A Survival Guide for Display Homes

Marina and I have spent the last few weekends looking at display homes.  For me, this has been a completely new experience and with it came my first introduction to the world of "Volume Builders" and their sales strategies.

Marina planned the first weekend. She selected an new house-and-land estate on the fringe of the city where a number of the major builders had homes on display.  She packed the pram, a picnic lunch and thermos coffees

And with the older two kids happily spending the weekend at the grandparents, we strapped sprog number three (aka Chuggaluggs) into the baby seat and set off in search of "everything we need to make our dream home a reality", or so the brochure says.

On arriving at the "display village", I was expecting to be assailed by over-eager second-rate sales people, trying to steer my wife and I towards their company's products.  Instead, we were generally received with anything ranging from mild to total dis-interest.  One builder didn't have floor-plans for the house on display.  Others shrugged us off with a "There it is, let us know if you have any questions..."  In general, we really had to prod these sales people to get any signs of life and getting useful information out of them was (with a few exceptions) an utter waste of time.

On the first day we saw about fifteen display homes and I can honestly say that I cannot remember any of them clearly.  On the second day we saw about ten more, but then just had to give up - a severe case of "luxurious alfresco-indoor-outdoor-living-options" overload.

On the second and third weekends we were a bit more strategic, both with our planning and execution.  We narrowed down what we wanted to look at and if the house did not have a few key things that we were looking for (or had something definitely didn't want), then we skimmed through it very quickly.  This saved a lot of time and allowed us slow down for things that took our fancy.

Display Home Bling

The first thing I will say about the people who build display homes is that they clearly all copy each other's ideas and they definitely consider themselves to have transcended any notion of practical living.  I imagine these people more like fashion designers than builders, pulling together the "spring collection" for a catwalk parade, rather than something you would actually buy and wear.

After visiting around thirty or forty display homes, I can confidently say what the 2013 "fashions" are:

• Gigantic Front Doors - The smallest front door we saw on a display home was 1.2 metres wide and they are really heavy.  I'll concede that these dimensions are practical for getting prams in and out of your house, but beyond that I do not see the point.

• Butler's Pantries - Start with a walk-in pantry.  Now add a sink and call it a butler's pantry.  Don't be fooled, they do not come with a butler.

• Porcelain Floor Tiles - Fantastically expensive, these tiles are beautiful to look at, but have all the grip of an ice-rink if they ever get wet.  If you get these tiles for your new home, make sure that you tick the box on your health plan for hip replacements - you are going to need it.

• Windows behind Stoves - An external window made of (expensive) heat-resistant glass sits behind your stove to collect hot spraying grease and oil as you cook, the same way a splashback does.  Generally installed at the height of the stove (your groin), I am sure these create a wonderful view for your creepy neighbours.

But I also learned some practical lessons in how to make the most of visiting display homes, so here are my four key tips for survival.

 

Don't Worry About "What's Standard?"

One of the real difficulties when building a home with a volume builder is knowing the difference between the "standard inclusions" of the house you are buying and the "extras" and "upgrades" that invariably cost more.  If you are planning on going to display homes to figure this out, forget it.  Display homes are pimped-up and tricked-out to levels that leaves them all but unliveable in any practical sense.  They are designed to showcase a house design by appealing to a lifestyle that simply does not exist for real people.

As an example, in one case, when we finally went through a display home in detail with a sales representative, the only things (literally the only things) that turned out to be "standard" were the height of the downstairs ceilings and railing inserts on the upstairs wardrobes.  Everything(!) else was an upgrade of some kind.

Make Yourself At Home

Okay, don't take this literally - you are not allowed to shag, shower or shave in a display home.  What I mean by this is slow down.  My observation is that most seem to people go through display homes as though they are tourists on a tight timeline ("bus leaves in 10 minutes, folks!") and that they quickly explore the house, but only take away superficial observations.

If there is a house you are vaguely interested in, my advice is sit down and relax for a few minutes, and see what impressions you get.  You may find that the space you are in leaves a very different impression when you are looking at it from lower down.  You will notice lighting and the placement of windows very differently after a few minutes of sitting in a room.  Also, lots of line-of-sight issues become apparent, like (as we found in one house) being able to sit on a couch in the upstairs rumpus room and see directly in to a toilet.

