The money value of time

There's been a few ads for knock down & rebuild in our local paper - here's a couple that we saved because (of course) it features a Nolan!


Can you spot the difference - December 2010 on the left, and February 2011 on the right?

Anyway, the basic difference comes down to the money value of time, or as most people know it - "time is money", and this is a great example of that in real life.

Would you rather have $100 today, or $100 in 10 years? Here's a hint - take it today. Inflation alone means $100 in 10 years won't buy you as much as $100 today, ignoring any other benefit from investing or growing the original $100 over 10 years.

Same thing applies to building a house. As time goes by, labour and material costs increase, let alone other associated costs to operating a business. One largely overlooked factor in leaving your initial $1000 deposit is that although it locks in the base price for your house, it only does so providing you start building within 150 days (or however many specified days according to your builder).

To be fair, it would be unreasonable to expect your $1000 deposit to hold the price of your house for 6, 12, 18, 24 months into the future, for all the reasons mentioned beforehand. How would you like it if your boss decided to commit to paying you your exact salary for the next 5 years?

If you're building, make sure the builder isn't dragging their heels in organising appointments for precontract, contract, colour appointments, tile appointments etc. Similarly, make sure you're as organised as possible - do your homework in picking colours and selections, know exactly how and where to make modifications and upgrades if you want, demolish any old house asap if you're rebuilding, know your block of land inside out and get to know people at council if you have to regarding building permits.

A special warning for those building in new estates, land developers are notoriously optimistic in having your land titled - delays of 6-12 months and beyond in titling is not uncommon, and you're the one who will have to foot the bill for delaying the builder - you can bet the developers have a good legal team writing their contracts to make sure they're not responsible for delay costs!

Anyway, getting back to that picture of the ads, in 2 months the price has changed $11,000. This doesn't mean that every 2 months the base price will keep increasing by that amount, typically prices hold for 4-6 months before increasing again. Factor in price increases when building - base prices change, upgrade prices change, upgrade categories change and so on.

More food for thought - let's say that extra $11,000 is paid back over 25 years at 6.45%. The extra interest alone on $11,000 is about $11,165 - so now instead of paying $11,000 more, it's cost you $22,165 more.

Unlike flat screen TVs and computers, building a house doesn't get cheaper year on year, exactly the opposite!

Hmm... I should really start writing a book about building new houses - any readers out there work for a publishing firm?

T&T

Handover pics continued

It's Sunday night, about 48 hours after getting our keys. Spent all weekend cleaning and moving in basic items, the place now looks a mess all over again with half-opened boxes, rags & mops everywhere, temporary foldup tables and chairs... but anyway, here's a couple of pics taken at handover on Friday, before all the moving chaos began.

The front door - part of the promotion when we signed on for the house. 1020 x 2340, clear glass, stained Intergrain Charcoal. 750mm Gainsborough pull handle upgrade. Not sure whether we'll keep the clear glass, or add some obsure tint - I quite like the clear glass at the moment. Bricks are Austral Melbourne series Hawthorn with offwhite flush mortar - absolutely love them! That portico light, we'll change to a sensor light... getting all the plain light fittings changed will happen, but it's low on the huge list of things to do.



Entry hallway, and the feature upgrade stairs. Cantilevered hardwood with continuous handrail. and stainless steel balusters. The downside to these stairs is that they look awesome, but you can't really have any under-stair storage due to all the supporting framework under the stairs. Currently in raw finish - we have the stairs guy booked in tomorrow for sanding & staining over 3 days; if he does a good job, we'll put his details up. We will probably need to touch up or repaint the walls surrounding the stairs after staining (as the stain will run onto the walls), so might even change to a feature colour around the stairs - we'll see how much stain bleeding there is and decide after that. Three step lights illuminate the treads and look very very nice! We didn't add in a light over the stairwell, as it wouldn't be very visible from the ground floor. Some designs like the Liberty have the stairwell turning 180 degrees, and I think we would have added a stair light in that case.


Laundry. Got to have one, but will be trying to avoid spending any time in here unless absolutely necessary. We decided to put the taps on the all above the washing machine position, so the taps are easily turned on/off when the machine isn't in use. Usually they're in the cabinet right at the bottom, a bit of a pain to crawl down and turn off. Had plenty of experience with split washing machine hoses that were left on all the time, that end up flooding the laundry and beyond, so turn off your taps when not in use! We also put in a floor waste under the washing machine, just in case. Colours here: floor tiles are Tecnico Charcoal 400x400, wall tiles are Linea Grey 200x300, cabinet is Laminex Polar White with Laminex New Graphite benchtop.

Standing in the family room area, looking towards the kitchen in front and dining to the left. Needs more furniture, and more food, and lots more beer & wine. Ceilings are Dulux White on White, walls are Dulux Natural White. Of course, at night with downlights or fluoros on, everything looks creamier than in daylight.

And finally, we cracked open a bottle of champagne - this was given to us by the real estate agents when we bought the old house back in May 2009, and we'd been saving it for handover day!


We had handover with a missing kitchen drawer handle, and a bloke came around Saturday afternoon to replace it, so that was pretty good. There's a couple of problems that need to be sorted out soon rather than at 90 day maintenance (mainly we can't watch TV because someone forgot to connect the antenna to the Starserve system!), but we're pretty sure John will get in touch with us soonish about them, as he's on our street all the time building our neighbour's Chelsea!

