and do something quick sharp!! Needless to say they now have and I think we are both feeling much happier.....

So here goes, the list of stuff we have done since June 2012.

• Just before we took ownership the next slightly tricky part was telling the people we had bought the section off that they were legally obliged to supply survey pegs onto the property. Going through the lawyer as we (mainly Mike) hate confrontation we told them they had to be done. It was and thankfully without too much anguish from them.... yes we are still talking to them. In total we got 13 metal/blue/white posts all around the boundry of our section showing us exactly what we had just bought. It was very very cool and when Mike and I went down to see them Tui flew over our heads and we felt at home.

Before shots of the garden!!! (above)

It took some doing (due to the sensitive nature of the issue) but I managed to get a man in to top the trees at the back to allow more sun in and to take out the trees around the sides and in the middle of the garden too. I refused to go sending Mike to check on the work. It all went very smoothly and made the section look and feel soooo much bigger.

Some shots during the clearance of the trees!! (above)



My half finished log pile!

 
 


















Mostly cleared garden!!


• We chose Jennian/Milestone. From the start I really like JMS. The man there "got" my/our vision for our house and could see the potential of our land. GJ although were more efficient and had better spec once JMS matched this it felt like the right decision. At this stage (from the above comments) I kinda regret it but hope now that they have been given a shake up that things will get back on track. Having said all that it hasn't all been bad. We have had a lot of plans through from which we have been tweaking, redesigning and getting very very excited over. We have been down to the section with the JMS man to spray paint onto the land our house and peg it out to make sure it all fits. We even painted in the kitchen bench, kettle and toilet hehehe!! :D

• Most weekends we have spent either at the section working in the garden or walking around kitchen, bathroom and plumbing show rooms. We have been busy cutting up the trees that were taken down, and I have started making a sweet log pile. I have placed it outside where the kitchen window will be once the house has been built. I did this because I'm going to hang flower baskets, fairy lights and other pretty things on it, so that when i'm stood peeling potatoes for the "Big Nazi Xmas dinner" I can watch them and think about how lucky I am to have achieved so much and have so much in my life.
• The Kicthen, bathroom and plumbing show rooms were great at helping Mike and I get up close and personal with the things we were potentially going to put in our new home. My mum actually came up with an awesome idea just before we visited the Jennian selection centre. She told me taking photos would help us remember all the things we had seen and help us once we got home to recall what, if any of the things we liked/didn't like.  Having done this the JMS man, Mike and Myself have been able to work on the Spec for our home. We are beginning to go through and pick exactly what it is we would like in our Ngaio dream home. Once this is nailed down I will post it for you all to see, but for now here are some of the things we think we will be having..... (price permitting)

1. Bosch appliances
2. Ebony and Ivory Manilow Shower with fixed glass panel
3. Methven Waipori tap ware
4. Cezanna clearlite 1000x1000 shower
5. Athena Liquid 1800 bath
6. Cashmere charred oak vanities

• The Selection centre. This is in Masterton and we drove over one weekend to pick out things we would like in the house. The building is basically a collection of baths, showers, vanities, mirrors, colours, tiles, carpets, bricks, weatherboards, doors, handles, windows and much much more. Mike and I had an awesome time going through all of this and when it was done we sat down with the desginer to help give her our visions of what the house would look like. It was truely wonderful day topped off by them giving us $100 to have lunch in Greytown at the White Swan. It was sunny and warm and Mike and I felt we really were living the dream!

• Plans. We have worked through many of these and are finally getting closer and closer to our dream home in Ngaio. At the moment we have a 2 story brick and linea board house with 3 bedrooms plus study. It has open plan living, dining and kitchen with sliding doors out onto a small garden filled with sun and eventually seats, pond and BBQ. We also have a double garage with laundry and a back door to the washing line. Our master bedroom has walk in robe and ensuite. Pretty cool all in all.... still tweaking and working on the price hope to have it signed within the month.... then onto council!

• Wills, yes another ticky and painful subject. Venturing on such an important and huge part of our lives it only seemed sensible that we get these. It rasied quite a few "curly" ones as they say with a few disagreements on both sides. However I think we have now got these done and can progress onto the Section 21 agreement. This will basically state that Mike, myself and the bank will own the land and house and when sold sorts out who gets what and how much. It is great for protecting individuals cash amounts and couple cash amounts.