This "slow down" idea was not a genius insight by us, by the way - it was a practical necessity.  When we were looking at display homes, Chuggaluggs (four months old) needed feeding every couple of hours, so we were literally forced to stop and hang-out in one of the display homes every now and then.

Take Photographs

In the several weekends we spent trawling through display homes, I took hundreds of photographs, but I saw almost no-one else doing the same.  I think not taking photos is crazy.  But, on reflection, I did take more photos than I needed, so here is my advice on this:

1. Take a photo of the sign in front of the house before you go in.  That way, you will have your photos grouped by each display home and it is easier to remember which house is which (trust me, they all become a blur after a while).

   

   Details - a staircase we liked. Go Figure

2. Take photographs of details you like, however small.  For example, Marina liked the low-set lighting in a staircase.  So we took a picture of it and later filed it (like many other ideas) in an "things we like" folder.
3. If you like a house, take lots of photos of all of the rooms.  For a couple of houses we liked, I stood in each corner of every room and took a photo, so that I could view the images alongside the floorplan when I got home.  This helped, especially remembering the vertical proportions of things (height of windows, ceilings etc).

Stay Grounded

Assuming that you are a 'normal' person, you will probably not get to live in a display home.  Even if you build the exact home on display, you will probably still end up disappointed.  This is because normal people have stuff: clutter, odd bits of miss-matched furniture, coat-racks, hat-racks, overflowing bookcases, kitchen appliances, unwashed dishes, laundry, hideous (but loved) holiday souvenirs, kick-knacks, kids toys and several prized (but hideous) amateur sports trophies that we hang on to.



I could have been a contender - my
2003 Division 5 (Runners Up) Soccer Trophy
will take pride of place in our new home.

So unless you are fortunate enough to afford to be able to buy new everything when you move in to your new home, all of this stuff is going to move in with you.  So you may as well start thinking straight off the bat about where you are going to put it all.

I am not trying to spoil the fun, but here are some of the practical questions that Marina and I asked ourselves when we walked in to every display home.  We asked ourselves these questions because we wanted to know if we were attracted to the layout of the house (which ultimately will have to be practical for our lifestyle), or the aspirational lifestyle that the presentation of the house implied/created:

• How will I lug the groceries from the car to kitchen butler's pantry?
• Where will the kids dump their school bags, sports bags and other junk when they get home from school / sports practice?
• Where will I hang my guests wet coats / umbrellas / hats on a rainy day?  And will my insurance cover their hip replacements when the slide on the wet porcelain tiles?
• How long will it take to clean these bathrooms, en-suites and powder rooms?  And more importantly, who do we think is going to do it?
• Where will the TV go?
• How often will we really use this home-theatre room?

With questions like these in mind, Marina and I were able to separate the houses we might genuinely be able to live from those we might want to live (if we had no kids and a butler)

Termites and Termite Protection

This is a post that I may add to (and clarify / correct) as I learn more.

Termites matter.  I think everyone I know knows someone whose house has been attacked by termites and the results have never been good.  So laying down termite protection when you are building is a very important step and one that builders should never skip over.

And because nearly all new houses these days are built out of timber, a termite attack is an attack on the structural integrity of the house itself.

What Are Termites?

Termites Attack! (not actual size, thankfully)

Termites (in Australia they are also called white-ants) are little insects that live in big underground nests.  They dig their way underground in tunnels in search of their favourite food - cellulose.  What is cellulose?  It is the primary ingredient in wood and the stuff that actually makes wood strong.  Termites live on cellulose and will travel a long way from their nest to find it.  They are a bit like ants in this regard for scavenging.   However, there is one big difference - termites hate sunlight and they hate being dry, so they never travel above ground.  All of their travels back and forth between their nest and a food source are underground and this is what makes them hard to detect if they start to attack your home.


