Week 4 - Nothing to report

Checked out the site yesterday, and there's sweet FA going on for our lot. There was some brick laying going on other the other side of the site for the two story townhouses, which surprised me, because there's still no slab down, and there are big piles of dirt still in the middle of the sites where the brick work is going on.

But then, what the hell do I know about construction? Maybe that's how it's done.

In other news, have decided that I'm going to see the Prodigy next year up in Sydney with my man Rob. Time for some raver nostalgia! This does, of course, run the risk that they'll just play shite off their last two albums (which I have not bothered with, but have it on good authority from my man T-ford that they're a bit naff), but I'm crossing my fingers. Fat of the Land was the first CD I ever bought as a spotty teenager, and it's still a ripper listen to this day. Listening to the Scratch Perverts drop Outer Space at Digital 2001 (at the Entertainment Centre!), which was the first dance gig I ever went to, has to be one one of my best raver memories ever.

I can't miss the possibility of re-living some of that, exorbitant price ($101!) or not.

It's not the same without a room full of sweaty ravers singing along, but here's a taste:

Week 3 - foundations!

I made it up to the site last night to check out the progress, and the change was quite dramatic compared to previous visits. The foundations have been poured on most of the townhouses (including ours!) and there's building supplies, big earth moving equipment, site offices and multiple portaloos!

I took quite a few pictures, but unfortunately, due to the late hour and my poor excuse for a camera, they're not all that great. Here are the best of them, starting with our townhouse. Note the bloody great earth mover sitting in what will be our courtyard.

The view from across the road (sticklers for continuity may spot that the portaloo has been moved away from our plot - I consider this a victory for the general smell of the area):

And across another townhouse from the south side. To give you some indication of where things will lie, think back to the plans. In the right hand side of the picture below will be the master bedroom. If you follow the line of the foundation to the left, there will be the ensuite and bathroom, followed by the kitchen and the lounge/dining just about where the earth mover is. As noted earlier, the earth mover is actually sitting in what will be our courtyard. I'm not exactly sure why there are so many big piles of dirt in the house, but I'm sure it will all become clear in the end.

You can also see from this shot that we're going to be quite close to our neighbours. I maintain that it's still a step up from an apartment building.

Elsewhere around the site, you can see the site office (which is a new addition this week) and more big equipment!

Bricks! Their colour doesn't really show up very well here, but it's all fairly neutral anyway.

Things are slightly more advanced at the southern end of the complex. These are mostly multi-story units from memory.

Foundations are still being dug and poured on the north west corner of the site.

Didn't make it up to the site this weekend...

...will try and make it up tonight to do today's progress report. Until then, enjoy this excellent advert for the NZ Book Council:

Week 2 of construction - more fence and a bigger pile of dirt

I visited the site again on Saturday, and not a lot has really changed. More top soil has been removed, with different areas leveled off to different heights to account for some minor slope on the lot. The pile of dirt in the middle is bigger. I've also noticed a few amenities being added around the site, like a portaloo and a tap. Now the builders can be a little more comfortable on site!

Here is the newly gravelled entry way. As you can see, the main pile of dirt is bigger than before.

The view from over the road. Get used to this view, as I'm sure it will be harder to get on site when they start closing the front gate over the weekends. You may also see that there is a second pile of dirt in effect. Riveting stuff!

The site now has all mod cons.

Our lot from the inside. Note the proximity of the portaloo.

Dana putting up with me taking lots of pictures of dirt. You can just see her patience beginning to ebb in this picture.

Not hugely exciting progress in the grand scheme of things, but better than no progress at all. I'm quite chuffed to be able to see progress for two weeks in a row after such a long time waiting for the DA to be approved. Hopefully there will be some more interesting reading next week.

Week 1 of construction - Fences and a pile of dirt

OK, so here are some shots of the very initial progress at the site. Firstly from across the road:


The very observant may be able to notice that there the fence doesn't even go all the way around yet - things are still at an early stage. Next the lot itself. As you can see, not a huge amount has happened apart from the removal of the topsoil. If you look very closely, you can see the lines that mark the border of each townhouse plot. They're not very clear at all at this resolution though [Edit: clicky for bigger pixen!].

Here's a close up of the lines that you can't really see in the picture above.

And at the end of the line is a stake with our unit number on it!

And here is where they put all the dirt they collected....

That's it for now! I'm going to try and do weekly updates to keep track of the build process.

Construction has commenced!

Things are still very much early days at the moment, but a site visit on the weekend showed that things have definitely kicked off. So far, it's just fences and clearing work, but there's also some lines on the ground showing where the lots will be.

