Backstory - The Contract Appointment

A Bit More of our backstory and my advice - this time on the "Contract" Appointment

The contract appointment is a whole-of-day affair and we were required to front up to their office in Narre Warren for it at 9:00am - about a 90 minute drive from where we currently live.

Porter Davis make it clear that after the Contract Appointment, no further structural changes can be made without incurring additional costs.  In our case, this was not entirely true, as there were a couple of changes that we managed to sneak through after the contract appointment, most notably the creation of a space between the Rumpus Room and the Living Room.  But the basic principle is that once the engineers get their hands on the finalised quote, their time is your money and material changes are discouraged.

The day is structured into three parts - the first half of the day is given over to reviewing the house positioning and site costs, as well as reviewing and amending the quote that you previously signed off with the sales representative.  The primary reason it takes so long to get through this is the convoluted structure of Porter Davis quotes.  Basically, because the quote lists everything that is standard, then adds on top and extras, including "in lieu" replacements, and then adds extras that you may have requested.  So, in order to figure out what anything actually is, you often have to flick back and forth through several pages and line items in the quote, which is really annoying.

During the second part of the day, the quote and all the amendments you have requested are given over to someone who punches the details into a computer, which in turn spits out a 'final' quote, against which engineering drawings can be drawn up.  During this time, which is typically about 2 hours, the staff politely shove you out of the office and suggest the local shopping centre is worth a look to have some lunch and kill some time.

The third part of the day is basically a repeat of the first half, with the consultant walking you through the final changes, after which you can sign them off and hand over a deposit.

 

Advice
For what it's worth, here is my advice.

Visit Display Homes During your lunch break - Given that the focus of the day is to finalise your structural decisions, you can do a lot worse with your break time than to go and visit a couple of display houses.  There were a couple of display centres within a 20 minute drive and we jumped into the car and headed to the nearest.  It was time really well spent, because we had made some decisions in the morning that we were not entirely sure about.

One important thing that we did discover that we hadn't thought about was inset shelving ('nooks' as they are called) in showers.  We had forgotten to ask for these and visiting the display homes prompted us.  It turns out that these are considered to be 'structural', so if we had not gone back and asked for them, then it would have cost us extra later on.

Don't Take the Kids - There is no kids area at the Porter Davis offices, which is not suprising given that it is a working office.  Also, because it literally is a full day appointment, it would be really tough to keep kids occupied.  We took Chuggalugs, who, at 10 months, was happy to sleep in the pram or play with a few toys on the floor (but mainly sleep).  But it would be hell for older kids.

Manually Reconcile Quantities of Everything - It took three attempts for Porter Davis to quote the correct number of window frames and window frame types and we literally had to count them off the plans one by one in order to get it right.  These things would be annoying if discovered during construction, so it is worth being patient and doing it now.

Construction Update - Week 4 - Framing

Looks like the carpenters have been busy and it is very exciting to see the second storey of the frame going up.  Nothing much else to report, except I think I spotted the first mistake.  Not sure for certain, but I suspect having a sewerage outlet buried underneath the slab is not something that was planned.

Check out this friendly exchange of emails to Porter Davis.

"Hi

By way of introduction, I am Marina's husband and I am hoping you (or you can point me in the direction of someone who) can help me with a basic question.

In looking at the framing for the downstairs powder room, I was unable to figure out how the toilet would be plumbed.  I presume that the inbound cistern will be plumbed through the wall.  However (see photo) I am unclear how the waste plumbing will work as there does not appear to be an outlet roughed-in into the slab.

 I am not an expert in these things, but can you confirm that everything is ok?

Kind Regards

James"

"Hi James

Thank you for your email and rest assured there are no dumb questions in construction

I double checked the photo and have spoken to [your site supervisor] also, the actual waste point is there, but the top is covered slightly with concrete when the boys were smoothing out the slab surface.

I hope this helps to clarify the matter and please don’t hesitate to ask myself or [your site supervisor] any other (big or small) question in the future.

Have a great day.

Regards"

 

 

 

Here are the latest pics...

Frame from the Front

 

Frame from the Rear

 

Frame from the Rear

The Living Room and entrance to the Rumpus Room

 

 

Kitchen and Dining Area

 

 

Alfresco

Looking down the hallway towards the front entrance

 

Upstairs Master Bedroom

Downstairs Powder Room - I can see the outlet for the vanity,
but where is the outlet for the toilet!

 

Backstory - The Porter Davis Wembley 35 - Structural Changes We Made

With construction underway, here is a bit more backstory...