And for all you housebuilders out there - when you do get handover, with shiny new keys in your pocket, driving up to your house with the facade lit up, parking your car in your garage and walking into your house - it makes all the planning, waiting, stressing, moving, mortgage payments all worthwhile!

More handover pics another day!

T&T

Day 267: Working... late!

After dinner and some late-night shopping madness, drove past our house - can you believe our hard-working SS and trades were still going at it, at 10pm?!


Only had my phone on me, but the facade lights look great when lit up. Will have to get some better pics with my SLR.

Spoke to John earlier today, and there should be a mad rush of activity in the next few days - scratched kitchen handles to be replaced tomorrow, and finishing painting top & bottom of internal doors, amongst other things. My job tomorrow? Get to the bank and make sure (again!) that our payment side of things is still on track.

Not often you'd find a tradie working past 3pm, and not often you'll see your SS on the job when most people would be getting ready for bed - top effort!

T&T

Completion inspection date confirmed

Left a couple of messages with our SS this morning to call me back to confirm our inspection date and time - we were unsure of whether it'd be the 20th (this Friday!) or next Tuesday 24th. I'd booked both days off just in case, but since work is crazy busy I need to be working at least one of those days.

Got a call back at closing time to confirm - it's ON for this Friday August 20th at 1:30pm! Wish us luck, readers! We haven't been inside the house for what feels like decades now, excited at seeing the "finished" product. Hoping there's not too many defects to be picked up. Now it feels like the business end of things, have to start arranging insurance, driveways, flooring, window coverings etc, as well as finding out about the final amount and adjustments.

Finally, a pic from the weekend - sorry about the weird angle, was holding the camera above the temp fence and couldn't see where it was pointing, but it does show our facade up/down lights; two on either side of the french doors, and one on each balcony pillar. They look a bit smaller than we expected, but that's probably because the balcony is a lot bigger than we thought it'd be. The colour of the balcony has matured nicely too - when the paint was first applied it was insanely bright purple, but it's calmed down to a nice modern shade. You can also see some unpainted plastering in the portico and the portico light fitting in front of the door, which we'll change over to a sensor light, one day... oooo, and the big pull handle on the front door!

T&T

Day 230: Late meetup with SS

Was on the way home when our SS called asking if we could catch up tonight - we ended up meeting at 6:30 - I guess site supervisors gotta work around the clock! Anyway, it was just to check whether we wanted some extra glass splashback in the kitchen - the standard design doesn't put any glass into the window reveal - despite the fact that all Metricon display homes with a window splashback and glass, have glass that go into the window reveal.



So here's a pic - taken on my new iPhone4 (without the useless LED flash going off, which makes everything look blue). The big glass piece on the side with the powerpoint hanging off it is standard, then there's another small glass piece which goes next to it (but only as high as the window reveal), and then there's "normally" plaster at the window reveal. Our SS thought it'd look better with the extra glass piece in both reveals for about $150.

Sounds reasonable, and we said so at the time - but now I recall then when we signed up with Metricon there was a promotion on for a glass splashback - we paid extra for the kitchen window, about $800 or so, we didn't get any credit back for the reduction in glass splashback (now taken up by the window) and now we pay a bit more, to get that little bit of glass back.... *sigh* ultimately it's not a huge amount of money, but given that we paid for the window, it would've been nice to have been given the glass that goes into the reveal.

Anyway, this certainly isn't a reflection on our SS - we've been quite lucky to have had a couple of very good site supervisors, who seem to be organised, efficient and proactive. Not long to go guys, keep it up!

We also had a quick look around the house - shelves are in, wardrobe fitout in the master bed is in (another item thrown in with the promotion, but it's actually quite a good size fitout with lots of shelves and drawers - happy!). Door handles are on, though the master bed door is meant to have a privacy lock which was put on the ensuite toilet instead - an easy fix, just swap the handles around. Errm.... mirror robe doors are on and look good too! Caulker has been through the house sealing up all the gaps. Still waiting on the rainfall showerhead in the ensuite shower and toilets - they'll both be put in sometime soon. The laundry splashback which is a little short will have another row of tiles added... happy about that too. Cement sheeting has been installed in the garage & portico, so they just need to be prepped and painted, then the garage door can go on. The house has also had a bit of a clean, and looks a million times better than when it's filthy!

Had a little talk about the light position in the sitting room and upstairs leisure - as a reminder, here's the sitting room lights and where they should be...


and the upstairs room lights, and where they should be too.


The thing about the electrical plan, is that it doesn't specify to the millimeter exactly where things should go. Now that allows for variability in the house construction process - for example, presence of studs or trusses etc, however I don't really think that's an excuse to stick a couple of lights obviously off-centre in the sitting room, or to put them a meter from the expected position upstairs. We did adjust the upstairs light position with our previous SS, and as to be expected not all changes or agreements are communicated to the following SS.

Still... all we want are our lights to be centred! Doesn't seem to be too much to ask. The electricians managed to do it everywhere else, but had a bit of a brainfreeze when doing the sitting room and upstairs.

And coming back to completion date, we had originally pencilled in Friday 20th August for a completion inspection, but might have to put it back to Tuesday 24th. It's very difficult for me to arrange a day off work, so let's hope this is the last adjustment of date. That said, we're not in a huge rush to get in our house - provided it's of a high quality finish (and YES that includes putting the lights in the centre of the room, not 40cm from a wall!!) we don't mind waiting another week, fortnight or month for the completion inspection. However it seems that head office is pushing for a completion this month, and providing quality doesn't suffer, we'll certainly be happy to have our house done!

