The Rain!

Rain is not helping! Builders pulled up stumps two weeks ago, just as the wood was delivered for our frames.  With weeks of rain forcast, they thought it best to cover up the wood and come back late January.

Slow... slow... progress.  Maybe we'll be in by next Xmas - maybe.

Brick walls

Nice weather and busy tradies = walls.  At last things are moving!
Loving the colour of our bricks.

A busy week

Lots of workmen doing lots of work this week. - Yay!

The brickies moved in on Monday and even worked on Thursday in the rain.  AND they were still working away on Saturday morning.

We now have a garage and all our lovely Chocolate brown (Gledswood Blend) bricks have arrived.  Photos to follow ...meanwhile - here's our bricks.

Bricks have arrived.

I'll start with some optimism.... the bricks have arrived and brickies start tomorrow! Yeah!

"Great!" you say  "But", you say, "didn't they lay the slab over six weeks ago?" 
"Yes", I say, "SIX weeks ago."

In that 6 weeks we've made a few grouchy phones calls to the builders, they've listened patiently and calmed us and given us a few plausible excuses - first they were having problems sorting out our water/flooding/plumbing problem, then they had problems getting brickies, then it looked like rain for a few days, then it did rain for a day or two, then finally a call on Friday to say they'd start Monday (by the way, this is the third Friday call to say 'they'll start Monday"). 

But this time I'm a bit excited because I actually believe them - after all, we have bricks. 


6 weeks in review:

• Pool and spa's done - Pool excavated, formed up, plumbed (is that a word?) and concreted within 2 weeks.  I asked the pool builders if they would mind building our house too. 
• Site drained (sort of) and ducks evicted - yes we had ducks living on our slab - seriously! we did!
• Retaining wall built and 'reinforced' a week later - then left to 'set' for a couple of days.
• Retaining wall waterproofed last week.
• Ag pipes (not sure if that's the right term either) layed last Friday.

Which leads us to Monday, tomorrow, Yeah!, brickies!  Hang on, forecast is for rain…

Retaining Wall

We have bricks

Ag pipes around front of garage

View from front

Enjoying our new spa

Start on the Pool

Our Pool excavation started on Tuesday and they've been busy ever since.  Good on our Pool guys!  We'll be able to swim in our new pool in Summer and watch the builders put our walls up.

Our builders have turned up today though.  Nice to see them after another long break.

Here's a little depressing note:  We've been watching a house spring up next to our rental.  The slab went down, then frames were up, windows went in, it's now been rendered and balcony balastrades are done.  It looks great AND ... THEIR DA APPROVED ON THE SAME DAY AS OURS.

We have a waterhole... now tell me our builders aren't slow!

Water, Water, Everywhere

Our pool, I mean, slab is covered in water.  Which is OK apparently.

What's not OK is that it's been under water for 2 weeks now.  The weather hasn't helped (rainy on the weekends) but I've come to the conclusion that our builders are just slow.  It's the only conclusion we can come to because they're not telling us what's going on.... Hope they can build better than they can communicate!

They weren't slow, however, in getting that first big invoice to us.  With only minor hiccups with ANZ (resolved in 2 phone calls and a fax - quicker than usual), we made our first withdrawal from our construction loan and we're on our way to Mortgage-dom for the next 30 yrs.

Having paid the builders big bucks, Hubby emailed them after they failed to turn up to a meeting with us and the Pool guys.  After 4 months paying rent and only 9 days' of activity on our site, a few flippant answers from the SS on our questions about fixing the water problems, and hubby finally hit the roof....feeling very frustrated at not knowing what was going on and then SS not turning up for a meeting was the last straw from my ever-patient-hubby (normally I'm the one losing it!)

SS emailed yesterday to say they would be starting with a retaining wall and some much needed plumbing to collect and drain the water, which is a big problem now we're below street level.  (Thanks again Council!)

So we have a plan... lovely!  But still no timing... Oh, well, can't expect too much all at once.  Baby steps. Baby steps.


Slab under 6 inches of water



We've been slabbed!

We finally have a slab.  A beautiful, expanse of grey silky-smooth concrete just begging us to write our names in!  A sight to truly behold (until about 6 months ago I thought a slab was a heap of beer).  So I guess now that the wheels are in motion, we should be in by Xmas!  Xmas 2012, that is.

