Early 1995, we were mildly contemplating on making the big move into buying a house. We hit the books and began planning on how we could hurdle the big “D” – deposit. We began by paying off and cutting into half most of our Credit Cards.
We also scrambled to pay off the car then, had it re-financed to consolidate all other outstanding debt and made it into just one small monthly repayment. This left us with little money, just enough to get into a “save while you build” scheme with the bank.
The start of our house hunting was incidental rather than planned. It began when we saw a for sale sign on a house in Drysdale Crescent, Plumpton – a few blocks away from the house of our friend – Luisa and Victor Atienza. The agent, Century 21 showed us a very elegant 15 month old 3-bedroom home with bay windows at the family room. Our hearts, however, were set to have a spacious 4-bedroom home for the price that they were asking.
The agent later on called back to tell us that Westminster Homes has a “house and land” package for a 3-bedroom home within our price range. The design could easily allow a 4th bedroom to be added. This idea stayed at the back of my mind until one day we were invited to the opening of the display homes in Parklea. It was here where we saw the “Botany” design of Westminster Homes. The design was so sound, it became our basis in comparing other designs.
Another blog I’ve written prior to blog being a word. This was written as a static HTML using a text editor and was first published in my IDX homepage. I thought I’d also use the original background image file.
Here’s a brief history :
| 30 Jul 1995 | Placed a $100 deposit on a house and land package with Westminster Homes. The house is still about to be builtin Armitage Drive, Glendenning. It was a 3-bedroom villa home, with a 4th bedroom option. |
| 03 Aug 1995 | Opened an account with St. George Bank. |
| 14 Aug 1995 | Transferred our $100 deposit to Lot 9 Ahmet Court in Oakhurst. Westminster Homes discouraged us to buy into the Villa Homes and suggested properties within the Glendenning – Oakhurst area. |
| 15 Aug 1995 | Pioneer Homes submitted a tender to build the “Monarch”,a 4-bedroom home for Lot 9 Ahmet Court. Jeanne fell in-love with the kitchen design. We made the mistake of placing a deposit for it. |
| 16 Aug 1995 | Westminster Home submitted a tender to build a “Botany” design on Lot 9. |
| 19 Aug 1995 | Transferred the deposit to Lot 11. For the same price, Lot 11 is situated on higher ground and about 100 square meters wider than Lot 9. |
| 20 Aug 1995 | We spent the morning with A.V.Jennings looking through all the designs of their Break-Away Series. We gave it a hard look but none of their designs caught our fancy. |
| 22 Aug 1995 | Closed our account in St. George Bank because of a very arrogant loan agent. We also sent a curt letter to the bank, protesting about the arrogance of their representative. They only refunded part of our loan application. We will never subscribe to that bank again. |
| 23 Aug 1995 | Applied for a Home Loan with Advance Bank through Standard Mortgage. St. George Bank bought Advance Bank in 1996 and therefore by default we’re back as their client again. |
| 01 Sep 1995 | Exchanged contract with Yalkin Shevket for the purchase of Lot 11 Ahmet Court, Oakhurst. Conveyancing was handled by Atty. Ted Gonzales – a Baguio born solicitor here in Sydney. Yes, it’s the same Atty. Gonzales who figured in a triple murder on 10 July 2001 at their North Ryde home. |
| 04 Sep 1995 | Advance Bank approved our home loan. |
| 14 Sep 1995 | The Pascual Family took a vacation to Melbourne. The house hunting is taking a toll on us, often times resulting to heated arguments. Manang Helen and friends, were not much help. We have settled to build a basic home, they however, urged us to include a Rumpus Room. When we came back to Sydney, we stopped looking at the cut price homes and decided to evaluate proposals with better inclusions and quality. |
| 28 Sep 1995 | Rosewood Homes submitted a proposal to build the “Lavender” design, a very classy Victorian design at a project home price.Rosewood Homes is a family owned building firm, well known for their workmanship. |
| 29 Sep 1995 | Allworth Homes submitted a tender to build a 4-bedroom “Fiesta Series I”. The designs of this builder can be characterised by generous living areas. |
| 29 Sep 1995 | Beechwood Homes submitted a proposal to build a 5-bedroom home. The design is a derivative from their “Sussex” series and called it “Glenbrook”.We have always avoided the display homes of Beechwood in the past because they are just too darn beautiful and expensive looking. Each design is characterised by attractive bay-windows and sensible fittings.The value per square meter of living space was reasonable and besides, Jeanne was already fixated in having double bay windows. One set is in the rumpus room and the other in the formal dining area. |
| 15 Oct 1995 | Paid the Stamp Duty for the purchase of the land. |
| 25 Jan 1996 | Sale of Lot 11 Ahmet Court was concluded. It was officially in our name but the title remains in the custody of Advance Bank. |
| 16 Feb 1996 | Tender of Beechwood Homes re-dated to 8 Dec. 1995. This means more money to pay. 🙁 |
| 17 Feb 1996 | Contract with Lockwood Carpets signed. |
| 06 Mar 1996 | Building Agreement was signed with Beechwood Homes to build the 5-bedroom Glenbrook design in our property. We spent a whole day at the Beechwood main office in Liverpool, to finalize the colour selections. |
| 26 Mar 1996 | Rommel Pascual became an Australian citizen. At the same time, the first excavation was done on our property. Soil fill were put in place in preparation for the concrete slab. This marked the beginning of the construction. |
| 30 Mar 1996 | Contract with Westside Ceramics was finalised for the supply of tiles, for the bathrooms, laundry, kitchen and passage threshold. |