Also need to organise carpeting - got a quote from Fowles flooring in Clayton for 40.5 lineal meters of carpet - enough for all upstairs and the home theatre room - for a dark grey carpet, so I'll head down there tomorrow to confirm everything and leave a deposit. Not sure if we'll have the carpet done before handover, but it won't be long after anyway, apparently there's a few days to have the carpet in stock, and about 2 weeks to book an installation day.

Finally for today, reminder to self: check the final invoice thoroughly! It'll be for the remaining 10% of contract value, plus our electrical upgrades, plus tile upgrades, minus an amount for an underground powerpit which we organised and paid for ourselves, and minus an unknown amount for "cranage provision". Also a credit amount for changing to a different toilet than originally selected, and a little more for that glass splashback extension.

Phew, gets complicated! Will also need to have a thorough re-read through the contract and see if there's any other provisional items we may be entitled to.

If anyone has had handover on their house, please comment and let us know what to look for, tips and tricks are most welcome!

T&T

Day 227: Toilet troubles... and completion inspection?

Got a call from our SS about lunchtime today - turns out the upgraded toilet we chose (a Caroma something-or-other) at Studio M back in Septebmer 2009 isn't available for months, and rather than using the portable toilet in our front yard, it would be better if we could choose an alternate toilet suite for the house.

Since I was working, I got Tina to do the hard work of picking a new toilet - she's picked the Raymor Espace wall-faced toilet suite. It should look something like this;


The other thing is that we now have a date for a completion inspection - Friday August 20th, exactly 2 weeks from today! Since we haven't been inside the house for a while it's hard to know what's been done - in a way, I'd be happy to not go back to the house until the completion inspection. That way, the next time we see it, it should look pretty magnificent and finished! Hope that date is locked in, I've already organised to take that day off work, which is quite a complicated thing to arrange. With any luck, any defects we may detect at that appointment will be minor, and won't be long after that we'll have the keys!

We also had a carpet measurer go through the house today, waiting on a quote for a carpet. Here's the thing with carpet - for example, Godfrey Hirst manufactures a range of carpet, but sells them to different retailers under different names, even though they're exactly the same. This prevents you from comparing prices across different retailers - a rather neat way to sidestep anticompetitive price fixing rules. Wonder if anyone from ACCC reads this blog? Anyway, hoping to hear back in the next few days about the carpet quote, we may be able to get it done before handover, if not, then very soon after.

We're wanting a dark grey carpet - found another blog which had exactly the right look in the first two pictures - though teamed with much whiter walls, to avoid the rather "closed-in" feel of too much darkness.


MyMetricon has had a very rare update recently - it's about as useful as a chocolate teapot most of the time, and the Certificate of Occupancy is due to be ordered next Friday... the 13th. Hope that's not a bad omen!

And non building related, going snowboarding tomorrow - normally we go for a week, but being so close to completion, a day trip will have to do. So if you're planning to go to Mt Buller tomorrow, stay at home instead - I hate queueing for ski lifts!

Not long to go until our house is done! Fingers crossed the final product is as perfect as we imagine it should be!

T&T

Day 224: The Final Countdown - and a brief review!

Met up with our SS and the construction manager for our area this morning...

.... and the news is, we're on track for a completion...

.... end of this month!


To actually hear this news is kind of surreal - I mean, really? We're going to have our house - soon?

We bought our development site back in May 2009, and the next 6 months from there was like sitting waiting for a kettle to boil, or toast to pop up... you know how it is!
Our problem was that we didn't really know much about redevelopment - all we knew was that we needed a block of land in a great location - so we bought the site at auction, then found out what easements were, and that led to a great big can of beans being opened. If you really want to know about that story, go see the first few months of the blog for all the pain involved with dealing with councils and water utilities! For a while there, I was worried that we'd have to scrap plans for our Nolan - but ultimately our plans were approved from council and water, and we were good to go!

Actual site start was December 22 2009 - we had a scrape done and temporary fence. Then not much for about 6 weeks with the Christmas period shutdown. Slab went down February 3rd 2010, and since then it's been pretty constant work. With any luck, from slab down to final keys it might be 7 months!

Probably shouldn't celebrate too soon, but our discussions this morning were regarding final fitoffs which should be done in the next 2 weeks. Then some QA people go through to check through everything. Hopefully we'll get a pretty good house at our completion inspection - which will be during a weekday, so we'll have to try and plan ahead to get time off work for that, plus getting our own inspector in as well. Should any defects be found, hopefully they'll be pretty minimal, and then we can arrange a final handover onsite for the remaining balance of the contract!

Anyway, we've decided not to publish any more pics of the house until after handover - mainly because there's not much more being done on the inside, plus everything's dark, locked up & we can't get onsite anymore. However, we'll be starting to plan things such as floor coverings, window coverings, driveways, landscaping etc and will be posting these things up for comment and feedback over the next few weeks.


T&T

Day 168: Some further plastering/carpentry, and onsite meeting with our two SSs

This morning, the carpenters were in and added the missing noggin in the garage (only 1 required, not 2 because they're only for plaster fixing), as well as installing the balcony!


