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.