Countdown is on!

2 weeks until handover...

Assuming all goes to plan.

I am quietly confident that everything will come together nicely, but I don't want to get my hopes up too high.

We have handed in our notice to our real estate agent, paid for our insurance and we received our final progress payment yesterday and that has been sent off to the bank.
Let's hope the bank gets its act together and processes it quickly and doesn't delay anything.

We had a sticky beak in the window yesterday, the tiler has been there tiling the main living area floor downstairs. It looks fantastic.

We have a walk through booked in for next Wednesday, so hopefully all the little things that need doing will be done or close to being done.

A few things left to do still;
- shower screens, wardrobe railings, shelving in pantry, mirrors
- fly screens and screen doors
- insulation in the roof requires spreading
- acid burnt bricks need replacing & a few bricks need fixing.
- timber screen to the front facade needs to be installed
- paint touch ups
- carpet
- tiling - a couple of tiles need to be done
- stair case needs to be stained
- site clean up
- internal clean

And then the obvious ones, all the installation of appliances etc on handover.

We are taking delivery of one of our lounges next Wednesday, not sure where we'll store that, but King couldn't deliver it once we were in because their warehouse is under renovation.

The DA for retaining walls should be through soon, we had to submit additional paperwork, so now we just wait!
That's our Christmas job, installed 900mm high retaining walls to the rear of our block and to the sides.

The land is OURS!

With the fences down on our release, we are now able to visit the land freely!

It's a beautiful view up there, hopefully we will be able to capture a peek at the views once we're built.

We've mapped out on our land where our house will sit, it's exciting to see what size yard we'll have.

So onto the exciting news, we now are the proud "owners" of our block of land.

Settlement was due on the 9th of May, of course nothing ever goes smoothly, our cheque was lost in the post on the way to the solicitor for settlement!
This meant that settlement was delayed until yesterday (10th) the cheque still hadn't shown up, so I madly dashed to the bank, waited an hour for the bank to do their thing to enable them to cancel the cheque, redeposit the cheque and rewrite the cheque!
With an hour and a half to spare, I sped down the M4 to Elizabeth Street in the city, as I travelled in I phoned the settlement agency's solicitor who was waiting on a street corner to collect the cheque from me.
I pulled up at a red traffic light in the CBD and I had a lady motion at me... something about a cheque.
I put the window down, she asked me for the cheque, I passed the envelope out of the window and off I went again.
There was a moment there where I wondered if I had given the cheque to the right person!

My conveyancer called about 45minutes later to confirm that settlement had taken place and the land is now "ours"... or the banks..

Our DA has been approved through council, our builder uses a private certifier to get our construction certificate, so that's underway at the moment.
We've got a few weeks until our build commences so in the mean time we've got paperwork to submit to prove ownership and finances, colours to confirm and then it's all systems go!!

Hopefully my next update will be a fence or a portaloo or something to symbolise that we're on our way!!!