Having been through all the design and contract processes with Porter Davis, I can now look back and reflect on what (I think) have been the best structural decisions we have made along the way.  In many cases it took several conversations and some real persistence on our part to get what we wanted, but we don't believe we have missed out on anything that was important.

I have ranked these changes in rough order of how important they were to us - from potential deal-breakers to minor tweaks.

Creating an Opening Between the Rumpus Room and the Family Room
For us, this was the big one.  In our opinion, the one really big drawback of the Wembley 35 design (as compared the Fullerton 38, which we had also been looking at) was the fact that the downstairs Rumpus Room was enclosed and not part of a broader open-plan living area.  We asked Porter Davis if the wall could be removed and were told no.  Looking at the engineering drawings, I could see why - it appears that that wall supports part of the upstairs structure.


This was the compromise we asked for...

So, as a compromise, we asked if we could at least have an opening in the wall, to create a 'connection' between the Family room and the Rumpus room.  This is an effective design approach we had seen in a number of display houses.

A bit to my surprise, Porter Davis said "Yes you can."  And we were happy with that.  But then we got thinking and asked a few more questions.

"Can we make the opening really wide?"


This is sort of what we will be able to do between
the Family and Rumpus rooms...

"Yes, you can."

Interesting.  "Can the opening be from floor height?"

"Yes, it can."

Very Interesting. "Can we make go nearly all the way to the ceiling?"

"Sure, why not."

So now we have an opening that will go almost from one side to the other and almost all the way to the ceiling.  Our plan is to install (my wife wants me to build this myself) some open box cabinets, similar to the ones shown in the picture.  To accommodate this, we have also widened the wall to about 36cm.

Build right up to the Property Boundary
The wall of the garage of the house we have knocked down formed part of the northern boundary.  During the sales process with both PD and Simonds, we had been told that the house siting could accommodate positioning the new garage wall in the same location.

However, once we got to contract stage, Porter Davis were insistent that they never ever (ever!) built to the boundary of a property, but instead always allowed a 150mm gap.  The reason, they cited, was that property boundaries often came into dispute, so building to the boundary was something that they just never did.  In retrospect, I have to confess that it sounds like a bit of BS - as the builder, a property boundary dispute has nothing to them.

During the contract negotiation phase, we were disappointed with this, but just kind of accepted it.  From our perspective, we were still getting the house we wanted, just 15cm south of precisely where we hoped it would be.

However, it was the local council who had an objection.  Due to overshadowing concerns, they insisted that the whole house be moved 15cm to the north, with the garage wall forming the boundary.  Given that the council's opinions on this were now delaying the start of construction (and therefore payments to Porter Davis), it was amazing how quickly the plans were redrawn (inclusive of non-intrusive box guttering!) to accommodate this.  Suddenly it was AOK to build to the boundary.


No Quad!
One of the things that we disliked the most about display houses with timber floors was the use of quad between the edge of the floorboards and the skirts.  Builders do this because (in order to protect them from damage from tradies boots and so on) the floorboards are installed as one of the very last things.  This means that the skirts are installed and then the floorboards are installed, not the other way around.

Okay, I'm a snob, but I think this looks cheap

Once installed, to deal with any unsightly gaps between the floorboards and the skirts, a perimeter of quad is tacked down.  Call me a snob, but I think it just looks cheap and ugly.

During our contract negotiations, Porter Davis absolutely refused to do this any other way and to a certain extent I can see why - it would be expensive for them to have to fix damage caused to the floorboards.  However, we did come up with a happy compromise.  We suggested that PD not fit the skirts at all as part of the contract.  Instead, they would lay the floorboards to the walls and leave the skirts in the garage for us to paint and fit ourselves after handover.  They agreed, and although it creates extra work for us prior to moving in, we think our house will look much better for it.


Extension of the Alfresco to the edge of the Family area
We have extended the Alfresco area to make it a bit bigger, but without going for the "Grand Alfresco" option.

The 'Standard' Alfresco Option



Our Alfresco

Replaced the rear doors with timber bi-fold doors
In addition to the Alfresco extension, we have also replaced the standard rear doors with a 5-panel Timber Bi-Fold Door.  The positioning of this is shown in the picture above.

 

A Cavity Sliding Door to the Walk-In Pantry
We have swapped the swinging normal door out for a sliding door, to create better access and more space inside the pantry for shelving and storage.  See picture below.

Removal of the WIP Window
We removed the window in the walk-in pantry so as to allow more bench and shelving space.

Walk-In Pantry Changes

Removal of Wall Next to Walk-In-Pantry Door
We removed this wall as so as to open up the kitchen space a bit more.  See picture below.

