Tell me about building your house.

[Cherished]

has taught me a lot about making sure we document everything - the dates, times, persons name and reason for phone call, etc. We ended up with about $20K from them in cash because of their stuff ups so its worth writing all the things you're told down.

Absolutely, can't believe I forgot to mention this one! It's the most important thing to GET EVERYTHING IN WRITING! If the builder 'says' something that is important ask them to put it in the tender letter, you'll be amazed how they conveniently forget things if it's not written down ALso can't believe I forgot to mention watching their every step because there were many things they did that woudl have been a huge stuff up if we hadn't seen it and told them to correct it, for example they had one of the internal door put on that was a totally different pattern to the others, we were like "a primary school kid could see that this door is not the right one" yet they still painted it and put it in our house

[Miss.September]

ALso can't believe I forgot to mention watching their every step because there were many things they did that woudl have been a huge stuff up if we hadn't seen it and told them to correct it

Yep, in my parents house, it has all exposed beams and upstairs is entirely timber, yet they installed a wooden staircase with wood borers in it. You could see the holes when the stairs went in, but they still polished it up and left it that way. Keep an eye on everything - you might have a fantastic builder who you have no issues with, but you may have a pain in the butt too.

[Livinthedream]

Hubby and his family are all in the building trade.
Be there everytime a new trade starts. ie when the plumbers come in for the first time, go right through the hose with them, every tap, floor waste, vent and drain.Make sure you have all of your fixtures and fittings ordered, and make sure they know what is going where. Same for the sparky, every powerpoint, ceiling fan, every fitting for every room,and BE THERE ON THE FIRST DAY THEY START.
The majority of stuff ups are clients not stating they wanted specific types of floor wastes/exaust fans/taps. The plumber goes in and mocks up for one setup, the tiler/plasterer goes in and does their part and then the owner says "oh no, I wanted XYZ type of fitting" and the wall has to have holes punched in it, or tiles need to be pulled out, which results in other tiles being cracked in the process blah blah blah.
Have everything chosen well ahead of time.
Try not to be working full time while you do it either.
Building is a full time job on its own.
GL

[Just Me]

We built in 2002 so it has been a while and it was before the massive housing prices hike (it cost $30'000 for our land and $110'000 for our house - that same house recently sold for over $300'000). I don't know how much of this info will be relevant but I will answer the questions anyway ...

How long did it take?
We bought the land in Feb, and they started building in May. We moved in September.

How much did you go over budget?
We didn't. We sat down with the house plans and the builder and told him which things we absolutely wanted - like tiles throughout, security screens, built ins etc, we then also discussed what we wanted as far as bedrooms, living areas, patios and we discussed our building budget. The builder pulled out plans that were a little cheaper than our price range so we had a little bit of extra to play with (because we met the kitchen place seperately, the money budgeted for our kitchen and what our kitchen cost were different because we redesigned it to suit us so the extra money in our budget came in handy for things like that - tiles were the same).

We also cut costs by doing our own landscaping, driveway and turfing. I also made all our curtains myself. Turfing was hard work but we got a few friends to help us out and it only took a day. Our landscaping we did slowly over a year. Our driveway also took a day with the help of a few friends but it cost us $1000 to do it ourselves as opposed to the $5000 to pay someone else. The coucil were also very helpful with the driveway plans. We submitted them and they gave us back step by step instructions on how it was to be built. They came out the day before we poured the concrete and checked our formwork and told DH what needed to be fixed ... they were really really helpful.

What were the hidden/unexpected costs that you encountered?
Rates - we had to pay for utilities as they were hooked up and we still got a rates notice in that time though it was only for the land. It wasn't that expensive relatively - probably about $1500 over the six months, we just didn't realise until we got the bill. We didn't find too many hidden costs because our builder was pretty upfront.

What would you do differently next time?
Next time, we will be building a bigger house. I don't know if that will make a difference to how it all goes.

Anything else you want to tell me?
Can't think of anything off the top of my head ...

[Faithful Mumma]

We built with Simonds, and moved in a year to the day that I picked up the phone for the first time to call them. They helped us find our land etc.

We went about $10,000 over due to being in a Extreme Bushfire Corridor, so had to get different fly screens, get our roof fire lined etc etc.

The costs go on FOREVER after in terms of landscaping/concreting/gates/patio etc etc...so keep that in mind!