It's Handover Time! | Building Your First Home: Liv's Journey
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!
The Final Countdown
We are on the final countdown!
As we approached our handover date of the 30th of July (extended by a week from the original date) Josh and I had a lot to organise. Getting our insurance sorted was at the top of our priority list because if we didn’t get insurance, the bank would not release our final funds to GJ. To get our insurance we also needed our Code of Compliance Certificate which we didn’t receive until the 22nd of July, so it was all go! Then there was the challenge of deciding what insurance policy to go with and what value we would need for our contents insurance etc. Our parents gave us a lot of valuable advice as we had no idea where to begin!
Power, Internet & All The Things
We also needed to organise our power and internet. It turns out selecting the provider was the easy part, sorting the rest was a lot more complicated and frustrating than we thought it would be. We’re glad we began the process as early as we did (6 weeks prior to our handover date) otherwise we would probably be moving in without any power or internet.
I think what made it tricky was the fact that we are in a new subdivision and no one really knew what was going on. It was all very new to us as First Home owners too and we felt like we needed more guidance throughout this process. What really frustrated us was when we would ring one company and they would tell us to contact someone else, however the second company would refer us back to the first company so we just felt like we were going around in circles and not getting anywhere! It was all very confusing, super stressful and definitely the least enjoyable part of our building experience!
We are not too worried if we don’t have the internet right away but we definitely need the power working on the day we move in! Fingers crossed we have everything sorted now and it’s smooth sailing ahead!
A Surprise Awaits
As for the build, we actually haven’t been able to do another site visit - GJ want the final presentation to be a surprise!
Our PM David has updated us with some sneaky photos over the last few weeks and lucky Josh got a sneak peek when he dropped off all our feature lighting. It has been very frustrating not being able to get inside anymore - but it makes us so much more excited for our presentation day (which happens on the Tuesday before our handover!)
Over these few final weeks all the exciting interior stuff happened! After our kitchen and bathroom fixtures and fittings were installed, the tiler came and installed our kitchen splash back as well as the tiles in our bathroom. All of our plumbing, lighting and electrical work was completed. The carpet and vinyl flooring was installed. Our driveway, paths and patio were poured, our entrance wallpaper was hung and all the other finishing touches were underway. Yay!
Also during these final weeks Josh and I have been going shopping to make sure we have all the essentials for when we move in. We already had quite a collection of bits and pieces, but because neither of us have properly flatted before, we pretty much needed EVERYTHING!! We both found it really fun and exciting buying all this “adult” stuff! It was finally all feeling a bit more real now!
The Finale!
It's our final walk-through time!!
The two days before our handover is when our final payment gets made to GJ, our window furnishings will get installed and any final touch ups will be completed.
I can just tell that on Thursday night, the day before handover - we will feel like excited children on Christmas Eve!
We have our fingers & toes crossed that we will get our keys as early as possible on Friday so that we can begin shifting in right away. We plan to take our bed using our horse float so that we can stay that first night. (We will be too excited not to!) On Saturday we have our families helping us shift all of our furniture that has been stored in Josh’s parent’s lounge! (Thanks Josh!)
Following that, Smiths City will be delivering all of our appliances in the afternoon and we will definitely be shouting Pizzas and Beers that night to thank our families for helping.
I can't wait to spend the following week settling in and enjoying the new chapter of our lives together in our beautiful new home. I get goose bumps just thinking about it and can't wait to show you the finished result. For now, enjoy these beautiful shots taken on our walk-through!
Be sure to join us on the blog for our next instalment, we're going to be chatting all things window furnishings and the process of choosing the right window treatments for our first home!!
With love,
Liv & Josh xx
