Our plot is there

Well its been two weeks since our last visit as we have been granted Permanent Residency (yay!) and had to go to Singapore to have the visas put in our passports.  Had a great time in Singapore but back now and have just been up to Ellenbrook to see whats happening.

Quite a lot happened again and our plot is finally there :o)

The below picture is looking down Karridale Vista towards the park area, our plot is to the right of this but out of view.

Below is the right hand retaining wall

Below is the plot looking from the right hand side

Below is the plot looking from the left hand side

And as we went to Singapore and I had some money burning a hole in my pocket I treated myself to a video camera so you can see things properly from now on

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Karridale Vista appears out of the sand!

As George went to the gym today, and me now being a gym lover as we all know, I was at a loose end I thought I would pop up to Ellenbrook to get out of the house for a couple of hours.  Much to my surprise quite a lot has happened since last week :o)

First things first the nice people at LWP have put up a sign which shows us a plan of what we are looking at, you can see whole area from this and i've taken a closer up picture below which is zoomed in specifically on our street.

The white dot on the bottom right of the plan is where the sign is and behind the sign is the parkland you can see on the right of the plan.

Now I can show you around, the below picture is just past the sign which is on the road called Lomas Circle.  To the right is the park area and you can also see the cobbled paving going in which is being used on our road and I would assume all the roads you see on the plan.

This is continuing on Lomas Circle as you can see the paving runs out here and just off to the left is Geographe Loop.

Below is Geographe Loop taking shape quite nicely, you can see on the left hand side the retaining walls are going on on the plots ive taken another picture from the opposite side of the road below so you can see them a bit better

Walking up Geographe Loop the retaining walls are in and some of the plots are finished and they have even started to put the stone detailing into the retaining walls which is going to throw our house colour plans into disarray but thats a different story...

Back onto Lomas Circle I thought i'd walk up a bit further and much to my surprise Karridale Visa is there now.  Okay theres not much to see yet but they have laid the base to the road and you can see the centre of the street where the trees will finally end up. 

Our house is lot 7124 which is about half way up, still cant get there without wading through a sandpit so that will have to wait for a few weeks yet I think but still exciting to see it all taking shape.

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Retaining walls and roads going in

Have been running around display homes today for inspiration on what colour schemes to use and while we were up north we thought we would drop by Ellenbrook to see if anything had happened with the land.

To our surprise there are now some nice paved roads going in which meant we could get a bit closer to where our plot it and you can now also see some retaining walls going up which means the plots are being separated.  Sorry for the crappy photo quality only had my iPhone on me

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Signed up a builder

Well we have signed up our builder and its full steam ahead!

We were tossing up between two companies, Homebuyers Centre and Ultimate Homes, they both had great plans but Homebuyers were more of a "starter" building company while Ultimate are considered to be much better quality and part of quite a well regarded building group.  The trade off if we went with Ultimate is that we would have to lose the pool (sob) until we can afford it as $30k can go a long way towards kitting out the house properly...

Ultimate won in the end purely down to the house design and what we considered to be a better standard specification which we thought would save us a bit in the long run once we started to look at furnishing the house, we had asked them both to add certain things to their plans and Homebuyers were quite a bit more expensive on their extras so for flexibilty we decided to run with Ultimate.  We can live without a pool until we can afford it and will leave the space there for it to be put in later, its a shame but its obviously a lot of money which we dont have at the moment.

The Ultimate House rough plan is below shown sat on our piece of land, the house is called the Newport but we have made quite a few changes including:

• Removing what we thought was a useless open study area behind the kitchen
• Extending the Kitchen into the study area to make it much bigger
• Removing a games room to the left of bedroom 4
• Extending Bedrooms 3 & 4 into part of where the games room was and also extending the Alfresco area
• Raising the ceilings throughout the main living area and foyer to 31 courses to make it feel more airy
• Sunken the floor in the Home Theatre
• Double shower into the main bedroom En Suite
• Removing the Power Room and relocating the basin into the main bathroom, although that change isnt on this rough plan

If I get a second i'll scan the unchanged plan so you can see what we have changed better.

Have a few months now for the proper plans to be drawn up, to have site surveys and to choose finishings before things can start properly.

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Swan Valley calling

Have been up to Ellenbrook again this weekend to see more builders and have even more meetings, think we are almost there with the decision but just need a few more days to mull things over as we have two plans which we really like but we arent in any real rush not yet even having PR (grrrr).

We drove round the other way out of Ellenbrook tonight though and didnt even realise just how close we are to the Swan Valley wine loop until today!  The Vines resort is literally 2 minutes from our house and the wine loop is well within 5 minutes.

Family are going to hate it up here when they visit!

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Malvern Springs

Very springs like isnt it...

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Ellenbrook, our little bit of Australia

Well the deposit is down and our offer has been accepted by the land owner.  The big build adventure starts here!

The plot is on Karridale Vista which is on the new Malvern Springs part of Ellenbrook which is currently just a big mass of sand where they are clearing bushland but by April the land should be titled and we will own our plot which is a very decent sized 660m2.

You can see more info on Ellenbrook here: www.ellenbrook.com.au

You can download the brochure for Malvern Springs here: www.beyondtheplan.com.au/Documents/Developments/ellenbrook/Naturaliste_brochure.pdf

Apparently the artists impressions in the brochure are of our street, think it might just take a few years to look anything like that considering how it looks at the minute!

Now to find a builder...
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