At least now that we have movement, we also have a timeline.  The builders have an 8 month contract to complete this baby now (not counting January where all builders lay down tools and have a well earned break).  My guess is we'll be in by June... let's say July... plus a few rain days... let's call it August.

I'm happy to report the guys started their prep work last Wednesday and by Saturday lunchtime we had a shiny slab of concrete.   Once they started they didn't muck around.

And its rained ever since.  I've been told a little rain is good for a slab so now we only have to wait until it dries.

Here's a few pics from waterhole to garage floor :)

Waiting... Waiting.... still waiting !

They don't move fast do they?  The tumbleweeds are back - it's been a week of noone on site again.  We believe the slab will go down this week but noone around today again.  I guess it's only Monday and 'this week' could me right up to 3pm Friday... couldn't it?

We met the SS and HH boss last week to discuss our column.  All good - it will be narrower than I imagined (not really a column but more a wall) but it will stay.  It will run into our foyer to make a bit of a feature wall - but only on one side (ie not in the loungeroom).  We have ditched the upstairs interior column too.  It looked a bit weird having a stone feature in our bedroom so we all agreed to get rid of that architectural anomoly.

And our landscaper came in and sorted out the retaining wall issue in mintues.

Our pool guys are keen too... they want to dig their hole, like, yesterday!  We've had to pull their reins in a bit and asked them to wait until we get the slab in.

Now I just have to deal with Sydney Water who want to bill us for water usage for the last 3 months.  I just have to give them a meter reading - except the meter isn't there anymore!  There's always some little battle to keep us busy!

The big dig!

We're been in our rental for over 2 months now, so it was nice to actually see a start on the block last week.
The excavator moved in and started digging and digging and digging.  We had to go down approx 45cm to comply with the Council's "whim" - I mean "request".  For background on the Council's request to drop the level of entire house, you'll need to refer back to my first post... Ok, OK, I'll let it go now and get on with the build.

Recent wet weather had held us back so we were happy that the hole didn't cave into itself in a catastrophic mudslide.  But instead of lots of nice muddy soil, we hit rock - lots and lots of rocks.  Which is not such a bad thing...sorta!  As the rocks were not joined - ie not a solid rock shelf - we didn't need to drill as that would have meant a hydraulic report (which I believe would have set us back approx $5k) and some (I'd imagine) very expensive special drilling machine.

So the big yellow excavator spent Day 1 moving rock and Day2 and Day3 loading onto more and more trucks to take away.  Twenty trucks in fact.  The builder estimated 30 to start with, so a good result all in all - even if a little on the expensive side.
Site Supervisor (SS) has already met our neighbour - who gave his team an earful of colourful language nice and early on Day 1.  I'm glad we're a few suburbs away so we don't have to hear it :)  Hubby went around to placate her but I don't think that will be the last time he'll need to smooth her ruffled feathers.  Thank God we don't need to drill !

We're meeting with the SS tomorrow to discuss a retaining wall that we now need.  And we have problems with our beautiful stone column that was to be a feature of the facade.  Looks like in all our tos/fros with the Council and squeezing the house plans to comply with floorspace ratios, my column has shrunk.  We're going to talk to SS tomorrow to see what he can salvage - or we may ditch it altogether.  I hope not as my whole dream revolved around that column.

Nothing much going on....

Our house has been gone for almost 4 weeks and still no movement on the site.  Apparently it's too wet to exacavate.  The major rainfall the day after the demolition turned the block into a bog so the builders are waiting for it to dry out before they move the excavators in.

The 10 days of summer-like weather recently wasn't enough to dry it up - and it's raining again today.
Soooo.... I don't think it'll be dry enough for the next few months (Summer?).  However, builders may see if they can start this week - go figure ?

In the meantime, we visited the Colour Lady who was fantastic!  Spend a very fruitful 3.5 hrs with her and selected lots of stuff - I'm waiting on colour samples then I'll pop up on the blog.  Although I did lose sleep over indecision over taps vs mixers...then slapped myself around a bit and reminded myself "Don't sweat the small stuff" - and went with the first-selected-mixers!  It's so easy to lose perspective over some things - I mean who is going to care whether I turn a tap or lift it?

The big old termite-ridden, concrete filled gum came down shortly after the house so we have a clear block (except for the tumbleweeds blowing through now and again).