Termite Protections used by Builders

If your house is build on a concrete slab, then the slab itself is a pretty good termite deterrent, given that it is very big and rather hard to chew through.  But the wily little critters are resourceful and persistent, so builders use special "treatments" on concrete slab homes to prevent termites from attacking by killing them.

People in the building industry refer to termite treatments as being "Part A" and "Part B".  Put simply, "Part A" treatments are put in place before the slab is laid, to prevent termites from coming up from underneath.  "Part B" treatments are put in place after the slab is laid and are intended to prevent termites from scaling the walls of the concrete slab.

What is a Part A Termite Treatment?

"Part A" treatments create a barrier beneath the slab, and can be either a physical or chemical barrier.  A physical barrier is typically a mesh of some kind, that termites can neither crawl nor bite through.  A chemical barrier is a spray (typically an insecticide) that is applied prior to laying the damp-proofing (the thick black plastic), prior to laying the concrete slab.

What is a Part B Termite Treatment?

"Part B" treatments are basically the same two options, these being physical mesh barriers or chemical barriers.  I have conflicting research that seems to suggest that chemical sprays used for Part B Termite treatments are only useful as long as the soil in which they are applied is not disturbed

Some of the physical barriers are designed to force termites to burrow up the outside of the wall of your house in search of timber to munch on.  They cannot do this exposed, and instead they will lay down small brown dirt tunnels on the outside wall of the house, in which they can scamper up and down.  These are easily spotted and will (hopefully) give you early warning of a impending termite attack.

Real Termite Protection

But this really brings home the point about termite protection when building a house - it is not really part of the construction process, but is a measure to protect against future damage to your home.

In reality, the best way to protect against termites is frequent inspections of your house perimeter and nearby trees to look for termite damage that might indicate there is a nest nearby.  I won't write about that here, but for those interested, there is a good site at the CSIRO that provides useful information on preventative measures termite protection.

http://www.csiro.au/en/Outcomes/Safeguarding-Australia/Termites.aspx

The Start

So we have started.


If you are going to follow this post series, then I will use this post to give an overview of who we are and the home-building project journey we are setting out on.


A bit about my wife and I. We've been married for 9 years and we like to kid ourselves that we have done this house-construction thing before. Well, sort of. The first house we bought together was an un-loved art-deco Californian bungalow in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. Like many first-home buyers, we purchased the house we could afford in the suburb we could afford and we worked really hard to make it our own. We painstakingly restored all the art-deco features, renovated it and did an extension to the house as owner-builders. Being owner-builders meant that unlike most renovation projects, where the house owners hand the project (and a load of cash!) over to a licensed builder, we had to take responsibility for everything and needed to be much more hands on.

Our first building project (photo taken at about the time
we had spent all the money we originally budgeted)

And how did our first extension project turn out? Well, we learned heaps about building and construction, we made plenty of mistakes, spent way more than we ever thought possible, and ended up with a house that we absolutely love.


It is also important to know that this experience did not make us renovation junkies, eager to audition for the next home-improvement reality TV show. By the time we were finished, we swore that we would never (ever!) do another building project and that we would happily live in our beautifully restored, renovated and extended art-deco home until we were old, grey and needed dentures.


But life doesn't work that way. We were able to stick to that plan for about 2 years, and then we started having children. Five years further on, three sprogs and a dog have appeared and suddenly our house is looking smaller and smaller as our kids start to grow up.



So we have made the big decision and we are going to do it again. The big differences this time are that (i) we are definitely not going to do it ourselves and (ii) we are definitely not going to renovate an existing house. The former because with three children, we just don't have the time to do it. And the latter because the first big lesson we learned (years ago) about renovation is that it is an act of love, not economics and it is often cheaper to knock down and rebuild an old house.


To that end, we have bought a old house in a leafy eastern suburb of Melbourne, and we plan to knock it down and rebuild on the site. The chances are we will be having our house built by one of the big "volume" builders from an off-the-shelf plan


Why am I writing? Well, I am writing it because it will hopefully help keep me sane as we go through the process of creating our new home.


So who should both to read this blog? I am hoping that these posts will be of use (or mild entertainment) to anyone who aspires to follow us down the path of building a new house.


How frequently will I post? Meh, who knows...