Plus some other carpenter type things were done, installing/closing gaps around the front door and internal access door with timber strips (that will be stained/painted to match). Now, if we only had a key for the balcony french doors (below), the waterproofers can go and waterproof the balcony so the tiling, guttering, and portico plastering can be done.

Also had a plasterer in today, installing the plaster under the top flight of the stairs and tidying up some other spots. He also repaired the two holes in the ceiling where the carpenters tried to find the damaged floor joist to repair... more on this later!



I guess the big things for today was our on-site meeting with Monique and our new SS John. MyMetricon was updated yesterday to say we were getting a new SS; because Monique is so busy with all the Balwyn builds, John will take care of us and our neighbour down the road (who just had the slab down for their Chelsea - congratulations guys!).

So anyway, we had a page of things that we were mainly concerned about and wanted clarification before any further work was done, and happy to say that we're satisfied with how things are being assessed and fixed.

1) Damaged floor joist: I pointed out to John that the damaged joist was directly under where the upstairs WC waste pipe was located. Since the carpenters had already tried twice (and failed!) to locate the joist from the ground floor, John got upstairs and banged through the plaster adjacent to the waste pipe, clearly marking out on the kitchen ceiling where the joist needs repairing. Should be an easy fix now!

2) Kitchen problems;

• Kitchen stone bench on the side will go right into the window splashback reveal as per the earlier pic posted- carpenters will cut out all the wood/plaster that's blocking the benchtop.
• Gaps, missing laminate strips - will all be fixed when the kitchen people come back in for the benchtops, or by the painters. Pretty minor but annoying stuff.
• Rangehood: Will be externally ducted, will be dealt with later during the electrical final fixing.
• Cables from the walk-in-linen - to be repaired by plasterer where they've been incorrectly pulled through in the fridge alcove.

3) Laundry waste: Been in the wrong spot for months, but the plumbing people responsible are aware it needs to be moved before tiling.

4) Garage internal access door: A replacement Balmoral-2 door has been ordered, as there was an estimating error somewhere - someone forgot to count all the doors correctly! And the missing noggins have been fixed this morning.

5) Rumpus room doors - Will leave them hanging the way they are, as they're set up for "right handed people" the way the right door opens. Not a big deal ultimately.

So, looks like things are geting back on track! John used to be a painter apparently, which should be a good thing, if it means he has an eye for detail!

The plans for the next few weeks:

• Carpenters back in sometime this week to do the final fixes and repair that joist
  
• Painters might start next week, and take around 2 weeks to complete internal painting
• Tiling around the start of July
• By August, final fixings, and maybe firming up on a handover date by that time too!

T&T

Day 140: Plastering, Day 2! Plus a bonus... walkthrough video!

After receiving the report from Alex last night, decided to give Monique a call in the morning. She hadn't received the report, so I emailed it to her and Julie, our construction CSC, as well as a request for the bracing diagram - which to Metricon's credit, we received a few hours later.

Anyway, we're pretty happy at how Monique says she'll handle the issues raised; some of the plaster has been left off where changes need to be done, and where the toilet plumbing cuts through a truss, the carpenters will cut out plaster and repair, get a few photos taken then replaster. Sounds good to us!

So here's a few photos from Day 2 of plastering - pretty much all complete (except cornices), and the joins in the plaster and screwholes have mostly been plastered over.

Many people have reported their houses feel bigger after plastering; we're not in agreement with that! The open plan area (kitchen, living and dining) definitely feels bigger after plastering - it brings out the 2.7m ceilings well, and we're looknig forward to spending many lazy evenings here! But the minor bedrooms do feel a little smaller after plaster, but then again it was getting late in the afternoon with not much light, so we'll see how it feels in broad daylight.

Home theatre room, south facing window looking out the the backyard on the left, then another window facing west, but shaded by the outdoor room on the right. These are double glazed awning windows (which are standard in the rumpus room only), so hopefully with the home theatre cranked up, there won't be too much sound leakage to annoy the neighbours! There's also sound insulation (acoustitherm) to all walls in the home theatre room. We were thinking of doing double glazed to all windows, but think we'll put them few extra thousands towards the mortgage first.

Upstairs. On the left is Bed 4, then a linen cupboard. Then an open doorway in the centre, with the toilet just to the right of it. Then another open doorway to Bed 3, and Bed 2 around the right corner.

Apparently, our beautiful (and expensive!) upgraded stairs might be in as soon as next week - and the kitchen is soon on the way! Hopefully the issues raised at inspection will be corrected prior to much other work is done too. So far Monique's been great at scheduling tradies, and we're hoping she's good at getting them back in to correct things too!

Now the countdown is really on towards finishing... took us months to get to a site start with all issues with easements and powerlines, but it's almost like the end is in sight!

And finally - because we've managed to hit the magic mark of 50 followers (if you want updates on our blogs and you're not a "follower", click on the follow button on the right column to get updates!)... I recorded a little video on Tina's ipod nano of a walkthrough, until the nano ran out of space. Enjoy!




T&T

Day 136: Roof tiles for garage delivered

Today, a delivery of nearly 2 pallets of roof tiles for the garage roof, as well as the timber tile trusses.


MyMetricon has also had a little update, with the plaster scheduled to be completed by 21.5.10; two weeks from today. That'd be nice!

T&T

Day 119: External lockup... complete?! Electricals... complete?! Progress!

Someone managed to spend 4 hours at our house today - the time went quick! Both the carpenters and electricians were on site today from about 7am, with the electricians wrapping things up around 2, but the carpenters staying until 5.

