The Floor Plan

We quickly decided on a floor plan and builder.

We looked through about 50 display homes and kept going back to ones built by the builder we chose.  We fell in love with one design, but then realised that the bedrooms and bathroom were too small for a growing family and a soon to be teenager.

We went for our original choice in the end with modifications.

The original plan can be found here

Changes we made:

• Increase of 50cm to the front of the house (encumbrance) which we added in the study
• Removed study door and wall
• Removed Hall door and wall
• Turn living room in to a separate room, moving opening and adding double doors
• Turn Dining into a store room, a pantry and a study nook
• Remove door from Verandah to Garage
• Add internal door from Garage to Kitchen
• Add external door from Garage to Backyard
• Move Fridge to Pantry
• Extend floor and overhead cupboards along the wall to the door

Miss 2 will have Bed 2, Miss 10 will have Bed 4.  The Study is actually a toy room. After handover we will be adding floor cupboards in the pantry and wall shelving.

The Block

The first step we made was to find a block.  We wanted at least 800m2, and not much of a slope.

We snapped up this block which is 820m2 and 20m wide and 41m deep.

We purchased this back in October 2014 but there was a delay with the civil works and it only settled at the end of March.

The soil testing was done a week after settlement and we got the report back a couple of weeks ago.  Unfortunately for us there is rock at 1.4m down and they need to dig out atleast 1m to level it before digging for the footings-so they are more than likely going to hit the rock.  So while our footings were considerably less than quoted, the rock digging puts it back up there and a little over. Still-could be worse!

The plans have now been lodged with the council, so fingers crossed they don't take too long as we REALLY want to get this started as soon as possible.

Miss 2 sitting across the road

Introduction

Hi and Welcome!

We are a family of four (and a dog!), our girls are 10 and 2.  Finally after 14 years together we are building our first home.

We live in the Southern Foothills in Adelaide, in a suburb that is a little bit country-and only 5 minutes to rolling green hills!

We have decided to move our family 20 minutes away to a small country town, a town we have always dreamed of living in, and building a home together.  It's a very pretty little town, it has a school, a few small shops, and a pub but no supermarket or anything like that.  That's not an issue as there are many towns 15-20 minutes drive away.

I will be sad moving, as Miss 10 is changing schools, so we leave behind 6 years of friendships-not that we are moving to the other side of the country, but we won't see our friends everyday anymore.  I am also nervous for Miss 10 starting at a new school and getting used to a different system and teaching style. She made the decision to change though and she seems happy about it.

Miss 2 won't be affected-so that's easy!  We already go to Playgroup down there, so she is familiar with the area now.