Clarendon Build - Boston 36

We had our external colour selection appointment with Austral - a relatively basic experience. We went in knowing we what brick we wanted - a $5,500 upgrade - and that with the rest of the colours we wanted to stay within the gray colour family. The above image is what we ended up with. We chose roofing materials and colours, gutter and fascia colours, window and door frame colours, the garage door, the entry door, render options and driveway colors. The frustrating part is the consultant did not know ANY prices. So even though we made our selections, they may still change when we find out the pricing. They also have this iview option that's  supposed to allow you to see your home with the choices you just made. But none of it is exact. The colours don't come out quite right and supposedly its expensive for builders to upload numerous facades so you get one that not yours anyways - all in all quite pointless really. My advice  - just go in with some clarity for ...

Now that the hard stuff has been done - its time for the fun things. Choosing everything for your home. I have to tell you, its not as easy as i thought. I think the novice within me just thought 'yep - i've got this' but there is just SO much to consider and analyze. Or over analyze if you're anything like me. The first steps: at the contract appointment go to the colour studio and just book your colours appointment - don't wait! There's lots to do. We gave ourselves two weeks to do a little more research, we spent more time at the colour studio, visited both brick yards (PGH & Austral) and did a tile tour with tiles direct. Clarendon advises you that you must have your bricks chosen before your colours appointment with them - so off we went... We knew we wanted GREY but that was about it... PGH was our first stop and we found two that we liked. Nothing in the included range is gray. Sadly. So we knew we were up for an upgrade. We had alloted $5k ...

The contract appointment was quite uneventful. Literally crossing the Ts and dotting the Is. All in all quite quick and simple. We have received a 42 week build time frame so will see in due course if that will eventuate. The one thing with the contract appointment is that you just have to resign yourself to the process at this stage. Go with the flow. Just take note of the payment deadlines, and any penalties that may apply. Don't get caught out with this. This is also when you will have to pay the stipulated 5%. We asked to pay less (in advance) as we simply didn't have the money and they agreed - thankfully. The fun stuff is next to come :)

We now have our design plans with the changes we discussed at the tender appointment. We really stayed away from moving too many things around. After all, home design and build is their area of expertise. We removed a door, changed a couple of window sizes, and added an additional slider door to the alfresco area - we really wanted an open, airy, bright space. That was about it. We are now a couple of weeks away from the contract date. Nugget of wisdom: This might be an obvious one but ask a LOT of questions. The tender appointment is your opportunity to do the real big changes - if you do this at a later stage you will incur additional costs, and delays. Or may not be able to do them at all! Also consider the position of the home on your block of land - make sure you have thought about how you will use the home. Where will the water tank go, the air conditioning unit, the clothes line? Those 'ugly' things you may not want to have in the section that will become your mai...

Well that was something! What an odd, and emotionally draining meeting for me. The tender appointment. The good news is we came in under budget - our additional site costs were just under $5,000. The big surprise that we got was due to the slope on our block - which initially didn't seem that large. It seems there is just under a 2m slope running diagonally across the block. What does this mean in the long run? We need to think about the final appearance of our home once the build is complete - to fill or not to fill? The issue it seems is that we will either require some drop edge beams built with the slab which would then mean our alfresco would be about 1m off the ground, which means it'll need railings... eg a balcony. Which is not what i ever imagined so its been quite hard to shift my thoughts ... my imagination to visualise something else. The other option is to put in a ton of retaining walls - which we got a quote for $24k. The drop beams once everything is fin...

We are about to embark on our new home build and i will be posting all updates and notes here. I found information scarce when i was searching for details regarding your experiences with building with Clarendon; so i am hoping this helps some of you with your new build. In the meantime, live vicariously! We are looking at building the Boston 36 with a Gallery facade (image of facade above, taken from Clarendon website). We have a 600sqm block in the Penrith council area. Our initial goal was to build the Sheridan 39 but we were told due to council restrictions this home could not fit onto our block of land - something to do with the ratio of living space you are allowed to have . We have our tender appointment coming up next week so we will have more information then. The starting price for the Boston 36 with the sapphire specifications was $412,000 so it'll be interesting to see what price we will end up with. We have a lot of upgrades that we want to do, and we think need...