• POWER!! And Phone/internetness. This was SOOOOO Painful and cost Mike (thank god it wasnt me doing as I have no idea of this sort of stuff) hours and hours, multiple emails, endless phone calls and eventually finding out the answers to get our section connected to the world. This is how weeks and weeks of back and forward went....

1. Emailed Wellington Electricity to inform them we would like some power pretty please to our section in Ngaio.
2. W.E organised a contractor to meet me on site to show him where we wanted the power/phone to go. We measured the distance from two power poles either side of the driveway and picked the closest one (obiously) which was 16m from pole to top of the driveway.
3. Quote - this came in quite scary and so we....
4. Asked for second quote! This one came in $1000's cheaper so we picked this one!
5. We paid the ouchie bill.......
6. Waited......... Then got asked for phone ducting from the contractor who told us we needed it from Chorus. Chorus told us it was a telecom/vodafone thing and to go to them. Mike rang Vodafone, Telecom, Chorus and eventually found out the contractor could buy it himself and do the work... sigh if only people within the industry talked to each other.....
7. Ducting was installed on a SATURDAY yup we got a workman working on the weekend.
8. Completion - new footpath and POWER!!!

 What 10K looks like!!! Ouchie but still worth it!!! Power cover, new footpath and white and green piping up the power pole. Mike giving it a good inspection!!!

So now you know what we have been doing and the progress we have made. Next post will hopefully come sooner than previous posts and will say we have started building.... heres hoping anyway!

Getting our answer

I know it's been ages and ages since I last wrote but we have been super duper busy with the section, work and life in general.

So here is an update on what we have been doing and our progess with the section....

Waiting for our answer on the section took 3 agonising days of waiting and wondering. P then finally rang to say "please could he come over to see us after work?" He turned up at 7pm and told Mike and I the vendors had rejected our offer. I began to cry Mike showed P out. I went to bed and Mike tried to console me. I could tell he was pretty gutted too. After a cuddle and a "we did everything we could and now we know" speech I went to brush my teeth and missed a call!!!! P had rung and I'd missed it. I hurriedly rang back butterflies in my tummy and he told us he had talked to the vendors and they had agreed to ACCEPT our final offer.... the relief and excitement flew out at such a rate of knots Mike thought something bad had happened. I said goodbye to P hung up and lept at Mike telling him we got the section!!! We went to bed very very happy, giddy and extremely excited.

Over the next few weeks (to bring us up to 1/7/12) it was all hands to the pump to arrange the meetings with building companies, lawyers and banks. We finally picked Westpac, a Lawyer and picked Milestone and GJ's to talk to about our house.

The bank stuff was relitively easy just a lot of paperwork and evidence gathering. Once we had all of this we stated talking to several banks playing them off each other and finally got a really good deal with Westpac. Building makes dealing with the bank a little bit different but not too much that it put us off. We have to have a floating rate when building then we can fix part or all of it once complete. Our rate is 5.4% and 3.5k cash in hand. I also managed to score a Westpac Helicopter money jar which is going to hold the funds my pond and landscaping for once our house is built!!! Very exciting indeed.

The lawyer stuff was a little more tricky and without going into too much detail he helped us read the sale and purchase agreement, LIM, Title and the Right of Ways/easments that apply to our section. He also helped us think about what names would go on the tile, how we would like to structure the ownership and got us thinking about Wills. This all got a bit much for me and I had a few days of cold feet, high emotions and grumpy pants moments that meant I had to go chill out with Robbie for a few hours one Friday and Sunday. Getting away helped settle me down and helped me remember why I was doing all this in the first place. To build a home with the love of my life, to build somewhere we can be happy and healthy in and one day start a family. I reminded myself that life can be short and that I was no longer living for me but for my big brother Grubs, I am doing it for him now too!!

After I go my mo-jo back we went to visit the Jennian and GJ show homes, a home and garden show and visited website after website at home where we began to collect even more ideas for our already massive pile of possibilities for our dream home. I soon decided I was sick of looking at piles so Mike and I went to Whitcoulls and bought 3 coloured boxes to better organise our papers, documeets and ideas. Red for house proposals, legal and bank stuff, blue for inside the house and green for outside the house. It was actually very therapeutic to go through and organise, sort, throw away and properly file everything we had collected.

