A Small Change

That moment when you realise it's been more than 5 months since the last blog update!

Where do I begin? So much has happened. The earthworks out in The Valley have progressed at an astonishing rate since work came to a grinding halt back in February/March. We had some serious rain, a months worth or so, continuous, wet, rain! The delays were inevitable but looking at our hill now, it's really starting to take shape. I will save the update on the hill for another blog post - I need to take some up to date photos, but realistically we are about 4-5 months away from registration.

So what is the small change I allude to in the post title and Hey! - what's with the new blog name?

Let me introduce you to the Nova 31.

MOJO Homes Nova - Grande facade. 

This is the home we are now focussed on building, a modern two storey 4 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom house that will fit beautifully on our block. A little different from the MJH Havana we initially were looking at building.

So here's what happened.  

As I alluded to before, our land has been delayed a little. The initial time of registration was mid-year but now we are looking at August/September for this to happen.  In the grand scheme of things, a delay like this is no big deal however an issue arose in regards to our MJH tender which is due to expire on July 12. After much toing and froing, we are told that our tender with MJH cannot be extended (even by a month or two!) and that the job will need to be re-tendered. We quickly learned that if this were to happen, the base price of the Havana would be increased by $25k and that does not account for any modifications we made to the home. We weren't even sure if MJH could offer the same inclusions that we had in our initial tender.

Meanwhile, Michelle had been suggesting for months that we should maybe have looked at building a two storey home to take advantage of the escarpment view. Without knowing what our neighbours are building, there is a possibility that our view may be obstructed if we build single storey which would be frustrating! A two storey home with a balcony will fix that.  We have weighed up the pros and cons of going two storey and in a nutshell, this is where we have landed. Bye Bye MJH!

A few weekends back was the grand opening of the Calderwood Valley Display Village. The Lend Lease Sales Office has now moved onsite and there are some 15 or so builders with homes on display.   The opening was a huge weekend, plenty of people around and lots of free coffee!  

We spent a day going in and out of several different homes and were quite taken by large GJ Gardner Home. It was a stunning house, a big two story home with all the trimmings which as displayed, was probably a little too far out of reach. It did however cement the concept of a two story home being the right move for us.  There are some amazing homes on display at Calderwood - definitely worth looking at if you haven't already been.

So since this opening weekend we have looked at a few different options. Advice from MJH has been that they wouldn't be able to place a two story home on a split block - strange! Other builders say it is no issue given we only have a small 1.2m split. I'm not a builder and I have never done this before but I can't see how it could be that hard to do. I have since learned that it is hard to do with steel framed homes.  Anyhow, feeling rather frustrated and deflated with MJH we decided to look at other builders. I knew a little about Mojo - they are a relatively new company that essentially is a subsidery business to MJH but that's where my knowledge ended. I have seen some Mojo builds popping up in stage 1 and I know of a couple building a Mojo Home in our street but we had never set foot in a Mojo display home before. Our Broker put as in contact with a fantastics Mojo Building & Design  Consultant who wasted no time in reaching out to understand what our needs were. The following weekend we drove up to Homeworld in Kellyville to check out the Mojo displays and to meet Elle. 

Wow!

We loved these homes.  The Nova 32 on display grabbed us both and we were pleasantly surprised at the space the home offered. Even more surprising was the estimated cost of building the home along with the list of inclusions and upgrades available. This gave us some serious food for thought!  It was great to talk to Elle and to finally be able to deal with somebody who listened and who could actually answer our questions. There was definitely little buzz in the air as we left that afternoon.

We were advised that the Nova 31 would probably be a better fit for our block. The layout is the same however the 31 is slightly wider and shorter than the 32. The 31 is displayed at Gledswood Hills, so last weekend saw us make the trek back up to Sydney to see this home. The display was actually closed on the Sunday however Elle ensured that somebody would meet us there to allow us to go through the home  - again... there is a a care factor here that has been missing for some time :)  

This was it! Everything about this house from the colour on the walls to the way it sat on the block was us. The block was the same size as ours (less the split) which allowed us to easily visualise the amount of outdoor space we would gain by building this house rather than the Havana. We were genuinely excited! 

Gledswood Hills - Nova 31 Grande Facade with Hebel :)

The square Kitchen Island. YES! (this is the 32 at Kellyville)

Living Area - Love the window

Upstairs Activity

The Kitchen in the 32- Maybe a different finish to the cupboards. How good is that window!

The Alfresco. Not a fan of the timber composite panels. 

That window splash back

The side on the 31 at Gledswod - Roughly the same 3 metre space we will have on the left side

Approx 8 metres to the back boundary. Should be very similar to our block, doubling the space from the Havana build.

The 3 metre side again.

The narrow side (Outright side) will offer more workable space given the building layout.

 

Yay!

Internal pano Nova 32.  Imagine square kitchen island

The stairs. The window is huge and will throw in a lot of light. 

Nova Kitchen - stolen from Mojo website. 

We headed back out to Kellyville to have one more look through the 32. We really felt we had to do something with the layout in the Master Bedroom. We needed to be able to have a bath in the en-suite and the hallway leading to the Master was the only part of the house we did not like - it was a little narrow. Elle knew exactly what were after and within minutes we had a solution.

This is our mark up sketch incorporating our changes.

Ground Floor. Some small mods to the Laundry and W/C to allow for the split.  We anticipate  5 -7 steps for the split

Upstairs. The dark border has all been changed, adding the bath to the en-suite and the retreat to the Master. Our aim was to have a quiet nook that would double as a study for Shell & I. The addition of a large WIR and storage in the hallway are a nice inclusion.

The original upstairs layout. Note the narrow hallway for the Retreat/Activity into the Master.

We are now waiting for our tender and are already working out dates for our upcoming Colour Studio appointments. We are really happy to hopefully have the right solution for our new home.