Design Council Approvals

Building in The Ponds means that you have to agree to build within some very strict guidelines - most of which Clarendon take care of. Some of the things that we had to keep in mind were:
* 3 different textures at the front of the house
* 1 large tree in the backyard and 2 medium size trees in the front yard
* a substantial letter box - specially no "box on a stick" - yes it really says that in the guidelines!
* mostly native plants
* percentage of hard vs soft landscaped areas
* boundary distances from sides, front and back of land
and the list goes on.

All of this must be approved by The Ponds Design Council before we can submit to Blacktown Council to ensure that we are keeping in line with "a great street." Along with submitting for the house we also had to create a landscape plan (something that is apparently common practice in the UK, but a surprise for Lauren - How on earth do you put together a landscape plan for a block of land you haven't even walked on yet - a landscape plan where you have to specify exactly which plants you are going to place where!)

Clarendon offered to do this for us, but we had a lot of ideas in our head of how we would like to put it together and decided that we could undertake this task ourselves - this came with the risk of the Design Council not liking our plans.

Doug was able to turn my sketches into a professional-looking landscape plan, drawn to scale and using a great colour key. He spent a lot of time looking through various sites finding fantastic natives to put in along with some great plants that have multiple uses.

Plants we have included are:
Little Gem Magnolia (large tree)
Olive Tree (small tree)
Tibouchina (small tree)
Crinium Pendunculatum
Kangaroo Paw
Gymea Lilly
Templetonia Retusa
Lilly Pilly
Cuphea
Cordyline Australias
Agave Gemini Flora
Poligara Myrtifolia
Lobularia Snow Princess
Bird of Paradise

I spent a lot of time looking around a different blogs, reading the Home One Forum and talking to people who had submitted their own plans and what it took for them to be approved and learning from the pitfalls they experienced. Before submitting the plan I then went through the Design Guidelines with a fine tooth comb and ticked everything off to confirm that we had complied. We really didn't want to get held up by having to make changes to the plans submitted.

All of the extra checking really did pay off because only one week after submitting to the council we got the message from Clarendon that our plans had been approved! We were expecting 2-6 weeks, so in only 7 days this was definitely a nice surprise.

Now we are getting everything ready to be submitted to Council - the land was registered on the 11th September (4 months after original expections) so as soon as Council gives us the go-ahead we are ready to get the slab laid.

Check check check

Something I am noticing is that EVERYTHING needs to be checked. Do not assume that things will be correct. I noticed that major elements of our tender (original inclusions and promotional offers) were not followed through into our variations list to sign - major items like lower level insulation; lower level hot water system; wrong oven.

I am sure that at some point these will be noticed - i.e. the kitchen is being built for a 900mm oven, when the 600mm oven turns up it will be too small! But I do not want the argument that will happen to get the changes made not to mention the wasted time.

By going through everything very carefully now, future arguments with the builder can be avoided. My opinion is that the builder is building over 100 houses at a time, all at different stages, all with different promotions attached. We are building one house, with one set of rules to follow. We should take the time to check it and make sure it is right.

Variation Prices

Now that all of the variations have come through, I thought I would post the costings for these things. Some we have gone ahead with and some we haven't, but it was always something I was interested in finding out before we signed with Clarendon but was difficult to find.

Kitchen
Cabinet above fridge space $510
Additional drawers $110 each
Towel rail $42
Two tone kitchen joinery $290
Bulkhead $720

Bathroom
Obscure glass to main bathroom and ensuite $90 each
Privacy lock to main bathroom and ensuite $25 each
Grange semi frameless shower screens to main bathroom and ensuite $412.50 each
Increase size of mirror to match vanity in both main bathroom and ensuite $30 each

Exterior
Corinthian Infinity 6G front entry door and sidelight $1710
Corinthian Infinity 8G front entry door and sidelight $1810
Provide additional deadbolt $90