| 14 Apr 1996 | Exactly 44 holes of piers, spanning 51.4 linear meters were drilled in the ground. |
| 15 Apr 1996 | Concrete was poured on the piers. |
| 26 Apr 1996 | Formwork for the concrete slab was put in place. |
| 19 May 1996 | Concrete was poured on the formwork building the slab. The weather is overcast and there was rain in the evening. This condition is perfect for a slow drying of concrete. |
| 20 May 1996 | Integral Energy installed a three-phase line from the power source to the service entry. Although our main line is single phase, the three phase is a provision should we decide to install central air-conditioning. |
| 23 May 1996 | Contracted Sentinel Alarm Systems. |
| 24 May 1996 | Stormwater drainage and sewer connection was placed, opening a 1 metre wide by 1 metre deep trench around the slab work. |
| 28 May 1996 | Telstra installed a pipe connecting the telephone switchbox through the open trench to the service entry of the house. |
| 07 Jun 1996 | The trench was closed and the frame of the house went-up. |
| 09 Jun 1996 | The remaining pile of dirt from the excavation was hauled out of our property. It cost us an extra $300 to dispose 18 tons of soil. |
| 10 Jun 1996 | Public Holiday (Queen’s Birthday) but work was done on the house – anyway. The roof trusses went-up. |
| 11 Jun 1996 | Weather is overcast. The roof trusses were completed and all windows were installed. With the exception of the window in the garage (which will wait for the brickwork) and the sliding doors at the family room. |
| 13 Jun 1996 | It’s been raining in Sydney, we visited the construction yesterday but there were no improvements. Today, the gutters and the fascia were installed. The colour of the gutter is heritage red and the fascia is smooth creme. |
| 14 Jun 1996 | The plumbing and the gas pipes were installed. |
| 18 Jun 1996 | The bricks were delivered. Previous days had been rainy and the construction site has been very muddy. The delivery truck had to leave our bricks in the less muddy part of Lot 15. We also tried cleaning up some mud inside the house but it was too hard, specially that we’re doing the cleaning in the dark. |
| 22 Jun 1996 | After 3 days of fine weather, the land was dry enough. The bricks were transferred to our front yard. |
| 23 Jun 1996 | The bricks were blended and distributed around the house. |
| 24 Jun 1996 | The first two levels of bricks was placed. |
| 26 Jun 1996 | The Termi-Mesh is set in place. This is a stainless steel mesh which is sandwich between the second and third layer of bricks. This is a new technology to prevent termites from creating havoc to the framework of the house. It was developed by CSIRO. The garage wall is now up and the window was set in place. The sliding door on family room was also installed. |
| 27 Jun 1996 | The front walls are beginning to shape-up. The brick layers told me that the Rockface bricks were more difficult to set. These bricks are naturally hard and are therefore more difficult break for those off-cut corners. |
| 5 Jul 1996 | The roof tiles were delivered. There were 10 piles and the 11th are the corners and ridges. The brickwork is almost done, bricks are still to be laid on the back of the fourth bedroom and underneath the windows. The telephone was also pre-wired. There were 12 extensions around the house, each having upto 4 numbers. We would, however, use only 2, thus there would be as much as 24 outlets. |
| 9 Jul 1996 | The roof was started yesterday and finished by mid-day today. I pre-wired the 8 TV antenna points and the alarms were also pre-wired by Sentinel Alarms. |
| 10 Jul 1996 | The plasterboards and the cornices were delivered. I also had to make a quick re-selection of the threshold tiles as our previous selection was discontinued. |
| 11 Jul 1996 | A fleet of builders stormed the house. The electricians pre-wired the house, the brick layers are doing the final touches, the carpenters started doing the eaves and the bathrooms are now being waterproofed. |
| 12 Jul 1996 | The eaves were fitted with weather boards and the wall insulation were installed. |
| 13 Jul 1996 | The brickwork were cleaned using acid and a high pressure water hose. |
| 23 Jul 1996 | Work resumed today after the council inspected the frame of the house. About 50% of the plasterboards are installed today. The roof ridges were also sealed today with cement. |
| 25 Jul 1996 | Lock-up stage. The entry doors were installed and locked. From this day onwards – only authorised people can enter the house legally 🙂 |
| 30 Jul 1996 | Carpentry started. This will cover all woodworks around doors and windows, skirtings and shelvings, except the kitchen which is manufactured by another company. There was only one carpenter. He has 40 years of experience and does everything manually. No power saws or pneumatic nail guns, just an old fashioned hammer and rip saw. |
| 31 Jul 1996 | The vanity cupboards and laundry sink was installed. All Colourbond gutters were also installed. |
| 1 Aug 1996 | The kitchen was installed but it was 50 mm longer than expected. They will have to make adjustments. |
| 3 Aug 1996 | The cornices is also installed by another contractor, who is 20 years in the business. |
| 6 Aug 1996 | The Statesman Panel Lift garage doors is installed and all electrical fixtures completed. |
| 7 Aug 1996 | Bathroom,Kitchen and Laundry tiles were started. |
| 14 Aug 1996 | Painting of the house started. It will take approximately 10 days to finish. |
| 16 Aug 1996 | The shower screens have been set. |
| 19 Aug 1996 | The pebble crete finish at the veranda is set. |
| 28 Aug 1996 | Final Inspection. |
| 2 Sep 1996 | Exactly One Year and a day after we bought the land, we got the keys to the house. Today marks our settlement day. |
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