the Europe trip...

A topic completely off the subject of building our house...

...tonight we're off to Dubai!!!

Our 5 week Europe adventure starts with a 24hr stop over in Dubai, before flying out to Budapest, via Vienna. Here we're boarding an APT river boat and cruising through Slovakia, Austria and Germany arriving in Amsterdam.

From Amsterdam we bus down to Paris, arriving on August 2nd (Erin's Mum's birthday) - and are meeting up with Erin's parents! 12 months since Erin's mum's battle with breast cancer started. So this stop will be a very emotional one!

After Paris we head to the UK on the Eurostar train, and hire a car then drive to Newbury, where friends Ash and Vicky are getting married on August 7th!

After spending some time celebrating with Ash and Vicky, we head to Bristol to catch a flight down to Barcelona to catch up with more friends Ev and Katy, fellow Melbournian's who have based themselves in London for a few years.

From Barcelona we travel to Milan for 24hrs of window shopping! Then fly south to Rome.

Our last 4 days will be spent meeting up with Erin's folks again in London before returning home to Melbourne... and settling our land and starting our build!!!

For the full story - check out our travel blog!! http://www.getjealous.com/aaron4erin

the valuation is good!...

"H" our new lovely CBA lady called to advise us that our valuation for the construction came in fine! Yippee! Fingers crossed... we now have no issues to stress over for the next month or so while we wait for our land to be titled!!

the bricks...

We found out the other day that our Selkirk Muscat Haze bricks are no longer available, infact Henley are moving away from the Selkirk range all together.

We've jumped onto the Austral and Boral sites this morning, and are about to head out to the displays for a closer look. The Austral range online didnt appeal so much to us, but we've found two Boral bricks that are quite nice.

Below is Boral - Mocha

and... Boral - Raheen

the building contract is SIGNED!...

This morning we drove down to Henley and signed our building contracts!

We had a bit of a hiccup with the copy of the contract that was mailed out to us on Monday for review... they had crossed out the clause regarding Insurance! This was a bit of a worry! We definitely were not signing the contract based on this clause being crossed out (as we'd prefer our build to be insured!!!). Anyway, "R" managed to redo another contract quickly with the CORRECT info, and after an hour and a half of initialling, and signing we were on our way.

We got to about 15 minutes down the road, then "R" called to advise us our bricks from Selkirk (Muscat Haze) have been discontinued! So it's back to Cosham Interiors for us on Saturday to pick another brick.

Tips for anyone signing contracts... Henley send out paperwork prior to the signing date. It saves an awful lot of time to go through everything, list your questions in advance, and initial each page to you already fully understand. There's a lot to sign and initial!

the water tanks NOT to laundry...

After weeks of asking, and weeks of waiting, we finally had an answer from our previous admin of YES ..."they will do a rainbank system to the cold water connections..."

Then apon reviewing our final tender there was a notation... "Due to O.H. and S requirements, Clients request to have an additional point to the laundry is not permitted..."

Reasons being... "This is not treated water... if there is a bug in tank the water is not sterilized... it can cause health issues... not for drinking water but it could be mistaken by someone and if installed it opens up a situation that may result in someone getting ill... and as Henley installed it they could be liable..."

Back to the drawing board for us... maybe Aaron can do something after handover. What a pain in the butt!!!

the contract signing date - revised...

• Initial contract signing date: April 24 - contracts not ready
• Rescheduled contract signing date: May 14 - contracts not ready
• Rescheduled contract signing date: July 2 - contracts almost ready!
  
  Assigned new admin - tender errors corrected and moving ahead at full speed!
  
  NEW contract signing date: July 9 (fingers crossed!!!)