Our little bog





Looks pretty dry from here



Down she comes

Here's the plan

This is what it should look like in a year's time.

Rain Rain go away.

This rain has got to stop now... our neighbours are complaining about the run off shifting plenty of silt down the street. 

Maybe this will save us some Demolition bucks - there'll be definitely less soil to move when the sun shines again so that's gotta be worth a discount!

Thought we might get to Week 2 or 3 before the complaints started though.

Goodbye Red Brick Home!

There one minute, gone the next - or at least, gone by the next week.

We’re really surprised how quickly you can rip down a house.  The Demo Team moved in last week and spent Friday toying with the house, pulling out random windows and hurling a few hundred tiles onto the driveway.   They couldn't do much more until the gas meter was disconnected.

But it was Monday’s efforts that really impressed.  With the Gas guys on hand to dismantle the lines, the bulldozer/tractor/thingy ripped down the satellite dish and air conditioner, and smashed through the walls and windows - much to the neighbour's kids' delight.  Demolitions really draw a crowd! 

My oven was smashed to smithereens (something I would have loved to do myself many times in the past 3 years) and I took pleasure in watching the bulldozer/tractor/thingy (must find out what it’s really called) use it's pointy bit to pulverise my kitchen cupboards into matchsticks.  How satisfying must that job be… just smashing stuff all day?

We left feeling really excited – our house was coming down and it felt great to see something finally happening.  Good riddance to the Dump!

Now all that’s left is a big pile of rubble …. But the rain has started so no movement at the site today.  Hopefully this is the last rain we’ll see in 8-9 months.  Fingers crossed (Yeah right).



Friday





Monday



Tuesday



And while the house comes down, so does our bank balance - had to pay the Council today – a sweet $8000+ for bond, certifiers and the Long Service Levy.  The LSL is our contribution to every builder everywhere who ever wants to take Long Service Leave.  Give me a break!

We have a building site!

Fence went up today … very exciting.  No sign of life on the property @ 2.30pm on a Friday but at least is looks like a building site now.

Still don’t have our CC yet though.  Or the gas meter removed.  Builder told us that we needed to arrange that as the demo company no longer organised.  But we were only told this 2 days before demo team moved in.  AND AGL has other ideas – it takes 10-15 working days to remove a meter so may hold up the demo somewhat!

So as there may not be any more entries over the next few weeks it may be a good time to reflect on how far we’ve come. 

We’d only intended to live in The Dump for 6 months while we sold our duplex.  We were forced out of the Duplex by our drug dealing, non-stop-partying, spa-users-at-4-in-the-morning neighbours.  Life became Hell so we moved out as we tried to sell.  Then the market crashed and it took us a year to finally get rid of it.

For over 2 years we looked at property after property and couldn’t find anything we were all happy with (or in our price range).  In fact, our price range started around $800K and eventually stretched to $1.1m – and still we couldn’t find anything.  Even $1m didn’t get a nice house in our suburb.  Maybe building was the answer.  So we started to do some research and decided to buy The Dump and have a go a creating our dream house in the Burbs.  

Although The Dump was awful and cold, it was in a beautiful leafy quiet street, with great views.  If we went up a level, we may even get a water glimpse.  And it was directly behind the Little One’s school.   I wasn’t sold on the block as I thought it was too small (570sqm) but Hubby and Friend convinced me that we could move the house forward a bit and I’d have a reasonable size back yard - except for the giant gum tree that I was convinced would drop a bough onto us at any time.  So Hubby called the owner and made him an offer.

After a bit of negotiating back and forth, and some unknown rush by the seller to have it completed by Xmas, we settled in December 2009 and The Dump was all ours.  Now we just had to decide what to build.

Lots of visits to HomeWorlds, Housetowns and Housing Villages left us dazed and confused.  None of the standard project homes would work for us because of our slope and small size of our block.  And very few of the construction companies wanted to build 'outside of their square'.

Finally we found Home Quest @ Bella Vista a liked a couple out there.  One in particular - Horizon Homes – interested us.  We started chatting to the builder only to find he was from out our way and had built my sister’s townhouse.  HH gave us a quote to work with and we were on our way.  After a few comparable quotes from Corrion & Quest Homes, we settled on the one that came with the trusted testimonials.

