August already? I think I missed July…

It’s been almost 7 weeks since my last blog (sounds like a confession)… forgive me reader for I have been slack.

No new photos yet – not many visual changes in 7 weeks, unless you count pipes and electrical wires - we have lots of them. I could put in a photo of our bank account which is shivering in the corner in anticipation of a god-all-mighty hit that’s on its way.

There’s been plenty of decision-making going on in the last few weeks.  We’ve chosen (let me refer back to ‘list of additional items’ email from builder):
• upgraded garage door (‘woodgrain finish’ – not ‘standard);
• front door (wider than ‘standard’);
• internal doors (taller than ‘standard’);
• *cornice (yes, an upgraded cornice);
• kitchen sink (double sink);
• oven and cooktop;
• vanity basins;
• and wall colour (every colour after the 1st one is an ‘extra’ so a feature wall - say 1L of different paint - is an extra)

Yes ! All upgrades.  Just about everything we’ve chosen is a more expensive version of the one the builders supply.   Am wondering if anyone ever builds a house without ‘upgrades’ and what would it look like?   We have pulled up on the Zip Water tap - can't justify that expense.
* Did you know that no cornice is actually more expensive than cornice – go figure!  We stuck with 'cornice' but of course it's not the standard one...

We also got IT Dude in to wire up for data in a few rooms.  So we’ll be able work away on our computers in separate rooms in the house (bit like that Telstra ad where the whole family are content not socialising with each other).  But needed this for the home office.

I made my 4th visit to Beacon Lighting to chat with my good friend Mel.  Each time I keep adding to the order so each time she seems happier to see me.  I think I have all the lights on my order now and we’re only spent slightly more than Clipsal wanted to charge us for the downlights ONLY back in April.  Gotta be happy with that.

We had an update on the finish date – it’s moved from early Sept to mid-Sept.  Since then, though we’ve fallen behind again.  Supposed to get Gyprock this week but now not scheduled until next Tuesday.

Popped onto site today to select garage door and front door colour, internal stairs and balcony.  Our balconies no longer have the horizontal railings I wanted (even though they were approved in Council-signed-off DA plans) because council says someone may use as a ladder, fall off our balcony and kill themselves (might be me if I have to give up one more design feature of this house !!!)  So, we now have glass balconies – you can bet they’re another upgrade.

Long Time No Blog

Another frustrating month of nothing.  Remember my last blog when I said… “This week cladding”?  Well I actually meant “In five weeks cladding”.

Five weeks of one guy showing up sporadicly to tinker inside at the frames but no sight of anyone on the outside to finish the walls and roof.

After a tersely-worded email and impassioned phone call by Hubby to the builders, they are now back on track.  Apparently they were called away to a disgruntled client to get their job done… well, now they have another one to take their place.  And boy are we disgruntled!  Our 12 month lease is up on the rental and would be nice to get this thing finished.

Since the heated discussions, we had the cladding done, rendered, painted, roof finished and scaffolding taken down.

The builder’s 160-day contract is up and we’re now into ‘rain days’ then the builders start paying us (a pittance… but enough to cover our rent rise kindly imposed by our landlord).
Went for a walk through the other day and it’s looking good inside.  But we did find another small design flaw (thanks Mr Architect once again).  The grand staircase is off-centre (ie not in front of the front door) and rises up to our lounge-room windows – not leaving much room to walk between.  Simply means we can’t move any furniture into the house.  Minor issue - Thank goodness we have a back door :)

On the plus side, we’ve selected our lights, picked all the kitchen cabinets/drawers/handles and bathroom vanities, wardrobes etc etc etc and, in return, got lots of really expensive quotes (as expected).

By the way… the house looks great!

Aerial view for build

BEFORE

AFTER

It's not much bigger than the neighbours' houses.. from the air.

Lovin' the Colour

Our render was painted last week and it looks great!  It has been one of my biggest worries since picking the colour for the DA application over 18 months ago.  We weren't sure if it would look OK with the dark bricks.  But we're really happy with it! Yay!

Visited the Kitchen/Bathroom/wardrobe man last week and picked everything that was expensive!  As you do!  We did draw the line, however, at electric kitchen cupboards.  Really?  How much effort does it take to open and close a kitchen cupboard?

Now waiting on his quote so we can slash and burn.  Hopefully won't have to cut back too much as our kitchen and bathrooms are quite small so surely, it can't be too expensive... surely!

We've added to the kitchen lots of drawers instead of cupboards, soft close doors, a clever corner cupboard, brushed aluminium kickboards and a few other extras.  On the way out, saw a great bathroom wall cabinet that we must have.  And of course, our walk-in robe needs to be designed so I can house all my shoes..... surely can't be too expensive!!  Who am I kidding :)

For those of my Home1 followers...here's our colours (facebook friends may glaze over at this bit... it basically means "Brown House/White Kitchen"):

• Exterior - Dulux Bogart
• Bricks - PGH Gledswood Blend
• Roof/Gutters/Fascia/Downpipes - Colourbond Dune
• Kitchen cabinets - Classic White  Poly Gloss
• Benches - 40mm Essa Stone with Waterfall edge - Sorbet
• Splashback - Decoglaze Glass - Silver Glitz
• Walls - Dulux Grey Pebble Half
• Appliances - Miele Gas Cooktop/Electric Oven/Rangehood
• Bathroom - EssaStone - Crystal Chalk (I think)
• Bathroom cabinets - Classic White

This week, we're looking forward to polystyrene cladding filling the gaps in the walls.  Yes, polystyrene... that's where all the recycled McDonalds coffee cups have gone.