A Galley Bench for the Kitchen instead of the L-Shaped Bench
We opted for a Galley Kitchen bench, set slightly back from the normal position, so that we could maximise the space in the dining area.

 

Kitchen Changes

 

A Power-Point in the Kitchen Bench
Not a structural change, but this was one of the dumbest conversations we had with Porter Davis during the contract phase.  We had requested installation of a power point in the island bench and were told, no, that was not possible - something to do with interfering with the dishwasher.  Again, as with other discussions, we were persistent and eventually emailed PD a picture from another Wembley 35 blog, where precisely what we were asking for had been done.  Suddenly, it could be done and was included in our contract.

A Sliding Cavity Door to the Laundry
One weakness (in our opinion) of the Wembley 35 is that the laundry is not particularly big.  As a family with three sprogs, we produce a lot of dirty clothes and mess, so a bigger laundry never goes astray.  So, to maximise the storage and working space in the Laundry, we have installed a cavity sliding door.

A Door to the 'Lounge' instead of an opening
We plan to use what Porter Davis call the Lounge as a guest bedroom and home office.  So we have replaced the opening from the hallway with a normal door.

A Door from the Garage to the Hallway
The standard plans do not include an internal door from the Garage - we have had one included.

Re-Locate the Windows of Bedrooms 3 and 4 to Face the Rear
We have moved the windows in bedroom 3 & 4 to face the rear of the property, which for us is east.
This also means we have relocated the wardrobe in bedroom 4.

Widening the Garage
Our block is wide enough for us to expand the garage from standard to around 6.2 meters wide.  This will comfortably fit all of our family transportation, including cars, trikes, bikes, scooters and space-hoppers.

Rear Roller Door on the Garage
It won't be a huge opening, but we have paid a bit extra to have a rear roller door installed.

Double-Glazing on all Front-Facing Windows
We happen to have a bus stop right outside the front of out property, so we have opted for double glazing to reduce any noise.

Construction Update - Week 3 - Slab is poured and Frame is started

We were expecting the slab to be poured on Monday and it was.  What was a surprise is how much work has been done on the frame, even though it has been a pretty wet week here in Melbourne.  It's actually quite exciting.

We have engaged an independent building inspector who performed a slab inspection for us.  The report he sent through was pretty comprehensive and included photos of a couple of cosmetic issues that he thought we should be aware of.  Having had a good look around myself now, I think what he is referring to is very minor.  But it is really good to have someone involved who can at least point these things out to you, as I would never have noticed.

With the slab poured, we also now have the joy (not!) of dealing with Porter Davis' Accounts Receivable department.  The slab was poured on Monday and the invoice was emailed to us on Monday before the concrete had even settled.  I suppose I can live with that.  What we are finding a bit obnoxious is the twice-a-day calls from Porter Davis demanding payment.  Literally, twice a day if you don't call them back straight away.  And all this, for a payment that is not (at the time of writing) actually due until tomorrow.

Here are some pictures.

From the Front

From the Rear

From the Rear

The Afresco Area

Looking down the main hallway and out where the front door will be...

Looking out the windows of what will be my home office...

Here are a few extras.  The picture below was raised by the independent inspector and is an example of how detailed their inspections are.  I'm not so fussed, but it is good to know...

Apparently there is something wrong here...

 

Having been an owner builder previously, I thought lintels needed to not have joins in them, but most of ours are made up of two pieces of timber.  

 




Construction Update - Week 2 - Preparation for Pouring the Slab

We are building a Porter Davis Wembley 35 and it looks as though the preparations for pouring the slab are complete.  All the timber form-work is in place, as well as the steel re-enforcement and the polystyrene blocks.

Interestingly, in terms of volume (as you can see by the pictures) the slab itself will be mostly polystyrene.  I guess it saves on concreting costs, particularly as the slab only really needs thick where it needs to support the weight of the house - that's around the perimeter where the outer walls will be.

The other piece of work that is obviously done is the laying of pipes that go under and/or through where the slab will be poured.

Underneath the slab, a layer of think plastic has been laid down, which I presume is the termite barrier.

All good progress and,fingers crossed (weather permitting), our slab will be poured in the coming week.




Preparation for the Slab (from Front)





Preparation for the Slab (from Rear)



A Sign Put Up by our Neighbours - Need to ask them about that...

'Let yourselves out'... I presume that says
something about supervision...

 

Yep, I get the impression that not a lot
of supervision is going to take place

Backstory - Dealing with the Sales People

Ok, this is the first of my "back-story" posts that fills in the gaps from us initially looking at Display Homes and Builder's Catalogues, to actually commencing work on the construction this week.  A lot happened and I will try to progressively post the story, as well as any advice I might have for those following in our footsteps.

