Thanks to our excavating team @ Matthews Contracting

We are very pleased with our excavation, Kane from Matthews Contracting has been excellent. Matthews are reliable, communicative and most importantly do a quality job- we couldn't recommend Matthews more strongly.

http://www.matthewscontracting.com.au/

Just wish we'd used them for our demo. Our demo company were terrible!

Pre-construction phase: demolition and excavation

Welcome to our blog. We are building Metricon's Liberty 45, with some modifications, here on the Northern Beaches in Sydney, Australia. Here's the show home, west of Sydney;

380 sq m of living, including 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, walk in pantry, walk in laundry, 3 walk in closets (robes!), outdoor room and a double garage. And of course a pool!

We found a great corner block, put in an offer ahead of auction and secured our blank canvas within 24 hours. The block is 674 sq m, sloping from left to right by about 2 metres. The block is predominately on sandstone (bedrock) so we had some work to do ahead of home construction.

Since we bought the block in late June 2015 we've been going through the admin phase of our build, which includes getting building approval (CDC) and making selections with the builder. It's been a long and frustrating process but Metricon have been great. Very professional, always there to answer questions and just easy to deal with. The amount of paperwork and signatures is eye watering!

While we were waiting for our paperwork to be processed with Metricon, we decided to dive into transforming the block in preparation for the house build. First the overgrown trees had to go. Luckily we were in a NSW 10/50 vegetation clearing zone so didn't need council permission. It made sense to remove the trees given we were also in a bush fire zone.

 Demolition started early November 2015.

We then started excavation of the rock, using a great company called Matthews Contracting. The results speak for themselves....

Kane from Matthews has been great, communicating with us via email (hubby works in Europe and was away the whole time). Matthews also excavated the pool, again predominately rock!

We're using Premier Pools for the pool, so far also a great company to deal with.

All done now, just in time for the Christmas shutdown. Whilst this was being done, Metricon obtained CDC approval, finalised our internal selections and our construction drawings and the plans are now with the construction team. Hopefully they'll start work by mid Jan 2016. So far, so good......