Facade is complete! Cladding has been installed all around, and eaves complete with eave edging also installed.


At the back of the house, the cladding has also been installed on the first floor.


While I was there, our SS also pulled up, as she wanted to deliver a couple of bits of timber personally for the chippies so they could finish the external lockup today. Thanks to Josh & his team of carpenters for doing a great job on our house! Things are going well - now external works are pretty much complete, the weather shouldn't really hold up any further progress.

The immediate plans according to Monique;

• Data, TV and phone cabling hopefully done this week
• Plumbers back for lockup plumbing fitoff (bathtub connections etc) and to fix the ensuite showerhead which shold be on the ceiling, not on the wall
  
• Painter to start work on painting the eaves & cladding Thursday
• Scaffolding to come down next Tuesday
• Lockup inspection by Metricon's surveyors plus Metricon's Quality Assurance inspection then to be done next week
  
• Plaster to be delivered next Thursday
• Our independent inspection (which we're yet to organise) tentatively booked in for next Friday.

And as for longer term stuff... plaster should hopefully be hung by start of May, then lots of painting and fixing. Cabinets, kitchen etc. June to July should see final fixing with tiling, showers, plumbing fitoff... and hopefully final inspections sometime in August, with handover September - or maybe a bit earlier!

We're not all that frantic about the handover date - as long as things are done correctly and well, we're not in a huge rush to get in - but it is nice to hear we'll be in sooner rather than later!



Someone also came in to cement in the bathtubs. You can also see some metal flashing between the floor and bath hob, part of the waterproofing process in the wet areas.


And finally, heaps more wiring in the house with the sparkies running in all the cabling for ceiling light battens, downlights, wall lights, step lights etc. It was a lucky thing I had today off, as our sparkies consulted me a few times to check I was happy with downlight and powerpoint positioning. Because the heating ducts are installed first, downlights often aren't located exactly where they're drawn in the electrical plan. Only two sparkies did all the wiring, the boss & his apprentice, and he'd been working for Metricon (and not any other builders) for more than 20 years! Thanks Rob & Rod!

So external lockup is pretty much done, and internal lockup about 90% done. Good progress!

T&T

Day 84: sand for bricking delivered, Frame inspection walkthrough complete

Turned up after lunch to see that we've gained another huge lump of sand in front of the garage - sand for bricking!

But the big deal today was our frame walkthrough with our new SS Monique - very impressed with her knowledge and thoroughness! Here's the issues we picked up on, and her answers. This won't make any sense to you guys, it's just so we can keep track of how these issues are being fixed!

TIMEFRAME - Next things to happen is that the chippies will be back onsite to install the front, rear and internal access doorframes either Thursday or Friday. Needs to be done before the brickies start working, which should be this Friday or following Monday. Ground floor should be bricked in 7-8 days, then scaffolding appears so the first floor can be wrapped, then first floor bricking will take another week, then cladding and eaves go in. Electrical roughin will happen about the same time as the first floor bricking, maybe. Hopefully full lockup will be at the end of April, and then we'll get a better indication of how long the remaining stages will take. With no delays so far in tiles or bricks, things are going well!

LOCKUP INSPECTION - Our SS is fine with having a lockup inspection, providing it comes after the Metricon lockup inspection. She'll keep us in touch every week to let us know when we need to organise that. The inspectors that M are using for each stage are Checkpoint Surveyors, and apparently their inspection was only just done and should go through to Monique tomorrow. Change to electrical plan: can upstairs leisure light be moved? See next.

LIGHTING - I realised that one change I made to the lighting plan upstairs wasn't really a good idea, and wanted to change the lights in leisure room to be one light point in leisure and one in passageway, which is the standard Nolan lighting plan. No worries - gave Monique a printout of the changes, signed it, and she'll pass it onto the sparkies. Also, Tina wants to finetune the position of the downlights over the kitchen island, and we'll do that at a later walkthrough once the kitchen goes in.

GROUND FLOOR ISSUES
Timber poles front & rear only held in by one bolt - not load bearing poles, only there to hold up frame until bricking done.

Floor waste to laundry - will be moved to correct position under washing machine location

Torn/open wrapping at sitting room wall - will be fixed prior to bricking, just needs more tape

Stud at meter box unsupported & loose - will be fixed (Friday?) when chippies fit doors

Missing noggin to study/family wall - will be fixed at lockup

Rumpus room door too low (needs to be for 2340 door) - to fix Friday

Also front door & internal access too low – will be fixed when doorframes put in.

Home theatre double doors: Changed so that the left door opens, the right door has mushroom stop.

FIRST FLOOR

Ensuite rainfall head wrong position – will be fixed after ensuite shower floor put in (currently a big hole)

Bed 4 door to bathroom - will be fixed - need to move over about 2 feet.

Roof access door - will be placed in Bed 4 robe, as Bed 3 access blocked.

Master bed doorframe stud unsupported & loose - will be fixed by door installers

Possible to move light position in upstairs leisure room, to have one in leisure, one in passage - done!

Other issues: Keep an eye on water patch near outdoor room - there's no plumbing in that area! Monique also pointed out the reinforced trusses we upgraded for a future evaporative cooling unit - about 5 trusses with 120mm thickness instead of the usual 90mm.

So, pretty happy with how today's walkthrough went, and Monique certainly seems well organised, and quite knowledgable about our house and aware of most of the issues we brought up.

