our first bill

Had a letter from those nice people who supply our water & sewerage services. A bill for water & sewerage used in the past few months. Interesting, as we do not have a house yet. A quick phone call to complain, turns out to be an estimated bill. We will have to pay the standing charges but we were asked to check the meter reading and get back to them. For those unaware of this all buildings here have individual water meters, usually just inside the front boundary so the man can nip over and take readings. Most of Melbourne has been on water restrictions for some time. No filling pools, watering the lawn, washing the car or washing windows. Our new place will have a rainwater tank which takes water from the gutters. This is then used to flush toilets and water the garden. The system will change over to mains water if the tank gets too low. We are considering getting a second, slimline tank, to make sure we have water to establish the new garden and keep it going.

main bedroom, nice...

Another pic of the show house, our new bedroom and parents retreat. En-suite is off to the left, walk in robe adjacent. Our house will have an extra 3 small windows at high level, behind the bed. The big windows look out to the front and street. We will be looking for a small couch in the near future to go in the same position as shown (been getting a few things off ebay at present).
The house will come painted a neutral colour as standard but we will be painting a few feature walls as soon as possible. The colours in the photo are not too bad, what do you think....

more information

Here is a photo of the kitchen and family display house we looked at. Our house is handed so the photo is reversed to suit our layout.
Their display house is decked out with all the best furniture and fittings, ours will not be as pretty for a while.
We will have the breakfast bench in the kitchen, patio doors to the outside area, large sitting area with doorway through to the kids play room. Note nice high ceilings. We will likely go for timber flooring or possibly a quality vinyl, still not sure. We will be building a timber deck outside, as shown, one day...

new blog

As the building work should be starting in November we thought this would be a good way of keeping you people up to date on progress.

We are building in a new estate in Point Cook, about 25km South West of Central Melbourne. It is basically a new town, close to the freeway and a couple of km from the sea.

Our new place will be a single storey on a rectangular block. The plot faces North South and our main living areas will be facing North and West to catch the sun as much as possible.














We have gone with Porter Davis homes as their Monteden design suited our room layout requirements, was a good fit on the plot and the rooms faced the right directions as standard so no expensive re-designs or alterations.
The house is 28 squares, the local unit of house measurement. A square equates to 9 ft square I think so the area is about 270 m2, big enough....

4 bedrooms, master has a sitting area (retreat) and en-suite. Rumpus room, open plan kitchen / family area, separate laundry, living room and study.