Porter Davis & HIA Contract Signed!

Our contract was finally signed off on 21st March.

On the day of our Contract, we arrived too early.. 9am sharp as all our other appointments had been scheduled for the morning. Unfortunately, I didn't check this one and it was actually meant to be 12pm. The contract wasn't ready to present to us yet (which meant they were still busy putting it together last minute), and we had to drive home, wait a bit, and drive back for the 12pm appointment.

Upon going through our Contract document, we noticed a few mistakes here and there that needed to be fixed and also needed to reduce some of the upgrades as we found ourselves $20k over our budget. Due to problems with the computers and a shortage of staff (possibly because some people would just be coming back from Christmas / New Year breaks), we found ourselves waiting for our revised contract up until 6.30pm. Now, being mindful of the fact that our BC also had a family and life outside of work, we agreed we would pay the 5% deposit, leave the contract unsigned, and take it back home for review and sort out the rest of the changes over email. This was actually good because it gave us time to look over the whole document in our time and pace.

Here is an example of some of the mistakes we picked up:

Structural:

• Remove ground floor eaves. We requested this removed at Tender

Doors

• Quantity of 1st floor doors should be 5 (not 4)

Cabinets:

• #1 - kitchen handles quantity should be 13

• #6: Pantry handles should be 12

Plumbing:

• Extra hot water system should be Rinnai 32 ot 26. (We had been asking for this since Tender)

• The bathroom temperature controllers should be 2x Deluxe Bathroom Controller and 1x Deluxe Kitchen Controller

Stairs:

• We were charged for the standard promo stairs. Not sure how this one got snuck in. Promptly removed.  

Drawings: 

• DINING / FAMILY WALL niche should be 900 from ground (to match feature window height)

• Study, Lounge, Home Theatre should be carpeted

• KITCHEN D - Increase height to match 2340 doors

• KITCHEN C - need another elevation drawing to show additional cabinet door to rear of island

• LAUNDRY B - move washing machine taps to inside cabinet

Here are some examples of things we wanted downgraded to keep our costs down

Windows:

• Revert some back from Awning to original sliding windows 

Roofing:

• Downgrade to Cat 3 Traditional roof tiles (The Horizon ones we chose were actually Cat 4 despite being displayed at Hopetoun as Cat 3)

Stone Bench Tops: 

• Downgrade to promotion Cat 1 Essa Stone (Crystal Chalk)

Here's some example of minor last minute changes:

Cabinets:

• Add push release button to cupboard door rear of island bench 

Drawings: 

• Move garage door as far right as possible

All in all, we are happy with the final version of our Contract. Just not happy about the time it took to get this right. Our Contract appointment was actually on 28th Jan... a whole 9 weeks before! The reason why this took so long was, apparently, due to a combination of an influx of work for Porter Davis, some unplanned leave for my BC, and bereavement leave for the Production Manager in charge of doing the updates to the contract and drawings.

For anyone else who also finds themselves not able to sign the Contract on contract day, what happens is that your project falls out to be managed by someone else (in my case, the Production Manager) who picks up all these odd bits and pieces of work that are out of line with their standard process. Normally this should still be fairly quick, so in my case, I should have been escalating after week 1 or 2 instead of waiting for around week 3 or 4 to be kicking a fuss. We all agreed that regardless of the reasons for the delays, 9 weeks is inexcusable. I did get a small sales incentive for this but it is hardly enough to cover for the loan interest and rent that I am paying for this delay. In any case, this is water under the bridge now and I am happy our Contract was finally ready to be signed off.

There are still a few things that we wanted to have updated but agreed to do them as post contract variations

• Tile drawings: Our drawings were done on the standard base plans and need to be updated to overlay on top of our modifications. (eg. Shared bathroom Option)
• Electrical drawings: We have switched the way the door under the stairs opens so the light switch inside now also needs to be switched to the other side. 
• Colours: With the change we made at Contract, I need to review the updated Colours document again. 
• Hallway door needs to be removed
• Heating unit needs to be upgraded back to HX35i

Apart from all this, we are just doing the waiting game for Porter Davis to do the engineering drawings and council approval. On a bright note, we no longer need any council dispensations... our overlooking window no longer needs to be obscured (as it is a very small overlooking area and it is more than 9m from the neighbours window) and our setback is okay'd for 8.1m instead of 9m (every cm counts towards the backyard!)