All we have to do now is sit back, and wait for the doors to go in and then a few weeks of watching bricks going up - yay!

T&T

Day 57: First floor wall framing commenced

Some more work done onsite today - commencement of framing the first floor.


View from front of house. Some wall framing done for the upstairs leisure room visible from here, with two medium sized vertical windows to be facing the front.

There's still a bit of unfinished work - flooring to master bed is not complete, missing a couple of trusses between the floors, and the ensuite shower base hasn't been sunken down for flush tiling yet. All those little items are probably waiting on a delivery of trusses & yellowtongue, as there's no room for any more materials right now! And a few doors still haven't had the taller frames corrected - again, not a difficult fix, just need to make sure it's fixed before bricking starts!


View from rear of the house - looking up to Bed 4, and some framing for the future bathroom. It looks like there's a huge bow in the frame, but I think I moved my iphone while taking the photo! I'll have to start packing a stepladder in the car to have a crawl up to the first floor! Apparently we've also had a change od construction CSC (according to mymetricon); that would make it the third construction CSC in 3 months. A little continuity would be nice!

Anyway, things are running nicely on target to have the first floor wall framing complete by this weekend. Let's hope the weather stays nice like the last few days!

Ian & Evie: We'll probably get an inspection done at preplaster (lockup stage) and final inspection. Haven't chosen a company yet, but are trying to narrow the list down a little right now! We'd probably need to book the preplaster inspection around middle of March if things run to schedule. Does anyone have suggestions for inspectors in Melbourne? They must be reliable & thorough!

R&T: yep, nice house, nasty bricks unfortunately. It makes the house look already 10 years old! And Tina found another Metricon home for sale in our area that's open for inspection this weekend, will post details in the next day or two!

JT: Sounds like you're about a month ahead of us - got any pics of the build so far?

T&T

Day 56: First floor (flooring) 95% complete

Turned up around noon today to see the chippies hard at work - all the trusses for the first floor had been installed, and by the time they left pretty much all the yellowtongue flooring for the first floor had been installed, except for a couple of sections over the sitting room to finish off.

Apparently the first floor wall framing should be done by end of this week, and sometime next week the roof trusses (with the help of a big crane) can go on!


If you look at the portico at the front, you can see a couple of vertical timber posts holding up a little extended section. On our particular facade, the master bedroom is extended here for about 2' - a little extra room is always appreciated! Looking at the right front corner of the house, you can see where the remaining trusses have been installed, but without flooring on top yet. I forgot to remind the chippies to raise the frame for the front door, internal access and home theatre - they're still set at normal door height instead of tall door height.

Completed beams, trusses and flooring. This view is standing in the hallway, looking directly at the powder room in front, with laundry on the left and sitting room on the right.

Does anyone know how soon the tilers get onto tiling the roof once the roof frame is up? Would be nice to have a hat on the house, to help prevent too much rain getting into the frame!

I took Hannah to the vet today, and judging from the bill I received , it cost me about $10 for each of the 15 minutes we were in the clinic! Should've been a vet, they get to play with animals all day... anyway, hopefully a 3 week course of anti-inflammatories will negate the need for surgery to her right knee. sarahv: thanks for the link - we were researching doggy doors a few months ago, there's another company called patiolink that sell an almost identical product, roughly $400 for a dog door insert. Pricey, but at least it's removable (can always move it to the laundry door if we need to!)

Day 52: Some flooring to first floor installed

I don't think the chippies were able to do much work today due to intermittent but constant rain, but they were able to get most of the flooring installed over what trusses were put up yesterday

I think this is looking up at the wall separating the study from the family room. You can see the floor trusses, with yellowtongue particleboard flooring on top. There wasn't a ladder or any access to the first floor, otherwise I would have crawled up for a look.

The trusses over the entry hallway and sitting room still haven't been installed - I think they're waiting for a delivery of more trusses because there are none left onsite. Plus a beam needs to be installed over the sitting room horizontal feature window that we added along one wall, and door heights need to be increased over internal access and home theatre room.

View from home theatre room - you can see flooring installed over the family room.

Tomorrow I'll be at the Liberty open for inspection, and will probably stop by a few other houses in the Balwyn area to have a stickybeak at what $3m gets you in the Boorondara area. And also 農曆新年 for Sunday - Chinese new year!

wushukid: yep, ceiling heights 2.4m is standard, 2.55m is higher, and 2.7m is higher still but only available to ground floor.

JT: so you're at lockup now? how long did it take you to get to that stage? I've heard of a few double storey Metricon houses taking over a year to build, but I hope yours won't be one of them!

anonymous: you're welcome, glad to help!

Finally, while browsing Domain I found a Henley home for sale in Surrey Hills, a steal at just $3m! Won't go to this open for inspection as it's the same time as the Liberty in Mont Albert, but this one looks like it has every option! We think it's a Henley Empire house, and doing the rough sums: land value approx $1.2m, house base price $300k, options, upgrades, landscaping etc another $400-500k = under $2m development cost. Asking $3m, so maybe $1m net gain. Anyone else feeling like they want to get into property development?

T&T

Day 49: Ground floor framing complete, site supervisor meeting.

