The background:

Finally I've got around to starting to blog our house adventures. Casey and myself will be providing regular updates on the progress of our new home as we go through the building process.

Below is a quick summary of the story so far:

The Land
After looking around for a month or so we found an estate that had a lot to offer including:

• Full Gym
• Pool
• Spa
• Functional Centre
• Parks

There were 2 blocks left in stage 5B and after driving around the area for a few hours we decided to go back to the sales office to enquire further. We found both blocks had been sold, however one of the blocks might have been coming up for sale again.

After receiving a call on the 13th of January 2008 that the property had become available we put down a deposit and signed the contracts on the 23rd January 2008.

The block had a 16 metre frontage and is 34 metres long making it 544sq.

We had already visited the Metricon Tarneit display where we saw the Mercer. We loved the open plan design and picked a block that had a Northerly facing backyard under the assumption we may buy this house. Funnily enough after looking at endless numbers of display homes we still selected this house.

We took title of the land on the 5th March 2009, about 1 and a half months after the originally estimated date.

Above is the current state of the land. Our neighbours have just started building so I'll provide another update over the coming weeks. We also have a tree at the front now!

The House
We looked at a number of builders including Metricon, Henley and Porter Davis. There were many others however the quality of the homes and the designs weren't quite what we're after.

We ended up going with the Mercer 32, we wanted a single story houes that was big enough to grow into. We have to have a 5 metre setback at the front so this gave us about a 5.5 metre back yard which we thought was reasonable given how many parks are in the estate.

As we go through the building process we'll let you in on why we picked certain features, it will be interesting to see how they come out.

We're currently waiting for final finance approval, Westpac are taking their time, and also for council and neighbour approval due to our garage being slightly higher than the regulations after removing the eaves on one side.

Above is the front of the display home. We have the same facade and we are rendering the same sections of the house. We have put the lights at the front in the same positions including the downlights which will hook up to a sensor. The render colours will be slightly different to go with the roof tiles and bricks we selected.