Just before Christmas

It is now a couple of days before Christmas and the site has been cleared ready for the driveway and landscaping to commence. The kitchen is almost finished with the stone bench top going on yesterday. The white Caesarstone looks amazing, unfortunately the stonemason cut the sink hole for an over mount instead of an under mount, but the builder has reassured us that this will be rectified early next year.

The outside tiling of the back shed has been done with just the grouting left. The front stairs and pathway will be completed early January once the concreting & driveway is done. On the inside the laundry was the only room left to tile and this was done just after the laundry benches went in.

Outside, a drainage trench has been built to the side of the driveway, and some filling of the land levels has been completed with aggregate so that water drains freely from our site.

The internal painting has started with undercoats being completed for the Rumpus walls and ceilings. The plan is to have the rumpus room ready first so that we can start moving some our storage items across, so that we don’t have to pay the storage facility any further.

Looking back it felt like the build was taking forever but just over a year has passed since we started this adventure, I just can’t see the end as yet, as there is still so much to do all of which needs to wait till next year.

Are we there yet?

It is just over a year now since the house was demolished and this is where we are now at:

A lot of work has been going on, so much work in fact that I haven’t had a chance to blog about it.

Over the last 3 weeks the grouting for all 3 bathrooms was completed and all of the joinery was installed, plus all plumbing accessories. All that is now left to do for the bathrooms is install the shower screens. Below are in progress photos taken before the accessories were installed.

 

The kitchen, laundry and lounge room cabinets were all installed over a 3 day period. The staircase was installed plus the glass balustrade and it looks pretty amazing. All of the cornices are now complete, this took longer than expected as there were a couple of faulty pieces that the builder wanted to be replaced. 
 

 

 

On the outside the kitchen landing and front entrance have been tiled, plus the garage façade has been rendered ready for the painters.

We are now on the home stretch but the house definitely will not be ready until late January as there are still a number of items outstanding with the two main ones being the painting and floor polishing. Even though the internal robes were planned to be ready for installation prior to Christmas we have opted to postpone this until after the floors are polished.

On the landscaping front we have decided to do what we can with the builders assistance and then have a landscaper come in and do the work that we can’t do ourselves like building the planter retaining walls; as the overall landscaping cost estimate was far more than we anticipated.