I'll put some photos up later on tonight.

We also received an email this morning from the builder, confirming that construction has commenced. It also contains the cryptic line "the developer is confident that the construction period will not be lengthy". I'm choosing to interpret this positively, but it really doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things.

Still no word on what the conditions placed on the approval were.

Ed Roth of Stencil 1 (via Design*Sponge)

Design*Sponge have an excellent feature on Ed Roth's apartment. Ed Roth has released a couple of books on stencil art, which I'm a big fan of. You can find out more about his art/books/blog et at the Stencil 1 website.

I like the exposed wood/bricks and a lot of the colour palette used, as well as the furniture.

DA - APPROVED (conditional)

WOOOOOOO! The DA for the new place has FINALLY been determined by the ACT Dept of Planning. My estimate is that it took about 15 1/2 weeks from their lodgement date to the determination, which is far above and beyond the statutory limit of 9 weeks. I'd like to say something nasty here about ACT Planning, but I guess I don't really know the full details. After all, the DA wasn't lodged by me, and I don't know what else needed to be amended or re-negotiated in the application.

The result that I can see on the ACT Planning website says "approved conditional". I don't really know what the "conditional" part of that means, but I assume it has something to do with the hold up. Hopefully it won't involve much deviation from the plans that were part of our contract...

We've had no word from our real estate agent yet, but hopefully we should hear from them soon. And more importantly, see some movement on the site!

I'm very excited about it, although its only a very early milestone still. From previous estimates of the build time provided by the builder/agent, it should take about another 7 months to build. That puts the finishing date at mid June next year (I'm assuming it will be more like the end of June/start of July).

When I think about it like that, it still seems like such a long, long way away. I'm going to have to learn to enjoy the process of the build.

One other thing that I've been thinking about on the house is the costs of cabling - do the benefits of fixed cables outweigh the costs and hassle of installation? My preference is for a wired home network, rather than a wireless one, but this is meeting some resistance from Dana. I shall have to do some sort of cost/benefit analysis and present her with a business case or something.

Happy days. It makes me think of this song:


PS: Yay!

Nanami Chowdroy

OK, I know I said I'd blog about my ps3 slim next, but I lied.

Instead, I'd like to share some artwork I saw online a while back (I think on Australian Design, but I can't remember). The artist is Nanami Chowdroy, and her pieces have a European/urban take on a more traditional Japanese style.

This one is called "Royal Flush" and has to be one of my favourites.

According to her website:

Nanami Cowdroy was born in Sydney, Australia with close bonds to her mixed Japanese-European heritage. Growing up with such contrasting cultures and surroundings, has greatly influenced her style of art and creative expression.

By intertwining complex characters and highly detailed objects her pieces reflect a juxtaposition between foreign and familiar entities and environments. Her imagination is illustrated through works which are elaborate and exotic. She is drawn to subjects, which may on the surface seem delicate or fragile, but are given strength and depth through her pen and ink techniques, intricate hand illustrative style and mixed media compositions.

Her signature detailed style reflects a refined monochrome pallette with her name 'Nanami' (meaning 'Seven Seas' in Japanese ) stamped in red. Fluid line-work, watery creatures and Goldfish are some of her favourite subjects, and distinctive forms which are featured in her artworks.

I think they're awesome. Here are a few more, Tori Trigger and Wired Dolls respectively.

If you want to get your hands on one of these prints as much as I do, you can find them at Urban Uprising, or at Nanami Chowdry's website. She also does some groovy jewellery.

Delays and more delays

This site is looking decidedly neglected. The reason for the neglect is that the ACT Department of Planning (and whatever else it is that they do) has still not approved the development application. We have confirmation from our real estate agent that this is the hold up and that it should be resolved "soon".

In the meantime, I think I'm going to change the focus a little bit and look at some other bits and pieces. The first is to start re-posting some design blogs that I've been enjoying, and also probably some game reviews.

Time to get into it! Firstly, here's some interesting post on desiretoinspire.net on a house by Whiting Architects. The house skirts a very fine line of being a little too severely modernist for my tastes, but some bits of it look supremely livable.




These two pictures are my favourite from the lot. The rest is all a bit white and stark edges, which is nice to look at, but I can't imagine living in.

Tune in next time, when I'll talk about my new PS3 slim!

New TV!

Its my birthday this Thursday (hooray!) and I got one present early - a new TV! This is the first thing we've bought for the house in a long, long time, and its the first thing we've really bought that is for the new place. The main reason we've avoided buying anything is that we haven't really thought it worthwhile when renting.

