After a few tender revisions and a long wait for the land to be registered we are finally here in September 2017. We were one of the fortunate few who registered within 6 months of buying the lot. We know a few people whose wait was a year or two.
The South West moment
We had a detailed plan walk through with the CSR and as we thought all is good for the contract our parents told us that the entrance of the house should not be facing the South West. We had a few anxious moments and arguments over this. Our block of land was facing the South West and it would take a lot of alterations to get the entry door to face any other way.
After a few days we decided to progress with angling the door to the west. This seemed to work well for both us as well as the builder. We had some 3D views of our facade and it did not look to be that bad an option after all.
We had decided to pay 20 percent of the price for the land. Meanwhile we got an intimation from the agent for our land, that our file had moved to the council for registration and in 21 days we would have the final settlement done. It is after this that we could provide the builder with any change of plans w.r.t the site.
As soon as our land settled we had our solicitor to request for a registered plan for our block of land and passed it on to W . Thankfully nothing had changed for us and that meant no added site costs or last moment surprises.
Following this our CSR requested for the final contract plans and we had our plan walkthrough.We looked at the tender and the contract plans with a magnifying lens just to make sure we had not missed out on anything. Also checked all the windows and doors. Some of the points to watch out for are:
- Make sure all the doors and windows are as per your request
- Make sure you have all the water points listed and catered for. ( We had a cold water point for the fridge and also the laundry connected to cold water point instead of the rain water)
- Make sure all the structural changes requested for are in place
- Actual ceiling height is measured before the flooring is in place. So make sure your flooring is selected such that it does not affect your desired ceiling height much. Some of our friends who got flooring of their choice done externally faced issues at later stages.(esp with granite which needs a thick bed underneath )
- One of the things to keep in mind is that the roof pitch should be minimum 25 degrees so that a human is able to pass through in case of any repairs
There were a few minor mistakes and we got them rectified immediately. At the end of it all we signed our contract and sealed the deal for of course a price of 5% of the whole build. The next step was selections for which we had been eagerly waiting all this long….