Tiling and Cabinets!

Been a while since my last post, mainly because the tiling pretty much held everything up. It finally began (and is still ongoing, not sure why it is dragging) but that didn't hold up installation of our kitchen cabinets. They have also begun prep for the driveway, paths, portico and alfresco areas, I'm hoping they do that next week. Week after that I *think* painting might be scheduled, not 100% on that though as everything has been pushed back because of tiling.
We were supposed to be in the house by 20th October (contract end date) but that won't be happening, we'll be lucky if its done by mid-November at this point. Paying extra rent at this point is stretching the budget a fair bit but thankfully it is only a matter of weeks, not months before we move in.


Thursday afternoon, start of cabinet installation

Driveway, paths, portico and alfresco preparation

Friday afternoon, cabinet install finished

Down Pipes Installed, Tiling About to Start and a Resolution to the Fencing Saga

Last week the down pipes were installed, finally. I was wondering when they'd get around to that. Would've been nice if they were done much sooner, like when we had weeks of on/off rain over winter. At least now the slippery muddy puddles around the house will hopefully begin to dry up. Oh and the gas meter was installed also.

It feels like it has taken so long to get to this point, because in reality a house can be completed in 4 months. Our contracted period was 6 months, and it has officially been 5 months since the slab went down. All tiles were delivered Monday and Tuesday and builder says the tiler is starting today. I'm hoping most of the wet areas are completed by the end of this week as then he will be starting on the main floor which is a wood-look tile that I'm excited to see on a full floor as opposed to a sample.

We've also been in talks with the guy that owns the ugly yellow building behind us. He is happy to help with the rear fence and will organise the install of it, all we have to do is give him $1500. I'm pretty happy with that as it would have cost us over $3000 if we did it ourselves. Unfortunately, there are pipes for his building that are illegally on our land, right on the boundary where the rear fence should be going, as well as a couple of drain pits that were not on our Contract of Sale for the land. We were going to fight it through council because someone signed off on the subdivision when they shouldn't have but in the end we have decided we could be waiting years for the council to fix it if they even owned up to the problem, so we are now losing about 20 sq metres in total as the fence has been pushed about 1/2 a metre onto our land. Luckily it was a 1220sqm block, we will still have 1200sqm to play with. Hopefully I'll have some tiling photos to show next week :-)

Front Door!

Received a welcome phone call from the builder yesterday with regard to our choice of front door. He was at the suppliers checking on our order and found out that the supplier had lost their purchase order that was sent a month ago, however, it wasn't really an issue as the front door could be ordered and arrive within a week or so BUT they did have in stock another of the doors in the same range which was very similar, the only difference was the number of glass panels. It also happened that this other door had the translucent laminate that we had chosen. I remember when we were making all our selections for the house that our main request was that the door was to be 1200mm wide, makes things much easier when moving furniture in and out of the house and I preferred the look of a wider door and we ummm'd and aaahh'd over the Hume XS24 (original choice) & XS26 (one in stock). So the builder gave us the option to take the one in stock instead of the one we had chosen and after a quick phone call to the other half we both decided we preferred the 6 panel door anyway so I told the builder to go with it...and I am so glad we did because the front door is one of the big things you look forward to seeing (well, in my opinion anyway) and when I rocked up to the house today the first thing I saw was our lovely big door! I can't believe how much the front door affects the look of the whole house in such a positive way. I LOVE IT!
I also did a quick walk around and took some photos through the windows, it's looking so house-y now. They've installed the skirting boards and most of the architraves and internal doors and everything is looking so good. After several slow weeks it's a much nicer feeling when things are actually happening.

Here's the pics :-D

Front door

Family Room (looking in from alfresco)

Bedroom 4

Bedroom 3

Bedroom 2

Laundry

Minor update

Has been a while since my last update due to the flu taking over my life the past couple of weeks. On the mend now though so went by the house and snapped some updated pics for you. Plasterboard is complete and cornices almost completed, tiling due to start any day now....

Meeting with Electrician and update

We met with the electrician today, we walked through and specified where we wanted TV points, power points, telephone points etc. We want most of our TV's on the walls so they aren't taking up too much space so we have some power points and TV points going higher up on the walls. We added TV points to all the bedrooms also to save issues down the track. We added a powerpoint to the island bench, hidden under the overhang so you can't see it and also to the pantry so I can plug things in there hidden away also. They will be doing the electrical on Friday and then next week the plaster will be going up, finally. I noticed the cabinetmaker had been into the house and marked out the kitchen and island benches so I'm guessing they go in pretty soon too :-)

I will post some more photos next week when the plaster goes up.

Eaves continued...

Eaves are done

Went by the house today as I was told eaves were being done this week, sure enough, when I got there all eaves are done, including the alfresco and portico ceilings. No photos yet, will update the photos once the internal fittings and gyprock starts :-)

Halfway hooray!

We just received the invoice for lock-up, which means now we get to see the interior start to take shape. The interior is what I am excited about the most.

We already have a bath installed, I think they installed that to check where the bath spout would sit. As I chose to put the mixer tap and spout on the opposite wall to the plans and now the original bath spout in our package doesn't reach to the bath. We had two options, move the bath spout to another wall OR purchase a swivel arm bath spout that is longer and will reach and will tuck away against the wall when not in use. I really liked the sound of that because then there is no annoying bath spout or taps to get in the way at all.

Below are the two taps we are considering, the Reece Tap is longer and I think will be a little more practical but there are some other measurements I want to check before we commit to it. The other one is a Millennium Tap and I prefer the look of that tap but it doesn't reach quite as far and I'm not certain it will work as well as the other one but won't know for certain until we go and measure up the bath some more.