So Monday 2nd July 2012 we take possession of the section and Mike and I will officailly own a slice of Wellington land, our dreams coming true!

Making the offer....

Not too long into the search for the section, it was fortunate that my parents were up visiting us and we were able to take them down to the section for a look and a helpful outsiders opinion.
I think at first look they were really happy with the site and loved, like me the greenery and mature ferns around the garden. We all stood and figured out where north would be and how to site the house on the section. It was helpful too that a Jennian/Milestone man, C came with us and he was very helpful. He pointed out to us that the type of house we were looking at would not fit on the section, we would have to go 2 story this was not something we wanted or thought we could afford so it was definatly food for thought.
While Mum, Dad, Mike and I were having dinner at our local restaurant we talked about the house, building, how we felt as a couple, did we want to travel or work overseas and generally did the parent thing of making sure that we were on the same page, and that this is what we really wanted. I thought we were but Mike was still a little unsure but kept sending positive signs so I wasn't too worried.
Mum and Dad were able to offer sound advice and it was nice to have someone outside our couples-ness to talk about the house with. I guess the one thing if i learnt anything from talking to them was that we had nothing to lose by making an offer and we would regret it if we didn't. I came away happy, fed and with a warm fuzzy feeling in my tummy!!

Convincing Mike was a little tricky, but having got all the information and knowing a house of some description would fit, we properly sat down and worked out our finances.
Once we knew we could afford it to a certain level Mike was happy to go into the negotiations with this number in mind.
I think looking back he was just a little afraid that our offer would look silly against the asking price, and that we probably wouldn't get it for the price we were willing to pay. Not to mention that he would have to live with a miserable Jemma Bear for the next little while. I believe also that he was still concerned that we would be buying a "White elephant" which I also felt but that's what the conditions on the purchase agreement would hopefully knock out of the picture.

His "White elephant" comment one morning sparked a huge debate. I thought the term was "Pink elephant" - Something obvious in the room, no one knew what to do with, or wanted to talk about. I was convinced I was right... Mike immediately got on the net (wiki) to figure out which one of us was right. Turns out we both where just in our own way.
The term "White elephant" refers to something bought for a high price that has become redundant.... like a stupid car you can barely get into or a section you can't build on :P  He was correct with his terminology but so was I, lets just say the anticlimax of winning against the other was subdued and annoying!!

Anyway I digress, yes MAKING THE OFFER! I called P the real estate man and arranged a meeting to put down on paper our offer and then we would know forever and ever we did everything we could to get the section and never be left wondering if we had only asked the question.... We wrote it down and the conditions of sale and went to bed nervous and excited!! The hardest part now was the wait..... what would they say.....?!

Some of our collection so far....

So I thought I would add a picture of just some of the stuff we have collected so far for our house and section. This pile has been cut down twice already over the last few weeks so you can imagine what it was like before we culled a few companies and products as well as some of the magazines (the mags though have been cut up and put into our scrap book... the black ring binder). We will of course be adding and taking away to this pile as we get samples of brick ect over the next few weeks or months.

Information Gathering Stage

Right the next task or tasks as it happened were to find out as much as we could about the section in Ngaio.

1. Size 504m2
2. Meters from side to side and drive way
3. Drive way Right of way and easements
4. Soil condition and ground conditions
5. Engineers reports/LIM reports
6. What if any services were connected to the section
7. What size house would fit?
8. How much sunlight will the site get?
9. PRICE

So yeah we had a few things to figure out... and even as I write this after all the information we gathered there are still some things I've probably forgotten to write in the list but which we did find out about the section.

I think the first few things we found difficult to deal with were the sewer and stream that run through the section. As you can see in the picture below there is a red line that runs  through 12A!? Yeah that's a public sewer line. Scary huh... well actually not too much... thankfully.

This sewer was the cause of many many sleepless nights, emails and phone calls to councils, building companies and a few other people too. After quite a lot of discussion it was agreed that we could put a drive way and outdoor area over the sewer and stream but no house. This then meant the house location would need to be looked into and how much room would be left.