We decided to engage our own Architect though – just in case we decided to go with another builder.  At least this way we would own our plans.  Word of mouth again and soon we’d engaged an architect.

The planning stage took much longer than we anticipated.  Getting the house just right took loads of time and changes and I still don’t think it’s exactly right.  But who can tell on paper?  We went back and forth over four months to get the plans just right.  We then handed them over to HH to manage the DA process.

Just as we thought we were ready for Council we were told we needed a Landscape Plan (didn’t we ask earlier if we needed one?)  So a few week’s later we had the plan but the Landscape Dude told us to get rid of the giant gum tree in the backyard as it was termite-riddled.  But to do that we’d need an Arborist Report.

Two weeks later we had an Arborist Report to submit with Landscape Plans, house plans and DA.  So to Council we went!  We lodged our DA in November then got our first raft of changes just after Xmas (when everyone was on holidays).

Our house was too big, too tall, too forward on the block – even our Garage door was too big.  With a bit of creative squeezing from the Architect and some juggling of the numbers we finally conformed to the Council’s request.  Didn’t help that they’d changed some of their requirements AFTER we submitted our plans. 

Our smaller version of the dream home went back to Council in March and we finally got approval in April …. Or so we thought.  Approval was deferred which meant we still had some changes to make.

The entire house had to be dropped 30cm to comply with the 2^nd storey eave height restrictions.  The roof of the house was well under the height restrictions but the eave wasn’t…. go figure!

So mid May, 6 months in Council, we finally got our approval-approval.

We're Out!

We have a start date – yay!  The demolishers move in on Wednesday and the giant Gum is coming down too.

We’ve been out of The Dump for almost 2 weeks now and we’re loving the new HUGE rental!  The door handles stay connected to the doors, all three (yes, three) toilets flush when you press the button – and better still – they stop flushing.  The oven works – both of them.  I made a pavlova AND a potato bake at the same time… just coz I could. 

And it’s toasty warm … mmmmmm!  This house doesn’t feel like a fridge when you walk in.  We’ve only had the air cond on once and it’s great.  We love it here so much that we might even buy the place – after all, we bought the last rental.  And in a weird twist of fate, we have moved next door to the family we bought The Dump from.   We’re avoiding eye contact in case they ask us why we’re here – they won’t understand why we’re demolishing their family home.

I was so happy to move out though. The wall behind the wall unit was covered in green mould - Yuck!! The wood was rotting away from the window frames - it was gross!  The move went really well but it's such a long day - you think it's done then you have to put the beds together - it's like torture.

Two weeks later and most of the boxes have been unpacked - even the ones that sat in The Dump's garage for years.  It's like Xmas! Lovely!

Creeping closer to a start date!

Nearly there... thought we were close to starting until we got the letter from the Certifiers.  We now need to obtain (read = buy with lots more money) a geo-technical report to make sure we don't implode our hillside when we excavate AND a hydraulic report to make sure we don't flood the low-lying area.  So we got our builder onto that - 2 weeks max he says.  Well that was a week ago and haven't heard a thing.

Meanwhile... we've found a lovely rental at way too high a price BUT it has aircond and a pool - Nice :) As well as heaps of storage.

And we got our loan - which is also a good start.

We also got our ridiculously expensive landscaper back in to explain his prices.  If he can justify why the garden is almost as expensive as the downstairs portion of our house, we'll sign him up.

So all in all, two ticks to one cross this week.  A bit more progress than the average week.

I'm now off to pack some boxes in the hope that we will get out of this dump next week.

Big new adventure - are we there yet?

We bought the house over 18 months ago now and back then, I was naive enough to think that our new house would be built by now and we'd be swanning around in our new pool.

Buh-Bong (that's the sound in they make in really bad game shows when the answer is wrong!)

We've walked kilometres around homeworld and homelands, given up on project homes and had our plans architecturally drawn up.  We've had landscape architects plans done.  We've called in the aborist to give our Gum Tree its last rites. We've signed up the builder... but we're still waiting on Council to approve our plans (6 months and counting).

Who would have thought it would all take this long.

But, if nothing else, it's been a lesson in extreme patience.

So, here's my first attempt at a blog.
When I have a spare hour, I'll document our troubles and tribulations but until then.... fingers crossed for our council approval this week so I can get out of this falling-down dump that I lovingly call our home!