Picking a Block

Jake wanted a really big block but I managed to talk him down to 1 acre (for budget and locality reasons). This would be big enough for our house, privacy, a pool, lawn and bush. We knew we wanted to move closer to Jake's work and decided on a budget of $ 300 000 maximum.
Most blocks seemed to be an average of 280, but there were some cheaper ones. Of course when a block is cheaper you have to ask why and it was usually because of the shape of the block and how flat it is. One block we considered was a triangle with a 127m frontage and on a slope. At first we thought we could deal with a block this shape, but upon learning about the 20m set back we are glad we decided against this one. We would have had no backyard.

When we showed up to the first proper meeting with one of our prospective builders he straight away told us about this perfect block for us that had just come on the market.
It already had an area cleared, fenced all the way around with established neighbours on both sides. Jake at first didn't really like the 'bush' as there was a fair bit of scrubby tea-tree but eventually came around.

As we were custom designing our house, the block had to suit the house. We didn't want to change the house to suit a block, so we got the prospective builder out to take a look. They said it would be fine. A couple weeks later we were meeting with a real estate agent to discuss putting in an offer.

Now the land was originally advertised as 270, but later changed to offers over 250. As we weren't in a rush and there were other blocks available, we were willing to negotiate hard. The real estate agent wasn't very helpful in giving advice on what to offer etc.
We went in with 240 knowing they wouldn't accept it but it would start the negotiations off with a lot of room to move. They came back at 260. We tried 249, 253 and 258 but they said they wouldn't take lower than 260 (why not just advertise it that way from the start right?).

We knew that as we didn't have a building contract and didn't want to rush into signing one, we wanted the longest settlement date possible (30 days being average). We initially went in with 90 days, but they never seemed to knock that back. So when they wouldn't budge from 260 we thought we would try a 120 day settlement. To our surprise they took it. So from 2 weeks ago, we have 120 days to work out a building contract and maybe even get approval to build from shire before we have to start paying a mortgage.  If all goes smoothly we could be ready to build by settlement (October).

Designing Our Own Home

So when you want to custom design your own home you have two options- go talk to a builder/architect  and get them to draw something up based a conversation you have with them, or draw up something yourself. We thought for us, the later would be easier.

So where do you start? Especially when there is two people involved who's ideas don't always mesh.
We started by listing what we both really wanted in a house and these made the initial layout.
For example; We wanted a symmetrical house. Access from the garage into the kitchen. Access to the alfresco from both the kitchen and dining room. A double story house (Jake) which I decided to go along with as long as I had a grand staircase in the entry. No hallways (me) and an activity room that links the kids rooms and their bathroom. The en suite joint to the bedroom via a walk through robe.  etc
All of these things left us with only a few options for layout.  Then you start adding on all the rooms you want (endless conversations about whether he really needs his own study, do we need a guest bedroom and if so why cant they both be combined).

After many designs, trial and error and compromise we came up with our design. This would have been impossible without a computer home design software. We used Punch (a little hard to get used to, but it's great when you get to know it). This is better than the free ones you can get online as it does 3D generations of the front and inside, which is in invaluable to see if the design works.

We found the best approach was to draw something up quick together that included the important requirements and then work off of this design in trying to get the little things right. Going off and drawing your own designs continuously gets you no where. We then went through and worked out the proper sizes for each room.

We submitted this design to three builders for rough quotes and they came back at prices between 400-500 depending on spec and builder.
From there we started working out the kinks with the builders and managed to perfect the design further. But the design still remains 95% our own design.

An introduction

Hi, 
I'm Amy, I'm in my 20s, recently married (to Jake) and have two puppies (Halo and Shiloh). 
Jake always knew he wanted to build and over the last 7 years that we have been together he has managed to convince me to. Although he didn't plan on building until much later in life. 


A fair few years ago I bought Jake a house building computer program for him to start designing the home of his dreams. Every now and again, over the last few years, we would get it out and have a play. 
Sometime in March I convinced Jake we should start investigating the building process. From playing with the program and the grand ideas we had we knew it would have to be a custom build. So on our first trip to a display village ever we talked to a couple of builders and all of a sudden Jake was wanting to get our plans finalised and submitted for a rough quote. He also started looking for suitable blocks in the area we wanted.