Hank has gone to council!

Monumental step today, Hank has been submitted to council! Also, we asked for an update on the extra $2K issue for our change to bathroom layout back to standard and our sales consultant confirmed that she believed we had been charged twice for the shower option on the ground floor. We will have to remind her to amend our tender.

Final tender? but wait a minute ...

Well we are still waiting for plans to be submitted to council but were given the latest version of our tender with final items added etc. A couple of wins were had, we had originally asked for skinny windows of the double hung variety which were priced around $200-300 per window but changed this to awning style and now these apparently do not incur any cost which should save over $1000... additionally we substituted a larger door 1200mm for the standard door with sidelight (so no sidelight now) and we have been given credit back for this change which was unexpected. However, a big difference was that now we were being charged over $2K for the downstairs bathroom and shower!! We had asked for the shower option in the downstairs bathroom from the start and have been charged previously less than $1000 for changing the configuration and layout of the bathroom from the standard layout, so we thought we'd save that cost by reverting back to the standard layout and were given the impression that this cost would be removed. Now we see that having the standard layout is costing more!

Hubby has raised this with the sales rep who has tried to justify but in the end will ask the draftspeople about this. I have no idea how she can justify it and if they insist on charging us, we will revert back to our cheaper, non standard design! i only hope that if we revert back they do not charge us for changing the plans again as we have already finalised the plans. But we were not given warning that changing back to the standard would cost us even more than how we originally had it!!

Anyway, we'll wait and see what happens, but most unfair if we end up paying more.

Oh we also got charged over $3K for a hydraulic charge system for the sewer which is a new cost but was indicated on previous tender so I guess we will have to wear it.

(Sarcastic) I love how you sign on with builders and then all the little costs come out of the woodwork. By that time you have spent so much time and effort with them that you are compelled to keep going rather than start all over again with a new builder. I'm sure everyone knows its a bit of a rort and that there should be more governance on this.

Tender loving Hank

We've received our final tender most of which we are happy with but we need to check a few things and will remove some variations we asked for. Hank is shaping up rather nicely now. Allcastle came back to us to ask how we went with their tender to which we told them we had gone with our current builder as they were cheaper and we felt their design was more modern. The sales rep at Allcastle was surprised to hear they were more expensive and offered to renegotiate but we passed as their quote was higher and they hadn't even added the double handing and traffic control cost yet (which was again more than what our current builder quoted). At any rate, we are happy at the moment and don't want to delay much further as we figure each week of delay is costing us now that Nora has joined the family and isn't able to earn her keep!

So hopefully in the next few weeks we will sort out the details, sign and submit to council.
Next weekend we are off to the snows!

Allcastle tender... burnt to a crisp!

Well we received our tender from Allcastle and really didn't have too much to say as the saleswoman went through the details. I think we were thinking that it was a lot more expensive to Masterton's quote.

Fixed site costs were about 5K but provisional site costs came out to 41K! compared to about 6K provisional site costs from Masterton. The alfresco area attracted the most cost, with the whole thing costing about 20K compared to Masterton's quote of about 8-10K. It was really hard to compare the two tenders as the two companies had different suggestions for ways of doing the alfresco and storm water etc so it made it difficult in the end to decide which company's recommendation was the best.
Additionally, we were concerned about double handling and traffic control as our land is on the main road with no stopping in front. We reminded the Allcastle sales rep who said it shouldn't be a problem although there was a clause to say they could charge if it turned out to cost something. So we asked her to chase it up again as it was costing us several thousand from Masterton for double handling.

Other additional costs from Allcastle were squaring off the rounded corners of the dining area as our council has privacy issues with windows facing neighbours. The quote for squaring off the top and bottom came to more than 10K as well as another 12K for 2.7 metre ceiling height to top and bottom as required by council. Masterton only gave us quote for the bottom at about 5K so i imagine it will turn out less than Allcastle's quote plus the Masterton design does not need any squaring off the corners.

At this point we are heavily leaning to Masterton as the price seems cheaper and includes alfresco plus the inclusions in the Mansion package are also pretty good. They also knocked 5K off the price when we complained about the high site costs. They offered us a deal on airconditioning but as our tender has past the two week due date, they are reconsidering this. Our only drawback with Masterton is they have two kitchen options only, the entertainer or conniseur design. We wanted to have 900mm cooktop and rangehood but this is only available on the conniseur package but we don't want to upgrade totally to this package. We will see on our next meeting whether we can push for this still.