Slow Moving

Things have been moving really slowly over the past 2 weeks due to the rain, but the demolition finally started last week with the asbestos removed from the eaves and the back sunroom with only the garage left to go. In the meantime we’ve been finalising the external and internal inclusions so that the builder can place orders prior to Christmas so that we have a head start in the New Year.

With any luck the house will be gone by the end of the week and the excavation process can then start. So apart from this there isn’t much to report.

Rain rain go away

We drove past the house on Sunday to see if the asbestos removal had begun and unfortunately it hadn’t. The demolition start was pushed out to the following week of the 11th and of course it had to rain for two days straight! At the same time we tried to follow up with our Gas retailer “Energy Australia” as to whether the gas had been disconnected at the street – big mistake, they were going to follow up with Jemena and get back to us, which they never did, so on the second phone call a couple of days later we were told that there was a huge email trail and that they would follow up again with Jemena as their system was telling them that only the meter had been removed.

In the end we called Jemena directly to find that they had no correspondence between them and “Energy Australia”, so who knows where EA have been sending their emails too and they had recorded it as a street disconnection. They told us that they would be confirming this with the technician that performed the work and would ring us back. Yes we’ve heard this before, so a couple of days later and no call back, we rang them again and they’ve told us that the street disconnection has definitely occurred. I guess we will see when the excavation machines come in and hit a pipe.

We started shopping around for a new electricity provider after Ausgrid issued a new NMI for our home, this was a nightmare as well, with sites like “iselect” having out-of-date information – deals that no longer exist and incorrect connection fee amounts, in the end we used the government site: www.energymadeeasy.gov.au to find the cheapest deal for our new “Smart Meter” that hadn’t been installed yet, only to find that some energy retailers don’t actually perform new connections and that you need to go with a retailer that can set you up and then switch across. So we’ve gone back to Origin on a Flexichoice plan (no lock in contract or exit fees) that we can then switch from into a better plan.

Bring on the demolition

We advertised a demolition sale on both Gumtree and EBAY and managed to sell a couple of plants plus a built in wardrobe, but unfortunately the big ticket item "the kitchen" did not sell; so you could say the sale was a partial success. On the day we also dug up our favourite tree "a weeping maple" from the front garden and moved it to a pot in the hope that it will survive and be replanted in our new home in a year's time.

We agreed with the builder "Brilliant Homes" that handover of the property would occur on the 1st of November even though the kitchen and a number of other items, bathroom vanity and laundry tub were still to be sold. They were happy for us to continue to sell and access the site right up until the start of demolition which was currently penciled in for Thursday 7th of November.

On the 1st, as planned the builder "Rocco" went to inspect the premises and mark up the grounds ready for excavation. The markings were spot on as agreed - save front/side and back hedges with everything else to go.

We drove past the house on the Sunday to check that the gas meter had been removed; which it had been, but it didn’t look as though the disconnection offsite had been done (no dug up pipes), so a follow up to our gas company was required. That day we also ended up selling the kitchen on EBAY with the buyer agreeing to come and remove the kitchen on the Tuesday, just 2 days before demolition.

On the Tuesday, not only was the kitchen removed but most of the site fences went up and a port-a-loo appeared ready for the first phase of demolition being the removal of asbestos from the eaves sunroom ceiling and garage roof.

In the meantime we have received a number of emails from the builder confirming our inclusions/joinery, which is great to see as we definitely want to make sure that everything is as we had originally communicated and planned.