The TV is a 32 inch Samsung LCD 5 series (I think it's this one) for the bedroom, and it's friggin hot. I've had a tiny little one in there for ever that I bought years ago so that I could escape my parents in my bed room. It looks pretty much like this:

So far I've just been watching TV on it - we don't have a DVD player for the bed room yet, that's another purchase for another day. Suffice to say, I'm enjoying having FTA digital channels and HD channels in the bedroom - waking up to the ABC breakfast show on ABC2 is SO much better than Kochie (the goddamn smugtron 5000) and Mel on Sunrise.

Development Application update

I checked the ACT Planning site yesterday, and the planning documents are no longer up there. Does this mean the application has been finalised? Maybe. Do I have any way to know for sure? Probably not.

At any rate, I checked the site on the weekend, and there has still not been any progress. It's not even fenced off.

Woe...

First Home Owners Boost

For some reason Domain's property blog are reporting that the full First Home Owner's Boost will not be paid to people who haven't finalised their financed by the end of October 31 (and not just have a signed contract).

It think it's a bunch of crap, but read about it for yourself here: http://blogs.domain.com.au/2009/08/first_home_buyers_dont_have_un.html

Its in direct contradiction of both FHCSIA's and the ACT Govt's websites.

The only thing I can think of is that its worded a bit sloppily to mean that people who are purchasing an existing property need to have things finalised by 31 Oct to get the full amount, but that people who have entered into contracts to have something built should still be eligible.

More info from FHCSIA here: http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/sa/housing/payments/Pages/FirstHomeOwnersBoost.aspx

More info from the ACT Revenue Office here: http://www.revenue.act.gov.au/home_buyer_assistance/first_home_owner_grant

It has me in a bit of a flap!

Development application update

I did some research on the ACT Planning website this morning, and found out a few interesting things.

The DA for our complex was in fact originally lodged on 8/6/09, but did not clear the initial checks at ACT Planning. It was submitted again on 24/6/09. The ACT Planning website shows final lodgement for the application that's currently on there as 9/7/09. I don't wish to besmirch ACT Planning, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it had taken them the two weeks from 24/6/09 to register all the documents on their system as lodged.

The DA is available for looksee on the ACT Planning website here. They stopped accepting public comments on 5/8/09.

Today is just under 7 weeks from the final lodgement date of the DA. There is actually a statutory limit on how long ACT Planning can take to consider an application - the limit is 6 weeks if no third party provides them with a submission, or 9 weeks if a third party does. This gives us the 6-9 weeks originally quoted by the builder.

It's a bit difficult to tell from the ACT Planning website, but the application is still listed as "active" so I suppose it must still be under consideration. There's no third party submissions posted on the ACT Planning website, but they might be confidential. My hope is that the DA will be approved any day now, worst case scenario, 2 weeks.

I'm a little bit peeved by the delay - we're about a month behind schedule before building has even started - but at least I have a better idea of what's going on now.

I've seen enough Grand Designs to expect this sort of thing, but I was hoping the delays wouldn't start so early!

Progress report: there is nothing to report.

Still no movement on site. Emails we have from the builder (via the agent) indicate that building will commence on approval of the DA (I think that means development application), which the email said would be lodged around 5/6/09. The email estimated 6-9 weeks for approval of the DA.

It's now 28/8/09, 12 weeks later. Maybe there's some sort of progress that I can't see going on somewhere, but if there is, I don't know about it.

I'm going to see if the DA is available for public viewing somewhere. Wish me luck.

The site

To establish a baseline of the build, I visited the site that will eventually be my new home. The site has established homes on three sides, and a reserve on the other. The reserve will be on the side that our bedroom windows (have a look here for the plan) open on to, across a road.

The sign approximately marks where our unit will be in the complex. At the moment, it seems to be the muddiest point in the lot.

Here's one zoomed out a bit to get some perspective of the site. The complex will take up the entire block when its finished, with an internal road that the garages and front doors of all the units will open onto. There will also be a landscaped garden in the centre of the lot. That's Dana in the picture above. Everybody wave!

This is the view directly opposite the lot. This will eventually be the view out from the master bedroom, and bedroom two (bedroom two is also known as the study, Dana's wardrobe, the library, the war room, or the situation room depending on who you talk to). The plan of Franklin available from the ACT Land Development Agency name this the "North Mitchell Grasslands".

This is the view south, with the lot on the right in this picture. If you look carefully you can see Telstra Tower on the top of Black Mountain! You can just see the drive way onto the lot in the right of the above picture.

We took these pictures on a Saturday afternoon, and I was really gratified to find that it was very quiet and peaceful. This will be a marked change from where we live now in the inner north of Canberra. The location is really great for walking to work, shops and pubs, but is right on a main road that is never quiet.

