The day leading up to our contact signing was eventful due to severe bush fires along the mid to north coast of NSW. The hot and windy weather made for dangerous conditions and we had an emergency alert issued at work mid afternoon to leave due to the risk of being cut off from our homes. Unfortunately the fire was uncontrollable and spread too quickly, resulting in us (and many others) being cut off for 8 hours. Fortunately they were able to contain the fire when the wind reduced and saved all of the homes that it surrounded. We got back through late on Thursday night with time to get some rest and then make the 2 hour drive to Newcastle yesterday morning. We will definately be drawing up a bush fire survival plan for our new home and would urge anyone who lives near bush land or in an area at risk to do the same. Below is a photo of the fire near our home, courtesy of the mid north coast emergency alerts Facebook page.
After all of the drama, we were very happy to get to our contract signing appointment. We were a little surprised at the pace of the signing. Everything was a bit fast and sort of skimmed over, which creates opportunity to miss important details. The contract was ok we did however come across the following issues:
- Our most recent adjustment (increasing stacker door heights) had been completely excluded despite multiple emails, a quote and phone calls between myself and MDJ. This means they will need to raise a variation and edit the plans for us to correct the error.
- The contract was drawn up as if our land was unregistered. We did provide verbal and written notification of this 6 weeks ago and our proof of ownership *sigh*. Those who have read the blog will have seen me post on this back in August! Fortunately all our CLO has to do is ring and get the DP number.
- Upon returning home I got my ruler out and checked the plans only to discover that none of the internal door heights had been increased (per the contract) and one of our external taps was MIA
( I was getting a very big headache by this point).
I'm amazed that there are oversights on such common features of the home. Surely if they did it correctly the first time it would be much more time effective for the company, not to mention pleasing for customers. I feel like we have to go into every meeting feeling suspicious and looking for errors, which we really shouldn't have to do. I'm just relieved we picked up the issues at signing.
So now we wait for the revised plan which has been promised by Tuesday. We are also waiting for the person who deals with council applications to let us know if we will need DA approval or if we can get a CDC (please oh please let it be a CDC).
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