BEST xmas present EVER? Site STARTED!

So, I was in a shopping centre hating every second of shopping for xmas presents for staff (I like giving people stuff, I just hate having to queue with screaming bogan parents and children to buy it) when I got a call from Gena. Of course, being buried alive in Northlands meant I had no phone reception, so the call dropped out. Anyway, checking my voicemail, Gena said that we had a site start date... well, actually, it had already started - site start was TODAY 22.12.09!

Of course, this was totally unexpected news (3 days before xmas for a site start?) so we went by the site to check things out.

Here's our new temp fence (glad it's up before the long xmas break!) and our metricon sign.



And it's not just a fence - we've actually had a site scrape today as well!


Unbelievable! Wish Gena had called us yesterday, as Tina could've gone to watch the scrape being done. Anyway, on the left you can see the scrape is lower for the garage stepdown alongside the fence. There's also temp fencing along the side boundary too. At the back of the scrape, there's about 30-40cm worth of fill.

For some reason I can't transfer photos from my iPhone to my laptop, but once that's sorted out I'll get more photos done.

Funny thing was, we were saying that having our hosue start before xmas would be the ideal present, but it wasn't going to happen... but it did! Probably the best thing about site start is that now the clock is officially ticking - the "370" days in the build contract start NOW, so theoretically handover should occur prior to December 27, 2010, or M will need to start paying damages - not that $250/week is anything significant given the cost of the whole build process.

Now we're wondering when M will get their guys back on site after xmas - we're going away for 9-10 days, so we're hoping not to miss too much of slab preparation, plus being overseas may make paying for the slab a little difficult.

Best xmas present so far, that's for sure! Hope all you reading this blog are having a good one too!

T&T