As you can also see the back half of the section had a slight incline shall we say... you remember me writing that it was a flat section well turns out we own up the bank as well! Thankfully the 102 line had already been cut away so when I went to the site and with all the awesome bushes and trees it was hard to tell just where the boundary was/finished.

The next hurdle was soil and ground conditions. To actually subdivide the section into a decent size  (over 40 years ago) the vendor's put in uncompacted fill over the drain and sewer and subsequently when the engineers report came through the solid ground in the front part of the section wasn't reached until the prob got down to about 3.6-ish meters. So pile foundations soon became a hot topic through emails, phone calls and a few nightmares!!

Having talked to quite a few people again it was concluded that most of the fill was around the drain and because we weren't building near it anyway it didn't matter. The good half of the section ranges from 0.5m-2.0-ish meters to solid ground so the foundations weren't going to be that scary after all, still pile foundations but as again a few people told us this in Wellington is quite normal!!

Finally we had everything we were ever going to need to know or as much as we could ever know and it was decision time... what do we do next? We (I mean Mike) made a spreadsheet and we (I mean me) put in 6 months worth of bank statements to see how much we had where we were spending and how much savings we currently had. This went into another spreadsheet to figure out how much we would need to borrow, mortgage rates, repayments and other stuff I vaguely know what Mike was talking about.  Having gathered all this information it was off to figure out which banks would help us and which ones wouldn't. Having talked to a few we knew that at least 2 banks and a new build finance company would help us so then it really got down to decision time... do we make an offer?! If so how much do we offer...? Not having done anything like this before we (and I mean Mike) needed time to think about it, so we slept on it (for quite some time).

House/section hunting.

Ok this is my first post!! It is long I seem to have a lot to say about the first part of our new journey, but it is good :P The next one won't be as long I promise :D 

For me the search began months ago. At first Mike and I were on the hunt for a house. I spent my spare time trawling Trademe for properties to go and look at, at the weekends. We would line up 5 or 6 on a Sunday and spend the day thinking.. ..ok the next one is going to be awesome.
Although we did manage to find a few nice-ish ones, nothing really stopped us in our tracks, turning to each other and saying "yup this is the one!" So we starting discussing our options, moving overseas, travelling or why not building. It's something we have always talked about but not really taken seriously as it's something more middle-aged to do.

So the hunt began again... this time for sections. I spotted the Ngaio section first... I thought wow this is nice, pretty, sheltered, sunny and even more WOW was it was FLAT!! Let me tell you in Wellington this is rare, unless you go out a very long way or have millions to spend or have a few kidneys lying around you wish to sell to dodgy men in dark alley ways...However there was still a problem... it was expensive. So I put it on the watch list to show Mike in the vain hope we would win lotto or it dropped in price.

As the search continued we went to look at again 4 or 5 pieces of land all of which were okish, but mostly on a giant slope. Being from Chch this kinda scared us but were coming around to the fact that Wellington is pretty much built on a hill and most people do, do this.
Mike having been put off by everything I had found I showed him the Ngaio section and he agreed that I could ring the agent and go and see it.

I met P at the section one morning and as soon as I walked onto the green grass saw the beautiful matured greenery I was in love (again) I did the sensible thing and asked all the right questions, making sure not to show my excitement which for me was like asking a child not to run around a sweet shop! P was happy to answer all my questions and agreed to send more information through and allowed me to bring Mike down to see it early the following week. He seemed genuine to our hunt or our future piece of Wellington real estate.

On Sunday Mike and I met P down at the section and this time it was harder for me to contain my enthusiasm. Mike on the other hand was Mr Super Cool! He again asked nearly all the questions I had and pointed out a few I had missed. We poked around walked it out, pasted it out and then went home thanking P for his time and told him we would let him know we would be in touch.

At home Mike did point out the obvious that yes it is expensive and had a few flaws but on the whole seemed ok. My happiness again over bubbled and of course I was told to calm down and we had a few things we needed to talk about and a long way to go... but I could tell Mike was just as hooked as me!!!

Now came the hard part.... information gathering and a lot of sole searching. Numerous emails, calls and show home research!!! Oh my poor brain....