Here's a couple of photos of the render... bit hard to see but it's a coffee colour.
Still don't have any photos of tiles but found a photo of our floor tiles.



Render from the front

Render from the back

Floor Tile - same inside and out
( BTW... this is not a photo of our house!)

Now it looks like a house!

The house is going well since that nasty wall was removed!  The bricks are done except for the back walls (I think they're waiting on a brick delivery) and sides and front were rendered this week.  Expecting the roof  on Monday.  It’s looking very large now that it’s looming over the street with all the scaffolding around it.

Last week we did our electrical plan.  It all felt a little rushed, even after 2 hours, and we had to take the plan home to absorb properly.  Even adding some speakers towards the end of the meeting was all a bit rushed.  She also couldn’t tell us anything about C-Bus which her Company’s glossy brochures seemed to promote heavily.  She did give us a quote for Data Networking but I can’t say I really understand how that works either.  All in all, a little disappointing as I would have thought we would have sorted out the entire electrics.  Now we have to meet with an electrician to discuss C-Bus.

Expensive LED downlights may need some revision.  Over $6K worth of downlights seems a little excessive – and that’s only really in 2 rooms and hallways.   Wandered around two light stores to select other lights and found downlights at less than half the price we were quoted.  Of course, the quote included builder’s markup and fitting but we’re meeting with the builder this week to sort out.

Looked over initial plans again today and reflected on how we should have spent more time understanding our plans (on paper).  Due to our architect’s inadequate plans:

• our front staircase is ‘grander’ than we wanted (builder couldn’t ‘build’ the drawn stairs),
• we no longer have a feature column (the column was never drawn into final plans);
• our timber features over the windows have been ditched after the builder told us they’d look like crap and
• my laundry chute was never going to work. 
• And as much as I love our big lounge/dining, we would have preferred to shed a couple of square metres off that to give to our squeezy Family room. 

Oh well …. Live and learn!

On a positive note - Picked our tiles yesterday.  That meeting was a huge success!  Love our choices – I’ll put up some piccies of the tiles in next post.

We have render - bit hard to see in the afternoon light

Our nice new beam holding up the 2nd floor

Back view/family room on left and kitchen on right

Kitchen view into family room - looks much better now the wall has gone!

You pay peanuts...

After sneaking onto the site without the builder (much to his dismay) we asked him if he could fix our too high kitchen window, that is, too high for me to (a) reach; (b) open and (c) see out of.  Fortunately, he offered up a solution and dropped the window level down so I no longer feel like I’m living in the Land of Giants.

We missed the window height in the plans completely.  One of those things that we wouldn't have picked up, not being familiar with reading house plans.  Which brings me to our next (extremely expensive) architectural gaffe.

The kitchen wall at the end of our kitchen bench!  Marked in the plans as a 900L Blade Wall, we never even saw it – or maybe we did and thought it was a 900mm wall at the end of the bench.  No, it’s a floor to ceiling wall that splits the kitchen and so-called-open-plan family room in half - making a small space even smaller. 

I cried.

Hubby was away when I explained to him that it was structural, ie not something the builders had put in temporarily which is what we first thought.  The SS assured me it was in the plans, but the problem was, we never wanted it in the plans.

To try to get to the bottom of it, Hubby immediately emailed Mr Architect, who said... wait for it ... he didn’t really notice it either!  So who put it there?  Builder didn’t, Architect didn’t know about it and we certainly didn’t want it.  But nevertheless, there it is – holding up the roof.

Long story short... lots of phone calls, emails, visits to site, builders trying to placate me, and engineer’s reports – and we have a solution.

So, roof trusses have now been removed, a massive iron girder is now sitting across the back of the house and the chippies now need to put all roof trusses on again.

And the price tag?  It’s a doozy!  Thanks Mr Architect!

Hello Stranger!

I’ve been away from my Blog for so long that I forget how to enter stuff!

Let’s see – last entry was on 17 December when builders had taken a short break over Xmas.  9, yes, nine weeks later I’m happy to report they have returned and made a real start on our house – we have frames!

The delays included:

• Rain before Xmas – no point in putting up frame before Xmas then it sitting out in weather for a month while builders were on holidays.
• Were coming back mid-Jan – builder sacked framers because they weren’t delivering quality product.  Fair enough.
• New framers would start late January - took a couple of weeks to line them up.
• Rain - heavy torrential rain on the actual day they were due to start – and the next day.   Now, I know we’ve had a lot of rain this summer, but most of it fell on these 2 days!

Last Monday they started.  I popped by Monday afternoon as the carpenters were leaving and they assured me it would only take a week to do frames.  True to their word, by Friday we had a 2-storey house.  Builder called on Wednesday to say we had nice views from upstairs – I was soooo happy we had an upstairs! (Oh and water view would be nice)
Now we’re waiting on trusses – they’re delayed!

But we popped in today to poke around and it’s pretty impressive – we have rooms!  Some smaller than I thought, but rooms, nonetheless.

We’re a bit sad that our ladder wasn’t big enough to get us upstairs – would have like to seen our views.

Can I start to get excited now?

First storey

1st storey from back

2nd storey from front

 

2nd storey back

The little-Family Room

My little kitchen

Dining looking into lounge - nice big room