Council Approval

This afternoon our DA was marked as approved on the council tracking website! One step closer to the dream becoming a reality!

When moments seem endless...

Tomorrow marks three weeks since our DA was sent to council and they have been going very slow. Currently our application it sitting on someone's desk and local people are telling me horror stories about how long they waited to build their own homes.

Our bank manager waited 16 weeks earlier in the year. 

My hairdresser waited 9 months for approval on his salon because someone went on holidays.

It's freaking me out!

In the meantime we had our electrical appointment last week, which I really enjoyed! We spent quite a few evenings after work putting together a checklist of electrical upgrades and marking every single light, power point, TV point and switch. We also marked out the number of switches on each plate and which lights would connect to each switch on a plan of the house. The appointment took around 3 hours and we came in within a few hundred dollars of our budget. Our colour consultant did our electrical and said it was the most she had ever done on an electrical plan, which we thought was surprising. Our house will be completely wired by MDJ except for the fans and bathroom lights. We also couldn't get Clipsal Saturn switches for our fans from MDJ. It worked out better this way as I was able to get custom made Saturn switches from eBay which have LED light switches and fan controllers on the one plate. The complete upgrade list is in the electrical tab. 

We also visited the bank last week to provide our building contract, plans, electrical and carpet quotes for our home loan. The valuer will be looking at it all in the next week and the bank manager said he was confident our house and land would be valued at more than or equal to what we are paying. I have to say our bank manager Jeff has been so wonderful throughout the entire process of buying our land and preparing to build the house. So here's my plug:

The folks at Coastline Credit Union have always made us feel comfortable and secure with our loan decisions, they offer very competitive interest rates and it is so much better to be able to have face to face meetings to discuss loans rather than just being a file on the desk of an anonymous stranger who decides if you are loan-worthy. Coastline are based on the mid north coast of NSW but do loans for people all over Australia, so if you are having problems with the big banks or just want great interest rates give them a call! 

So now I shall continue to wait for council, whilst distracting myself by re-reading my entire book collection and watching the box set of friends from start to finish!

A big thanks to everyone who is reading the blog, I am astounded that there have been more than 1600 hits so far :D

On to Council

This week felt very long and tiring. Our plans were due on Tuesday afternoon but never arrived and there was a lot of backwards and forwards with our CLO due to mistakes. I can't say it was a pleasant week. Neither my partner or I like confrontation (we don't even argue with each other!) but we have had to be a bit pushy. I've felt a liitle bad for it, but finally yesterday we got a correct set of plans and a contract amendment for our stacker doors.

Yesterday was a good day all around. I've been completing my masters degree over the past two years and attended my graduation ceremony. After the ceremony I took out my phone to take a photo and saw a message from MDJ saying that our plans had been sent to council! So now we wait and hope that council are kind to us!