 

This post tells the long (rambling) story of dealing with the Sales Representatives for several volume builders.

 

After spending a weekend looking through display homes, we contacted several builders to arrange appointments to discuss their homes and get their sales 'spiel'.  Marina arranged for several of them to come to our house, which several of them agreed to do, but we know now is not the preferred way they work.

 

Simonds Homes - "Busted Balls"

We christened the first sales rep we met "Busted Balls", and with good reason.  We had scheduled to meet him on a Friday evening at our house, to go through the plans of one of the display homes we had seen and liked.  I was running a few minutes late getting home and he was already waiting on our front doorstep.  I could see his car parked on the kerb outside our house and noticed that there was a woman sitting in it.

I introduced myself to him and suggested that he was more than welcome to invite is wife/partner into the house.  He said thanks, no, it's fine and that she was ok to stay in the car.

I have a feeling that this poor guy had expected the meeting to take 10, maybe 15 minutes - probably as long as you can reasonably expect to leave your wife in the car while you talk to clients.  "No trust me, honey, I'll be 10 minutes with these guys, 15 minutes tops!  Then I'll take you out for a nice dinner, just the two of us..."  But sadly no, we kept this poor man trapped in our house with our incessant questions for over an hour.  We even suggested to him, again, after about half an hour, that he might wish to invite her in to at least to get out of the cold.   But no, he said, she was fine and they were going out to dinner later.  He was really helpful, which was part of the problem - we were talking to someone who actually knew something about building and construction.

So anyway, I figure that when he finally escaped our house and got into his car, his wife duly tore his nuts off - hence his name.

Porter Davis - Mr "I'm not a Sales Person, I'm an Engineer"

The Porter Davis Fullerton 38 - Yep, we could see
ourselves living here

The second sales person we met was from Porter Davis.  We were quietly hopeful that this would be a good meeting, because we rather fancied one of the Porter Davis homes we had seen.  And on the plus side, he was really nice.  The downside was that he just a little bit useless when it came to being helpful.  His problem was that he considered himself to be "an engineer" rather than a salesperson, so pedestrian considerations such as actually walking a client through a display home to explain the details to them were somewhat beneath him.  His approach was that if we had already seen the display home, then we could simply tell him what we wanted and he could quote on that.  So we did our best to describe what we wanted and he (to his credit) took lots of notes.  48-hours later, we had the quote for our dream home.  More about what happened with Porter Davis later...

Carlisle Homes - Mr "No!"

We met with a representative from Carlisle Homes, who we quickly christened Captain No.  For him, everything was simply "No".

"Can we re-size the upstairs parents retreat?" - "No."

"Can we re-configure the ensuite layout?" - "No."

"Can we..." - "No."

Carlisle - Nice House, no flexibility

 

I freely admit that I am a persistent beggar, so I challenged him on exactly why he was not willing to discuss any alterations.  After all, most of the other sales reps were wooing us with their flexibility ("you want a toilet mounted on the roof? Why yes, of course we can do that!").  Turns out (according to him) that their tradies work off fixed plans and that varying those plans always causes issues.  Seriously, their tradies are that bad?  Anyway, with no flexibility, there was no future to the relationship, so we let him go and we dumped the Carlisle brochures into the recycling.

Carter Grange - Cool Guy

The guy from Carter Grange was really knowledge, nice and flexible.  Nothing witty or interesting to say really.  Carter Grange only build their houses with Hebel, so (in my opinion) all their houses look like low-rise office blocks.  They call it "contemporary", I call it "office block".  Check here for my thoughts on building in Hebel.

And Back to Porter Davis...

So we had a quote from Porter Davis and went back to the display home on which the quote was based that weekend and wandered around trying to make sense of what was quoted on paper - it made no sense.  Not knowing any better, we stuck our heads into the office at the site and asked a friendly-looking woman if she could assist us by showing us what in the house was on our quote.  And that was how we met Miriam.

 

We think Miriam is actually really great, but on our first encounter with her she was a bit of a bitch - at least at first.  She was really put out that we would ask her for assistance and actually told us off for not having arranged to meet our sales rep at the display home.  She added that it was not her job to show us through as we were not her clients.  We tried to explain to her that our so-called sales rep was actually an "engineer" who didn't take clients through display homes and she didn't believe us.  Then she saw the quote in our hands.

"Is that a quote?" she asked

 

"Yes", we said,

"How did you get that?", now Miriam was standing up, hands on hips

"Our sales rep emailed it to us."

"So he has shown you through the property, then?"

"No."

"How did he prepare the quote?"

