Looking at building your first home? 

Follow along with our Window Design expert, Liv, as she begins the exciting journey of building her very first home with her partner Josh.  There are a lot of moving parts to building your first home, and we believe with knowledge there is power!  Liv will be sharing the highs and lows that come alongside venturing on a first build, we hope this can assist you and make your journey easier!

Throughout the whole build process, David sent us weekly updates of how the house was tracking along.  Quite often he sent us photos of the tradies in action which was really cool to see.

The following two weeks included digging out the foundation, filling it, boxing it up and pouring the foundation.  We visited the section almost every day after work, checking out the progress (which we did for the following several months!)  It was exciting seeing all of the other new builds progress around us too!  We were looking forward to being a part of this new neighbourhood.

Our First Walkthrough!
Next up was framing and the roof trusses!  This was super exciting because now it was actually starting to look like the skeleton of a house!  With David’s permission we were able to visit in the weekend and have our first walk through with the framing up.  Most of our family joined us too and even though it was a terrible rainy day, no one was going to miss this first walk through!  So, in our raincoats and boots, we all weaved through the obstacle course of timber.  It was so cool taking our family on a tour and getting a good feel of the size and layout of each space.

Then the roof fascia and gutters were added, followed soon after by the roof in the first week of April!  We couldn’t believe they managed to put it on in just one day!  The house exterior was then covered in building wrap which made it feel slightly less like a skeleton and more like a home with walls when we walked through it.  Next were the windows, followed by the bricks!  We were over the moon with the windows and really happy with the joinery colour which matched the roof.  We were a little anxious about the bricks as it was a tricky decision choosing the colour.  But as soon as we saw them, we felt like we made the right decision and were so happy with the darker colour which looked very smart with our dark Winsor Grey roof.



Our house was progressing so quickly and even though it was all happening right in front of our eyes, we still couldn’t believe it was real, it felt too good to be true, it was like we were in a dream!

Electrical Walkthrough
One of the most exciting visits we had onsite would have to be our electrical walk through with our sparky, Kynan.  It was the first time we were onsite amongst all the action.  I couldn’t even count how many tradies were there, it was buzzing with activity, and I just wanted to stay there all day and watch what everyone was doing!  The electrical walkthrough itself was fairly straight forward.  We were sent an electrical and lighting plan prior to our appointment so we did have a good idea of what we wanted to add and change around.

Kynan also made some really good suggestions of things we hadn’t thought about such as putting an exterior light outside our garage side door and where to place our power sockets etc.  While we were onsite we also confirmed some extra blocking with the carpenter - we wanted it for various things such as our top fixed curtain tracks, our wall mounted TV and the mirror in our entrance. 

Axon Cladding
Once all of the electrical wiring and carpentry was complete, our feature Axon cladding was installed at the front of the house.  This was really cool to see, especially once they removed the scaffolding, as our exterior was almost complete!  All of the insulation went in at the beginning of May and we had a walk through with David to make sure we were happy with how everything was tracking along and to ask him any questions we had.  This was when he gave us a tentative handover date of the 23rd of July!  Even though it’s not set in stone and could change by a week or so, I have been counting the days down ever since!

We've Got Walls!

When the GIB was installed it changed the feel of the interior completely!  We now had walls!  It was really cool to get an even better feel for the size of the rooms and be able to visualise where our furniture was going to go etc.  The GIB stopping and painting took up most of May and early June.  We had another walkthrough with David half way through the painting which was really cool.  I was really happy with the slight contrast between the Okarito ceiling and the Mt Aspiring walls however the feature walls were yet to be painted – I can’t wait to see them on our next visit!  Here's a sneak peek at our walk-through with David.

We have a lot to organise over the next few weeks such as our home and contents insurance, our rates, and who we will use for our internet and power providers.  Josh has started some research into different companies and we have asked our friends and families for their opinions.  Once all this is sorted we will be on the home straight!

Be sure to join me on the blog for my next instalment, our build is so close to becoming finished and moving day couldn't be any closer!!

With love,
Liv xx