Certification

Anyway the private certifier finally walked through the house on Monday and was happy to grant an interim occupancy certificate, so we should be in very soon. The only thing we need is our perimeter fence to go up so that no one accidently falls off our site.

On the inside we have walked through the house without the builder and have started to make a list of defects – most of which are minor. The only major defect at this point in time that we can see is that the ensuite toilet is leaking from the in wall cistern into the toilet bowl continuously and at a rate of an open tap so we have had to turn the water off for this toilet. Hopefully a plumber will be out shortly to rectify this.

We finally have a tiled pathway to our front door! Hip Hip Horray

The renderers are back today to commence work on the perimeter walls. Apparently they have 3 - 4 days worth of work but the forecast is for a week of rain! Just our luck. 

 
At the same time we have found ourselves a local landscaper “Mike’s Property Solutions” to build our planter “Heron” block walls and lay our turf for us. We have agreed to have him start late March once the fence has been done and the site has been cleared of rubbish.

Still more to go

The motorised roller blinds and external awnings were installed earlier in the week but unfortunately the electrics to the house was not turned on as phase 3 needed to be switched on at the power pole. This was done on the Tuesday so the Sparkys returned to finish off any work and test all electrics in and outside the house. 

On the Friday the blind company returned to install the plantation shutters and calibrate the blinds only to find that the external awnings were not feeding into the track correctly. So a return trip was needed to fix these and calibrate the internal rollers as well once the fabric has straightened out. I must say the shutters look fantastic!

The repainting that was required was done during this week, plus the external doors and garage façade was also completed. Overall unfortunately we haven’t been impressed with the painting quality nor timeframes. They really dragged it out and we have found a number of spots where only 1 (possibly 2) coats of paint were applied when there should be 3. Also they dripped paint onto our floors and fittings – not impressed!

Driveway is poured!

As the week continued the concreters managed to beat the weather and poured the crossover and our driveway plus other colored areas all by the Thursday! All I can say is it came up better than what we expected. I have attached photos. Eleveneen Pty Ltd worked with our builder and the council representative to give us a driveway that looks good and is functional. The council wanted us to drop the elevation of our driveway to the guidelines apparently so that our car would not be scrapped, but this meant we had to excavate at our cost. Our concreter managed to convince the council inspector that he could give us a driveway that wouldn’t scrape our car with a higher elevation that would slope us up to our garage and still have water drain into our trench on one side of our driveway and boy was he right.

 

Back on the inside, work was continuing with the stairs being sanded and polished; whilst the cleaners were busy re-cleaning the internals ready for caulking.

The Sparkys are now back for another 3 days installing power points, data, tv connections etc. With this build we have been very fortunate that the builder has allowed us to come onsite and deal with the tradies directly for any questions they may have. This has allowed us to check firsthand what products they are installing and using throughout the build. There was a mix up with the 3 in 1 heat lights for our bathrooms, our contract stated that we would be receiving IXL branded 3 in 1’s however the sparky turned up with the Arlec branded versions which are one third of the price. After a couple of phone calls, discussions and emails we ended up with 2 IXL’s and the third one for downstairs unfortunately was left as an Arlec as the ducting (which would prove too difficult to change) had already been done at the rough in stage to suit this other brand.

So lesson learned – keep an eye on what is in your signed contract/agreed inclusions are and what actually goes in.

Are we there yet?

Last Friday and Saturday Stegbar came to install our built in robes as we opted to not go with the builder’s standard robe company. Anyway the robes look great and I must say this was a hassle free experience with Stegbar and would highly recommend them for any future robe work. They came when they said and they cleaned up after themselves and worked 2 solid days installing our robes.

The mirrored splashback was also added to the kitchen on the Monday along with a couple of other internal missing glass work pieces. The Sparkys today are busy installing power points, data plus other electrical work but unfortunately can’t test their work until the power to the house is turned on. We also hit another issue with our feature lighting installation where our pendant light was deemed to heavy/big to be installed by the electrician without additional ceiling support and a scaffold. So this was put on hold until we could come to an agreement on how much more this should cost us even though the electrical contract included the installation of 2 chandeliers. 

Work has started to progress on the outside with concrete planter footings, air con and a garbage slabs all being poured. The curb and layback was also done and the driveway was approved ready for a pour.

The new year has started

So the holiday lull is partly over, some trades/suppliers are staying closed until after Australia Day whilst others are just starting up again. We came back to the house today to find that the painting unfortunately is still underway with 2 coats of the walls and a final coat of the timber work still to be done. The paintwork had to stop as the timber floors (excluding the stairs) were scheduled to be polished and the house had to be locked down for the week.

Once the house was re-opened and the floors could be walked on the painting continued. The plumber also returned to install the water heater, taps and toilets.

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.