I also checked my mobile phone reception on the lot - excellent! Full bars and strong 3G signal on Optus. Yay!

Franklin

Our new house is in the new suburb of Franklin in Canberra. For some reason the ACT Land Development Agency calls it Bridgewater at Franklin, but nobody else does. To check out the plans and location for Franklin, check out the suburb location maps here.

Last weekend, I had a look around the suburb to get a feel for it. The feeling that we mostly got, is that the place is incomplete. Maybe a quarter of the suburb has buildings in various stages of construction, but the rest is empty infrastructure. As you can see in the picture below, there are a lot of empty lots.

There's also quite a lot of construction going on, which made for interesting poking about.

I've always liked nosing about half built houses to see the frames and how they're set out. Its a trait I inherited from my father - I remember when I was younger and we used to go walking, he'd always want to go and have a look in any half built houses in our neighbourhood. I feel the urge even more strongly now that I'm investing in a house myself.

But more on that in a different post. Possibly about specific house stalking.

One other characteristic that dominates Franklin (apart from the empty streets and half built houses) is a system of drainage channels and ponds that runs through he heart of the suburb. Hopefully, this will eventually provide a nice focal point for the suburb and be a nice area to walk/run around.

There's also a couple of nice bridges over the run off area, which is actually quite nicely landscaped with a system of reeds and rock filtration areas. It's not really very clear fro the picture above, but apart from a bit of rubbish blown from the building site next door, it looks quite good.

The idea of building drainage areas and run offs like this is something that is common in Canberra, especially in the new suburbs. Even in the older suburbs like the inner north areas, there are systems of open drainage and flooding areas. Its not something I was used to - in Perth, where I've lived most of my life, the run off is quite minimal. I've always assumed its because the soil was a more porous sand there, but it probably also has as much to do with the planning and infrastructure.

There are permanent ponds as well, which have already been populated with ducks.

Ducks! on a building site!

Overall, the suburb is very much only half finished. I have a lot of optimism that it will be really nice when its finished, even if the houses are little boxes on the hillside (little boxes made of ticky tacky).

The beginning - plans

In the beginning, there was a lot of house hunting - open houses, viewings, trawling the listings, subscribing to property web sites, all of that.

In the end, these resulted in an email from a real estate agent with some plans attached.



This was the beginning, and apart from a few follow up questions and a few more drawings, that's all we have to go on for the next seven to eight months.

The courtyard will be north facing, and the structure is free standing. We don't share a wall with anyone. The fence on the bottom of the plan is about 1.8m high, and there is an internal road for the complex on the other side of it. The thick border at the left hand side of the property is a hedge that will be planted as part of the complexes landscaping, and there will also be a 1m chain link fence on our side of the hedge. The front door opens onto the interior of the complex, and the external road is on the other side of the hedge.

There are 26 townhouses in total in the complex, and the communal areas have landscaping included in the price. Our house was the largest of the units left, and the only single story dwelling. I haven't gone through them all, but I think it is the second or third largest in the complex.

A project to stave off boredem at work

Welcome to my latest bid to stave off boredom during the quiet periods at work.

The plan for this blog is to keep a record in words and photos of the progress of the townhouse that myself and my partner have recently signed a contract to buy "off the plan". For those who are unfamiliar with the term "off the plan" it means that we are buying what is effectively an finished product from some builders that will be completed in about eight months time. We have paid a small deposit, but don't have to get a mortgage and settle the final balance of the property until it is finished.

The upside of this approach is that you get to save more money while the residence is built, and you buy at, or just below the current market rate for a future product, allowing for capital growth before its even finished. The downside is that despite having a house built, you don't get much say in how its done or a comprehensive picture of what the final product is ahead of time. We had to make our purchase decision based entirely on a set of plans that lacked information about several aspects, like the fixtures or the kitchen.

It is also a very long wait (or at least so it seems at the moment) until we get to move in from signing the contract and handing over a deposit - which feels an awful lot like purchasing, despite only being the first step in the purchasing process. This brings me to the title of the blog - delayed gratification. A big part of this blog is to help me stay enthusiastic about the house despite the long wait. According to psych theory, being able to delay your gratification until a later period when required to is a key indicator of emotional intelligence, and people who possess the ability are more dependable and well adjusted. It is not something I am always good at, but something worth being good at.

There will probably be posts about all sorts of other topics, but the plan is for the majority of them to be about the house. These things have a way of growing a life of their own depending on usage patterns and how much I feel I actually have to say about it.