This process has taken so long, but we now have a start date

26/06/09: I contacted Coral to find out if they had a start date for me yet, but was told the private certifier still had the paper work, I was told to try again next week. I was initially told that this process would take a matter of days, it has taken over a week.

03/07/09: Once again another call to Coral, this time though some good news. Finally after a delay of two weeks, the private certifier has our building certificate. I was told that Coral would receive it on Monday or Tuesday, and that they would go through the conditions to see if there were any that had not been met. When I got home that day I had a letter from the private certifier with the building certificate and the building condition. It’s getting exciting, it’s so close now.

10/07/09: I received a call on my mobile while I was at work, I couldn’t answer it so it went to message bank. When I finally got around to checking it, I went into freak out mode. The message said “Can you please call B*** back, there is a council requirement that needs to be met regarding your block being in a bushfire prone area. Can you please call me back as soon as you can?” Now you can understand why I went into freak out mode. I thought to myself “what does he mean bushfire prone area, where are the trees?” I called B*** back, he told me that we needed to have Level 1 bushfire protection. I asked why we had to have it, he couldn’t tell me but advised me to ring the council, he gave me the person’s name, contact number and the DA number to help me out. I then asked him what was involved in the level 1 bushfire protection, he ran me through the list...

All fly screens have to be metal, including those on the doors and windows, this would also including having to have fly screens over our lovely front doors, which we didn’t want. All vents and weep holes will need to be covered in stainless steel mesh. The garage would need to be sealed around the door to prevent ember attacks. All roof gables will need to have fibre cement backing with no timber trim. I asked him what this was going to mean to our facade as we had upgraded to a wooden gable with wooden trim in the gable and portico. He told me that I could get it changed to hard wood (Merbau) and that we could only stain the hard wood not paint it like we wanted to and had spent 2 hours choosing the paint for only 5 weeks ago. This was particularly frustrating as we are building in an urban area, and when we raised this issue with our sales consultant he told us that a house they had built a few doors down did not require any bushfire protection.

So what was this going to add? I ask, not really wanting to know the answer. He told me that at a rough estimate it would be around $2500, but he would send out the variation for contract tomorrow with the final price. I wasn’t sure whether to be happy or not, I was sure he was going to tell me $5000-$6000, but then again I was chucking away another $2500. I just kept thinking about other things we could have done to the house with that money. Bloody councils.

I decided to call the council to find out why we needed to pay for this, as I’m not sure where this “bush” is. His reply was that you are within 100m (90m to be exact) from “bush” and that level 1 bushfire protection is needed, no questions asked. All I can say is that his definition of bush must be different to mine as all I can see are a few trees. Nothing could be done, we would just have to wear it.

11/07/09: I got an email from the mortgage broker telling me that Coral had sent the stamped approved plans through. But she had some bad news for us as well. Because the process had taken so long we had to resubmit our paper work to get reapproved by the bank. Great, just what we needed another hold up, can there really be any more?

13/07/09: After trying to get our current payslips and other paper work that the bank needed, we emailed the mortgage broker the paper work and she took care of the re-approval paper work. Our mortgage broker has been one of the handiest people to have, she has been just brilliant. She has mediated between us, the bank and the builder. I don’t think we could have done a lot of this without her as she filled out and sent everything to the bank. I hate paper work so it has been great to have her.

14/07/09: We got one of the variations regarding the bushfire protection, it didn’t include the hard wood with staining as he had to confirm the price. This variation was $2392 for the bushfire protection alone, I hope the wood and staining doesn’t cost too much. One thing I will say that is helping speed things up is that the variations are being sent via email, we can just print it out sign it, scan it and email right back, it is saving two days of postage.

17/07/09: We got the second variation and cost of the wood is another $592, damn that is a total of almost $3000. We really hated the council right now. We then noticed that they had forgotten to take off the extra we had paid for a deep base paint to the wood trim, yah, it will be a little win back for us, every little bit helps.

19/07/09: The variation with a credit came back, it was only a little win, but a win is a win I guess. It was -$174, so this bushfire protection was costing a total of $2800. Total crap, but hey, what can you do? Nothing.

20/07/09: All paper work has been done, Coral are now being delayed by the bank and are not happy about it, I’m told that if there is another week delay that the contact will have to be reassessed and the pricing updated accordingly. We didn’t want this so we were straight back to the mortgage broker who called the bank to get the paper work fast tracked.

22/07/09: We have finally received unconditional approval for the loan, this is one of the best feelings we have had in the past few weeks. It can’t be much longer now.

24/07/09: All paperwork from the bank arrived at Coral, I have been told they will now work on get us a start date. We have an appointment with the bank on Tuesday the 28th to sign off on the loan.

28/07/09: WE HAVE A START DATE, oh my God, this is a truly awesome feeling. Six months of work have finally come to a head. This is how the day unfolded; I received a call on my mobile, because I was at work I couldn’t answer it so it went to message bank. When I got around to checking it, it was the customer service officer from Coral letting me know we had a start date, when she said the date a huge smile came to my face as it was my birthday, the date is the 13th August. That’s only two weeks away!

02/08/09: We went to the block today to mark out where our retaining wall is to be built. We both think this is a joke as the wall is only 8m long with a total height of 45cm, most other houses have tapered the land down with a fall this small, but Coral won’t start without it so it has to be done. We will be doing this next weekend.

Again another big update, sorry. We have been so busy getting stuff done for our house and wedding that I haven’t had the time for updates. I plan for these to become more frequent as things start to progress with the building process. I will place photos of the block and the retaining wall up on this blog next week after it has been done.