We also had our ducted reverse cycle aircon unit installed the same day as the bath, the main unit is in the roof but there is no fan unit outside yet as the electricals have not been done, that should be happening very soon.

Next, we have an internal garage plaster and doors installed.

Roof Complete, Bricks Nearing Completion

Roof has been finished this week and the brick layers have achieved a lot in the last 3 days. I expect most of the bricks will be finished by mid to late next week. Pretty happy with it.

                                       Front

Blind side, by the garage, laundry and main bathroom

Looking towards alfresco

Rear bedrooms

Back

Showing main bedroom 

Bricks started & Roof nearly complete!

The bricks were started nearly two weeks ago but for some reason the brickies haven't been back since last week. I'm wondering if it's because they were waiting on the roof tilers to finish their work before continuing on with the bricks. None-the-less, we are super happy with how it's coming together. The bricks look great with the black contrast in the windows, gutters and now roof tiles.
The roof tilers started Wednesday with the prep, yesterday tiles started going on and today they are nearly finished. Below are some photos of the house from around 4:30pm this afternoon.
They still haven't rectified the issues with the frame yet (A few broken pieces and pantry door installed opposite side), hopefully they plan to sort it out before plaster goes up.

A lot is happening

I planned to post photos of the frame this morning but I ran out of time. It's lucky I didn't because I went around this afternoon and since my last update we now have a frame that has also been wrapped, windows and stacker doors installed, bricks delivered and roof tiles delivered. We can really get a sense of the house now. My guess is they will start the roof next week, maybe not the bricks because that delivery wasn't expected for at least a week or so. Pretty happy so far. The only complaints we have is a couple of the wall frames have a little damage from installation, but I'm certain they will fix them up as there will be another inspection before the release of the frame progress payment. So it's looking like we'll be at lock-up stage sooner rather than later :-)

So here is where it's at:

Slab stage complete!

I've been so busy lately that I've been a little behind in posting updates. The slab has finally been completed and the frames as well as the windows, stacker & sliding doors have all been delivered to site ready to go next week. Once the frames go up we'll get a real perspective of the house and how things are going to fit. Can't wait :-)

It has officially started!

Finally, plumbing was done last week and today they've dug the holes for the footings which are getting poured tomorrow. We should have a complete slab by the end of this week. This has made us very happy as we expected this to have all happened end of February/ early March. Main thing is it has now finally started and we should see lots happening over the next couple of months :-)

Surveyor, Plumber and the Fencing Guy

Well not a whole lot has happened since my last post BUT a little bit has happened. After the whole boundary peg fiasco it turned out the builder was waiting on the local surveyor to get back from leave to re-establish all of our boundary pegs, because 3 out of 4 pegs isn't enough apparently. Now the builder took this upon themselves to get the surveyor out, because apparently that's why the plumber hadn't done his thing yet. The builder didn't tell us to organise it and they haven't mentioned anything about the cost, so hopefully we don't end up paying for it at the pointy end of the build. Anyhow, that happened last week (27th March), we have some newly re-established boundary pegs and a pretty pink streamer/flag on a stick in the ground. I actually drove around to the block yesterday to see if anything more had changed and the builder was actually onsite with someone else (plumber maybe?) doing some markings on the dirt and there was a bunch of star-pickets in the ground, but I couldn't work out what that was for. I only did a drive-by as I didn't want to interrupt them and decided I'd go back later in the afternoon to see what they had done. After going back in the afternoon it looks like they have marked out the wet areas so plumbing will happen any day now and then hopefully a slab will finally follow shortly after.

Here is what we saw yesterday:

Now, jumping back to the fencing guy, who I am still yet to received a quote from, I really really want to mask off the back of the property because I'm so tired of looking at that shabby old ugly yellow building but even the fencing guy is lagging behind the timeline he gave me for the quote...must just be the way they roll out here.

ummm...huh?

I had a meeting with the fencing guy this morning who mentioned that the boundary of our block hasn't been marked and he'd prefer it was, and wondered if the builders were going to do that. I said I'd contact him and find out. I made the assumption that the site would be checked and marked out in prep for the slab and everything else as the builder would use that boundary to make their measurements. Seems that they weren't planning to and that I might need to get a surveyor out but I wouldn't have thought that would be our problem but the builders issue to sort, and up to this point NO ONE had mentioned that so I have no idea what they were planning to do when they finally do start the actual construction. He mentioned their builder may just mark it out himself but none of this helps the fencing guy really, sigh. So I'm going to add that to the list of possible expenses.
They are also getting a lot more vague when I ask for details as they really have no idea when the plumbers will bother to show up and do their bit, even though I was told it was happening beginning of this week (and it didn't happen) so I think I'm not going to bother calling them for a while as my frustration will begin to show soon. They did mention our slab was the next one on their list behind the one they are working on but even so we are still at the mercy of the plumbers. Maybe I'll have some real news to report next week :-/

Progress....sort of.

Had a horrible day today, unrelated to the house, we had to make the choice to put down our beloved Piper. My beautiful old girl had reached the end of her days today and we had to call the vet to peacefully put her to sleep. So have been feeling quite 'empty' I suppose you could say.

To keep my mind occupied I went for a drive to the block as the plumbers were supposed to have started early this week but there is no sign of them yet. However I did notice a delivery of materials used for the form work for the slab, so something HAS to start soon. I'm not too worried just yet, just would have liked to see something happen on the block that is a a little more exciting than a delivery of mesh and posts.

We also have a fencing guy coming out to the block to quote for us tomorrow morning which is good, if it comes in under $6000 for supply + install we'll probably get this guy in ASAP to screen the ugly building behind us. That building probably bothers me far more than it should but still can't wait to screen it off, not to mention the crappy old cars this guy is hoarding.

 

On a separate note, I realised I haven't uploaded the house plans so here it is: