Rebuilding higher on their 15-acre rural property to access wonderful views is part of the new start for Chelsea and Wayne McCormack after a fire destroyed their old Helensville home.
Their build with Generation Homes Auckland North far surpassed their previous building experiences and they are very complimentary about both the service and quality they received.
“It’s a whole new fresh start. It’s peace of mind to know that we have a new safe build and the standard is so bloody tough now with the building codes,” Wayne says.
Wayne’s eldest sons Leroy and Clayton give a massive thumbs up to their spacious separate bedrooms, while baby Cash celebrated his first birthday in the new house.
After the fire, the family lived with her parents until they built a 60 sqm American-style barn on their property, which accommodated them while their dream home was under construction.
In June 2023 the family moved into their new place.
Cash has space to move and play and he’s now well used to utilising the new walls as props for making his way around.
Wayne and Chelsea escaped the 4am fire in 2020 with the clothes they were wearing. They were lucky to purchase new socks and undies before the first Covid-18 lockdown just a few days later.
“It was pretty scary, but we didn't have the boys that week,” Chelsea says.
“We just woke to what we thought was burglars – hearing a crash, bang and smash. I looked out the window and that’s when I saw all the bright orange huge flames out on the roof. So we had to jump out the window. A firefighter said the next day we were very lucky to be alive,” Chelsea says.
This is a happy story now, she insists.
WAYNE
One of our friends Adrian does quite a bit of earthworks contracting for Generation Homes, so we heard about Generation Homes by word of mouth.
CHELSEA
He’d come to help us with the drive because we knew we were going to be building. We’d already sort of signed up with another builder and we had a few red flags. They gave us a price and then when we went to sign the initial contract the price went up by $400,000. They definitely underquoted in the beginning, and it was during the time of Covid when all the prices did go up, but it was obviously a big shock to us, and frustrating. While we had to accept prices had gone up, we didn’t want any more surprises, but they couldn’t confirm the price, so we felt a bit uneasy.
WAYNE
Adrian told us Generation Homes was doing fixed price builds despite Covid. We went to Regional Partner Peter Suckling’s new house and he’s a straight-up good dude. We trusted them pretty much from the beginning. Pete just talked to us and wasn’t pushy. He’s a builder himself. He knows what the standard should be and you know you’re talking to someone who’s got the depth of follow through we needed.
CHELSEA
We bought the plans we’d devised off the other builder and gave them to Generation. They redrew the architecturally designed four-bedroom, one-story home with pretty much everything that we wanted. We had a fixed price.
WAYNE
Pete is old school – he shakes your hand. It’s good enough as you know he’s that sort of guy. So we’re lucky. There’s always dramas whoever you’re building with. There’s always little things. But Pete is such a straight-up guy, his handshake means something. We dealt directly with Pete and it worked really well. He hasn’t let us down.
CHELSEA
We have built higher on our section and we have a much nicer view looking down on all the horses and you can see the Kaipara in the distance. It’s much nicer where we are now.
WAYNE
We work out of here; our horses are in the stables complex. Where we were before when workers were leaving at four in the morning we could hear everything. Now we’ve chosen to build up on the high and it’s isolated the dwelling from the business. It’s easier to switch off.
CHELSEA
We’ve got no neighbours. That’s really good. We’re in a pretty rural area. The boundary of the property is all Woodhill Forest so no one can build us out. It’s a private little place at the end of the road.
CHELSEA
Generation really put us at ease. They didn’t have a problem getting Gib. There were all these horror stories about builders who couldn’t get materials. They literally gave us a move in date.
We'd already made our selections for our vanities, taps and everything. So, we had the meeting with the interior designer because they use different suppliers. Some things weren’t the same, but they had alternatives. I was adamant on the floor that I wanted so they let me just go and source that myself. So that was good as I really wanted that herringbone finish. I also got to choose my bathroom tiles from elsewhere.
WAYNE
Building is chaotic and I’ve been involved with building myself. Counting the barn down the road, I’ve built three houses. When you’re building yourself it’s a lot to keep on to the contractors, the builders, and planners and sparkies etc. At the end of the day, it's just so good to be dealing with one point of contact.
CHELSEA
Yeah. That’s why we wanted to go with a company that just deals with everything.
WAYNE
This is definitely the way to go.
CHELSEA
At the very beginning we got a timeframe and knew what happens every week. There was never a worry about the schedule. As we lived on the property we could see all the people coming and going all the time and sometimes we could see lights on and people working late and then other times people would be coming on the weekend to finish jobs. It was pretty busy.
WAYNE
We'd recommend them to anyone. They've gone above and beyond with some stuff. An example is our driveway. We’d agreed to spend an extra bit of money to get it a little bit further than what they originally quoted. And then they finished it too short as there wasn’t enough concrete in the truck. Pete’s solution was to get another truck. So we ended up with a longer driveway. They made the situation even better.
CHELSEA
The living space is really lovely. All the kitchen, lounge and dining is together. That’s really nice. And then I’ve got like my dream walk-in wardrobe.
WAYNE
A funny story is we asked my oldest son Clayton what bedroom he would like on the plan. He said he wanted the big bedroom beside our main bedroom. And Chelsea says, ‘Oh no, that's my wardrobe!’
The open plan lounge is my favourite space. We've got a gas fire and a big flat screen and it’s just really nice place. Possibly in summer my favourite will be the al fresco area outside. We've got doors opening all the way through so the indoor-outdoor flow is great.
CHELSEA
There’s a big walk-in pantry. It's a pretty gorgeous big space.
WAYNE
It was Chelsea’s idea to put a window at the end of the hallway and it’s awesome because we can look over our property and check the horses.
WAYNE
We’ve got phenomenal landscaping plans. We’re putting in low maintenance trees and grasses and in stage two we will be putting in a swimming pool.
CHELSEA
We’ve got curtains to get and the second lounge to set up. We’re getting things as we can. The best thing you can do is live in the house and kind of see what works and what doesn’t.
WAYNE
I always say happy wife happy life!
CHELSEA
Before we had to start making house payments, I bought most of the nice furniture on sale. Now I get what I want as I can afford it, just buying one thing at a time.
From my experience with other builds, I think even with a fixed price, you still find yourself thinking to upgrade to this one or this one, and it’s easy to say yes in the beginning. When you get to the end and there’s literally no money left you find yourself wishing you’d not done that.
WAYNE
We have got to the point in our lives where we could have saved bucks, but we think we are only doing this once. My business is on this property – it’s not like we are planning on ever selling. So I think we’re best to spend that money the first time and have our dream house for our lifetime. We knew this is always going to be our forever home.
For us there were hidden costs of country living. An example is the foundations for the well we’ve built. It’s up on a high spot. There was a lot of rock needed and we had probably about $50,000 worth of earthworks to be done. So you need to understand your section and any extra costs that might come from that.