"He came to our house."

"Your house?"

"Yes"

"And he has never shown you through the display home..."

"No."

Miriam paused, rolled her eyes and sighed, "Right then, let's start all over..."

We'll never know what else Miriam had to do that morning, but she packed away whatever she was doing, sat us down and then explained the process and proceeded to spend over 2 hours with us, showing us through the house and helping us prepare a new quote.

We pretty much decided there and then that we would go with that house and Miriam, (but boy did we make her work for it).

 

Making a Final Decision

Over the next three months, we ended up working with both Busted Balls and Miriam.  Much to their mutual frustration, we did not make a decision quickly and circled back to both of them repeatedly, asking for modifications to their designs and quotes.  While we were happy to play them off against each other, we were torn between choosing the two houses that Simonds and Porter Davis offered.  Our problem was that we loved the façade and presentation of the Simonds house (the Oxford), but found the interior a bit pokey and constrained for our needs.  On the other hand, we loved the interior of the Porter Davis house (the Fullerton), but felt the facades truly sucked.

The Simonds Oxford - We loved the Façade



The Porter Davis Fullerton-38 - We loved the Interior

Busted Balls was awesome in his responsiveness.  We asked him to quote to have the entire 2-storey house extended by exactly 960mm to accommodate our enormous dining room table and sure enough, 48 hours later, we had a quote inclusive of the engineering costs to this.

 

Miriam was different.  With Miriam, it was clear that her end goal was to get us to sign and that pretty much everything she did was oriented to that end.  There were a lot of changes we wanted to make to the Fullerton and we figured things out one step at a time.  Miriam probably had to draw up 10 different quotes for us.

 

But in the end we decided to with the Simonds home, not so much because of the service, but because to get the Fullerton to the layout we wanted (and we couldn't get a façade that we liked) we were starting to make substantial (and expensive) changes to the layout.  The Simonds design just seemed easier.

When we told Miriam where our thinking was at, she went into hyper-drive.  She started pointing us back to plans in the Porter Davis catalog that were not available as display homes.  She surprised us - she had been listening all along and was able to steer us towards one or two plans that actually better fits for our needs than the Fullteron.  She even admitted that she felt that the Fullerton was "limited" in its facades.

So just when we thought that we had made up our minds, we flipped again.  We started seriously looking at a design called the Wembley (all the Porter Davis houses have posh sounding names) and the more we looked at it, the more we liked it more than both Simonds or the Fullerton.

The story ends with us signing with Porter Davis to build a Wembley-35.

Advice

For what it's worth, here is my advice about working with the Volmue Builder Sales Reps through this stage of the process.

Work with 2 or more Builders at once - Even if you fall in LOVE with just one house, find two or three houses that you would be happy with and work with each of the builders through as much of the process as possible.  Things that one builder includes become the questions you ask the other and visa versa, meaning that you will quickly get a clear picture of everything you are getting (and everything you are not getting).

 

Don't be pressured into signing - the more work you do on your quote at the outset, the clearer your budget will be before you commit.  There are many things that the builders will advise can be sorted out "at tender".  But by that stage you are already more or less locked in.  Remember that this is possibly the biggest investment you will ever make, and all those little details can also be sorted out up front just as easily.

Ask for incentives to sign - sales people have monthly quotas, so waiting until the end of the month to sign des not hurt and always, always ask what would be in it for you to sign now (as opposed to, say, in 2 or 3 weeks time)

 

Construction Update - Week 1 - Levelling and Piering

Finally something is happening!

After an originally scheduled site-start in January was scuppered by problems raised by the council (I'll post about that later), weeks had drifted by and suddenly we found ourselves in early March.

With our council problems finally resolved, we had been told by Porter Davis that we could expect a "site start" of 12th March, and, sure enough, an excavator turned up to our block on the morning of the 12th.

These photos were taken on 15th, and it is pretty clear that some real progress has finally been made.  The cut-back and flattening of the block for the slab has been done.  But also (I wasn't expecting this) the piers for the slab have been put in.

Porter Davis have also told us that, weather permitting, they will be pouring the slab on the 24.

Happiness


This is the block on the 15th.  It is pretty clear (especially looking at the shot from the rear) to see where the excavator has done its work.

Excavation Viewed from Front of Block

 

 

From the rear of the block, it is really clear where the excavator has been doing its work.





Excavation viewed from Rear of Block

 

 



 My new front door will be here!

Piering

 

 

And this is going to be our "Alfresco" extension - I can't quite yet visualise the "luxurious in-door/outdoor lifestyle options" the Porter Davis sales rep was talking about, but I'm sure that will come.

More Piers