A day off work = a good day to inspect the site! I turned up first around 11, and caught the chippies hard at work in the sun finishing off the ground floor frame. The head guy there was Josh, and when I pointed out that I should be having higher door frames to accommodate the taller 2340mm doors, he agreed and said it'd be an easy fix. Good one boys! Gave them a slab of coldies for their hard work. Here's the thing - if you're nice to your tradies and bring up little issues early, you'll probably get a good resolution to your problem. Of course, this is dependent on you having the time during the day to get to your site, which isn't always possible.


This pic taken in the afternoon, they finished the job around 2pm. The entry doorframe is too low - only about 2000mm instead of 2340mm, so that'll be fixed later. Not bad for 2 days work!

View from outside the sitting room, looking towards back of the house. On the left is doorframe to garage internal access, then study behind that. Centre of photo; cavity slider door to rear of house. The internal access doorframe is set too low, another one to be fixd up later. The crew had already fixed the frames to the study, laundry and powder room


View standing in kitchen. To the left is walk-in pantry, walk in linen to right of that, then doorway to hallway. Lots of angled wood stuck across doorways, maybe just to hold the frame together until the supports are all set in?

We also met our SS Brian in the afternoon - nice guy! As for progress, he reckons more ceiling trusses will be delivered tomorrow, and the chippies back later in the week to set them up. Then first floor, then roof trusses - expecting frame to be complete by end of the month! Windows should be in around end of the month as well. And then, lockup (tiles and bricks) maybe a month later - ie end of March! Yay for progress!

He also asked us if we had any issues so far to be looked at, so we brought up these things:

1. Door frames too short = acknowledged, and already on the way to being fixed.
2. Powder room toilet position very close to door = will be fixed, as the doorframes are larger than the actual door size required, so there's room for adjustment.
3. Laundry floor waste in wrong position (under cabinet) = will be fixed so it is under the washing machine.
4. Site cut at neighbour's boundary leaving about 300mm of vertical soil = will need tiny retaining wall, will be raised as a variation. Hopefully not too expensive!
   
5. Huge mound of soil at back of site from site cut = will be levelled. But some medium sized rocks, we'll have to pay (not much) to be removed.
6. Some minor changes to electrical plan - want to move a couple of lights, shouldn't be a problem.
7. No temporary power pole required = we had a $1000 powerpole included in our contract, but because we organise the power pit, we'll get this amount back as a credit towards final payment.
8. Small chip in corner of portico concrete = will be repaired, brickwork for piers to balcony will cover most of it too.
   
9. Some water pooling in front yard area - leaking tap? = plumbers will be coming in the next week or two to run in water to the house, and will correct and leaks from the main water line to the block.

Pretty happy with our SS so far - certainly we've had heaps of work done since resumption of activities mid-Jan, and the next couple of stages will roll through pretty quickly he reckons.

We've also located a few more Metricon houses in our area, so when there's a slow day with no work to blog about, I'll post photos here - helpful if you're trying to choose bricks etc for a nice facade!

wushukid: Peninsula is a fantastic design - the open area above the dining room is incredible! Bit expensive for us to go for though :(

stefan petersen: thanks for your comment! There are pretty big windows, and the family room window faces east, so some nice morning sun. It's about 3m from the side fence, so hopefully no shadowing will occur. We walked through all the ground floor rooms today, and our earlier perceptions of rooms being too big or too small are gone - everything feels in perfect proportion now!

T&T

Day 48: Base stage paid, and frame started!

Paid the base stage invoice today - can you believe CBA wanted $28 to do an electronic transfer to ANZ? Anyway, ended up doing it through netbanking for free - stuff you, banks and your fees!

Got a call from Tina on the way home from work, and she sounded excited - for good reason too, as she was already walking around our ground floor frame, which was halfway done!


Not bad work by our tradies, suffering in 34 degree mad heat - I'll bring them a carton of beer tomorrow I think! Also spoke to our fantastic neighbours, who said the chippies started about 7, and worked through to about 3, solid effort that!

The next picture shows our sitting room.




Now that the frame is starting to go up, it's so much easier to get an idea of the size of rooms. My perceptions so far is that the sitting room and laundry seem a little smaller than I thought they would be, and the study is bigger than I thought (good!). Powder room seems about right - because we made some modifications to the floorplans, our laundry/powder room is different to standard Nolan.


In the previous picture, from bottom to top: Powder room (with one pipe for sink waste), then laundry (two pipes), then the two little areas are for walk-in-linen and walk-in-pantry. Then the kitchen (with 2 pipes for sink) and dining room, then outdoor room!

This next picture shows my room in the house - the home theatre/man cave. Tina can have pretty much every other room, but I've got big plans for this room! Though one thing we need to check with our SS tomorrow is the door heights - we have 2340mm doors everywhere, and I think the door frame to the HT is too low. It's basically the same height as the bipart doors to the rear (right) of the HT, which is only about 2000mm high. Should be an easy fix at frame stage to rectify.


The next pic is a view of family room from kitchen area. HT room is to the right, and to the left is entry hallway. We'll put our plasma TV on the left, so you can see it from the kitchen and meals area.


Finally, welcome to all the new readers to the blog - seems to be quite a few fellow metricon builders out there, some ahead of us and some just starting out. Please feel free to ask questions, and to comment about things that we should be checking (in particular, we'll have to get around to organising an inspection at preplaster in a few weeks/months?)

Ben&Dana: Hi, welcome to our blog. Jealous that you're at lockup already! We looked at a Stanton display home, somewhere in the northern suburbs I think - we like how the informal area of the house (kitchen, meals, family) takes up the entire back half of the ground floor! We did get our building permit mid October, but due to delays in demolition, we really didn't started until mid January, though the site scrape was Dec 22nd.

