The Montague 21 ~

On a rare sunny day in Melbourne I packed up my husband and his parents to see some display homes. Boy oh boy the first houses were sooooo exciting and shiny and amazing and this is so much fun!!! and about five display homes in and this is melting my brain, I can't see another display home, I think I'll just pitch a tent on our land and call it a day.
Looking at the quality of the Porter Davis display homes we decided we are probably going to go with them, so I opened my phone (Praise to the gods of smart phones who enables us to see display homes with a few clicks) and saw the layout of the Montague 21 and had a great feeling that this is the house we've been looking for. After convincing my husband that the real deal is waiting for us in a display village about an hour and a half away we went to our very last display home. As we went into the Ibiza display of the Montague 21 (with the 4th bedroom, living, extended kitchen and grand alfresco options) my husband and I looked at each other and said "this is it". The greatness of the Montague is that it is efficiently and beautifully built. I love the big window in the kitchen and how you can see the whole back yard from the living areas. In my opinion it is the best configuration of open concept living. As we were indulging in the excitement of our new treasure we received a call from our Porter Davis sales consultant (coincidence? more like FATE!) who was excited to hear we found the house of our dreams and proceeded to crush it by telling us how much the site costs will be- a whooping 43k dollars!!!!!! 😬

Just what we need!

The sales consultant was an amazing person to deal with, is extremely friendly and understanding and took his time to explain in details the pricing. It's not about the fact that we need to pay 43k for the build but the surprise that we need to. Every big spend we have as long as we are aware that it's going to be big then we go to it with a smile.
After we received our land we revisited him and signed the contract, by that time the prices went up but there were pretty good special offers. The access range (our precious Montague) in that time made itself unavailable to our zone but because our lot is just on the edge of the zone and we already discussed building that house he allowed us to go with the Montague at no extra charge- did I say how amazing he is already? well, he is!
Honestly, my experience with Porter Davis thus far has been nothing but pleasant.

Plain on the outside, extraordinary on the inside!

How to choose your house and construction company.

The process of building a house is very confusing and can get stressful. Financially, it is very difficult to gauge how much it will actually cost you. What is included in the price of the standard house? what about hidden costs of electricity? blinds? furniture? fence? OMG! can we afford this? No way I am getting a laminate bench-top, how expensive is the stone upgrade? a simple google search will reveal upgrade lists of what other buyers paid for. Thank god for the kind people who prepared me to the approximately 13k dollars I ended up paying for the kitchen upgrades in WOS. If it weren't for them I would have had a heart attack instead of a good time picking my dream kitchen.
The other decision which is one of the hardest is with what building company to go with. Going through display homes with their designer furniture and top of the range finishes , you can't stop yourself from thinking, I can live here! But don't be blinded by the billions of LED light-fixtures that make the houses seem to sparkle, look at the floors- do they look even? do they squeak? look at the corners, is the craftsmanship good? are there any weird edges to the house? look at the roof at the bricks, look at the actual house, this is what you're mainly paying for. google the building company that you like their display home, read reviews carefully. I find that some people write bad reviews because a sales person didn't get back to them soon enough, even though it is annoying, it is not a legitimate reason to go for a different builder. legitimate reasons are problems with the structure of the house, the slab, the craftsmanship.

twinkle twinkle LED light

After talking to some friends who built with Porter Davis we decided to put them at the top of our list together with Carlisle Homes and Burbank.
And off we went to the glamorous world of display villages...
One story or two stories? standard range home or luxury range?
It's easy to get distracted by amazing grand houses but we had to remember that we don't need or want (or afford really) a grand house with so much to clean, with the money we are saving we can afford to decorate the hell out of our new home and get all the upgrades we want. Also, if you think about it, it takes just 1 iRobot to clean a single story home :) and honestly, I am sooooo lazy, I detest staircases. Even though two story homes provide more yard space they require me to do unwanted activities. No thank you.