R&T: I think you said you had a bit of a fall on your block? Sure, a big slab will cost more $$$, but it'll stop your house sliding off onto someone else's land :) Should get nice views too! I think I've found another Nolan being built in Mitcham, will blog about it if I'm right!

wushukid: Hi! What design are you building, and what area? It's interesting to find readers of this blog are building all over Victoria, and NSW as well :)

Today's frame start has been sooo exciting - I just wish I could stand the heat to stay a bit longer - had to go home after a few minutes to change!

T&T

Day 44: Termite protection (?) installed, and delivery of wood

Today, the skies finally parted to allow a bit of rain to wash away yesterday's humidity. Apparently a bit of rain is good for the slab, so we're glad to see it today! We didn't expect much to be done for a few days, but arriving at the site after work, seems like people had already been at it today!


The sight that greeted us first was a few big piles of wood. Probably not enough for the ground floor frame, but certainly enough to get started! A couple of sheets of yellowtongue for the first floor as well.



Also, our slab now has a nice blue skirt on. Tina dug a bit of paper out of the bin, and apparently it's a delivery slip for termite guard protection, we think... the rain kind of ruined the paper. It runs the perimeter of the main slab, but not around the portico of outer garage wall (no timber there, just brick piers).

So far, we're quite happy at how things are progressing - lots of work has been done since the xmas/new years shutdown period! Certainly didn't expect anything done today - the problem is, now we might get disappointed if we turn up at the site and nothing has been done! MyMetricon was also updated today - a huge "Completed" bar across the slab stage of construction!

Of course that means Metricon will send me a big invoice for 20%, but who said you could get a house built for free?

R&T: Hope your selection process is going along well too... I'm still hunting on Domain for Metricon houses for sale/inspection, as we still like to stickybeak at other builder's houses. Especially looking at "real people's" houses, not just the over-the-top display home. We saw a Porter Davis house in Bundoora for sale, just off Grimshaw St, and it was done pretty nicely! Also; have a drive all along Shannon St, as you'll see another Nolan being built with Hawthorn bricks, in case you haven't seen it already!

JT: Welcome to the blog! Donvale is a beautiful area, we had a house in Mitcham that we sold to buy our redevelopment site. You'd probably drive past it a bit, it's next to United Petrol on Mitcham Rd, and the new owners are converting it to an osteopath clinic - here's a photo we took of it the other day.



It's kind of a pity that they're converting it as it was a great house to live in (except only 2 windows in the house could open because the previous owner to us had painted them shut!).

I wouldn't worry too much about the "420 days" in your contract - from what we've seen of Metricon in our area they generally get the double storeys done in 7-8 months, and single storey in about 4. Also, we don't have Gena anymore, it's Joanne now :) We liked the Hampton plan, but because it wasn't on display we went with the Nolan :) I think you're right, in that the Sycamore has replaced the Hampton, but to be honest I think the Hampton is better, mainly because of the shared bathroom between Bed 2/3 - I think that's more practical than an ensuite to all bedrooms!

As for the kitchen, I just had a look at our onstruction drawings - there's definitely a cupboard door to the island bench (I think about $150 or so?) and the pot drawers appear to have a smaller top drawer and bigger bottom 2 drawers (I think we paid $880 to get a dozen pot drawers), though there are no specific dimensions to reflect that. Unfortunately I think it depends on the salesperson/consultant you get on the day as to what kind of options you can choose to get.

One thing about building - I think it makes my working days go faster, as I can't wait to be out the door and go to our land to see what's been done!

T&T

Day 43: SLAB DAY!

Wooo, what a day! Had to get up early, as we figured we could fit in about half an hour of concrete watching before work :)


A lucky gold coin for the slab?


Concrete trucks rolled in about 7:50am. Apparently they're not allowed to get started any earlier, and with the concrete pump truck attached, it's easy to see why - it's a pretty noisy operation and lasts for hours! Anyway, they were all setup and pouring concrete by 8:05.

The crew hard at work. They started off in the furthest corner of the slab, pouring the trenches around the outdoor room, then moved towards the front of the slab. Kind of like sanding a floor - start at the furthest corner from the exit! Meter box still crooked, but obviously will be fixed as the frame/bricks goes up.

Then, we had to leave to go to work... came back in the afternoon to see this...


yaaaay! Big huge bit of concrete! Now we're really starting to see our dream take shape. Garage on left, portico at front, and rest of the ground floor behind it. It really does take up a huge amount of land (I think our plans say it's around 49% coverage), not much at the front, sides or rear! Which is a good thing - less outdoors stuff to maintain.


View from rear of the slab. Directly in front is the home theatre room, then family room, then study, then the setdown area for garage. On the "left" of the slab from this view is the outdoor room, dining room, kitchen, laundry, powder room and sitting room. Hard to visualise right now!

Today was a pretty hot day too, around 33. Fortunately the next few days will be a little cooler with some light rain, which is apparently ideal for the concrete to cure (set) properly.

And checking MyMetricon, apparently the wall frame is due to be complete by Feb 15, just 2 weeks away!

What a journey - from buying the old house in May 09, to finally getting the foundations done Feb 2010. The next few months are sure to alternatively rush by and slow down, depending on what stage the house is up to - can't wait to see what happens next!

T&T