Day 129: Plumbing, plaster & cornice

Busy on site today - plumbers came in to connect up the downpipes, and a big delivery of plaster & cornices.


They removed the french doors upstairs to load the plaster up there - but fortunately they remembered to put the doors back!


You can see here the bricks have been cleaned everywhere - except for the balcony, which will be rendered. You can also see a couple of downpipes - square profile, in Woodland Grey (to match the gutters), close fitted to the house. We saw another house being built in Nunawading which has huge round downpipes, not fitted close to the house and it looked unattractive, so we're glad our downpipes look good! Though where it connects to the stormwater piping at the bottom of the downpipes is not painted and is quite a long way above ground level, so it stands out in white - maybe someone will come in later to paint that?

Lots of plasterboard (Boral 10mm) and cornice (Scotia) sitting in the kitchen/dining area waiting to be installed. Plaster shouldn't go up for a couple of weeks - I got a call from Monique today saying the carpenters should be back in next week for the balcony, garage roof (and fixing up all the notes marked on the frame?), and our independent inspection has been moved to Monday May 10th, so plaster can't start before then. Plus the insulation needs to be installed first. Where they've put the plaster is right under the massive hole in the roof where all the tiles have been broken, so I'll get some big plastic sheets to put over the plaster to stop it getting soaked when it rains.


Closeup of the cleaned bricks near the front door - love how they look! I think the brickies have done a great job, bricks evenly spaced, mortar widths consistent, good blending!


Finally, the plumbers also had a go at correcting the ensuite shower. We have one showerhead on an adjustable rail on the right (you can just see the plumbing fitting sticking out of the frame), and one showerhead mounted on the ceiling (which was mounted on the wall). It's been moved up to the ceiling - but it's located dead centre of the shower, rather than to one side as drawn on the construction plans. We're thinking this is maybe a good idea, and leaving it as it is?

What do you think - leave the ceiling mounted showerhead in the centre of the shower, or place it to one side? Comment below!

T&T

Day 69: Gutters, fascia - and lots of plumbing!

Went by our house on the weekend, and realised why the family room window was bugging me on Friday - turns out the awning window they put there was meant for the home theatre room (double glazed), so I'll pop by the site tomorrow morning, and if the chippies are there putting in the rest of the windows, I'll let them know.

Building a house is a bit like Christmas every day - you get to the site in the afternoon after work, and if you've been a good boy/girl, someone's left you some presents already unwrapped! (And if you've been bad, maybe nothing's been done!)

Anyway, we must've been good on the weekend, as not only are the gutters & fascia on the first floor, but also a whole lot of plumbing has been run through!


Gutter is Colorbond Woodland Grey, and fascia is Colorbond Surfmist. Looks great! With any luck, the Surfmist looks close enough to the white windows to complement the facade. Need a roof & gutter/fascia to the rear of the house though - waiting on the chippies to come back for that job.



Plumbing: They must have had a fairly big or efficient crew today, as pretty much the entire house has been plumbed! Hopefully they've fixed the leak at our main entry pipe, as we had a huge bill for the final quarter of 2009 - I think the demo crew didn't cap off the main water feed when demolishing the old house, plus there was also a puddle of water in the front yard after the demo. This picture is of the ensuite; a whole lotta pipes to feed the twin basins. I wonder how the plumbers keep track of which one is hot, and which is cold - i"m sure there's a system in there somewhere!

They've also installed pipes for the solar panel for the hot water system (plus insulated copper or brass pipes)

Pipes for the island bench go in one pipe under the side kitchen bench, and pop up in the middle of the slab. Waste for the sink/dishwasher pictured behind water pipes. We added a floor waste in the laundry, but it's in the wrong spot (under the cabinets) so this is another item to bring up with our SS - it's meant to be located under the washing machine.

Checking how things have gone today, only only little thing about the plumbing is wrong; we have two showerheads to the ensuite shower. One is a mixer feeding a normal rail showerhead on one site which has been installed correctly, the other showerhead is a mixer feeding a ceiling-mounted rainfall showerhead, but the plumbing has been installed for a normal wall-mounted showerhead. Will have to mention that to our SS.

And "hi" to our neighbours down the road who dropped by today, yet another M redevelopment on our street, starting soon!

Yesterday we spent a bit of time wandering through some furniture shops on Church Rd - lots of fairly pricey stores there like Natuzzi, King furniture etc. Not sure I'd spend $15k on a big sofa from King... Suite Deals also had a store there with some nice items (lots of ex display home furniture), and then after we went to Ikea to check our their "sale" which wasn't really a sale. I don't think we'd get furniture from Ikea (though I have my eye on quite a few storage items for the home theatre, family room and study), as their furniture prices aren't that competitive compared to some of the deals available from dedicated furniture stores. We're at least 6-7 months away from seriously looking for furniture, but it's nice to dream!

T&T

Nolan structural options

So I've been doing a little bit of extra research on some of the main structural options that we've tentatively put into the quote. Apparently now that our quote has been submitted to M head office, we can't change them through our sales consultant anymore, but will be able to do final additions/subtractions at the preliminary contract stage.

Anyway, stepping back in time a little bit, this is basically how you price up a new house build -

"When you invest your initial $1,000 deposit, Metricon will fix the base price of your home for 150 days. The final cost of your home is the sum of:

1. the base price of the home type (including facade) you selected;
2. any applicable site costs to build on your land;
3. the cost of any variations approved to your home; and
4. your chosen options and home specification selections."

1) This is a pretty standard approach from the major project home builders. The base price has a certain set of standard inclusions - eg timber frame, roof tiles, walls (duh!), basic kitchen, bathroom, laundry etc, doors, garage door, windows etc.

2) Site costs are probably most new builders greatest fears, as there's a lot of uncertainties in site costs. In a perfect world, your block of land is ideal for building your selected house and site costs are $0 extra. For our block, or consultant has put in a figure of $30,000 provisional costs because of many factors, including:

• We're knocking down an established house, so the site will most likely be a "P" class
  
• We're in an established area, so access to the site is a bit harder
• We have an easement at the back of the property as most land sites do, but we have an additional easement along the side of the property which we'll probably need a whole bunch of piers to avoid encroaching upon

And in a comment from one reader of this blog, due to being in a flood prone area, their site costs are estimated at $45,000. Not knowing much about flood areas, I'd imagine there's some provision for having the habitable floor level above the flood risk level, plus much reinforcement/foundation for the slab?

3 & 4) I'm not sure what the difference is between variations and options/specifications, but both will cost your some money!

Lately I've been thinking about some of the structural options we've chosen, mainly reasearching Colorbond roofing and eaves.

Colorbond on our house is approx $3000 more for the Colorbond, $1,600 for the sarking underneath. While I love the zero maintenance aspect of colorbond, Tina likes tiles as I've mentioned in a previous post, and here is where we could save $4000 or so. We'll probably talk it over more later, but I'm happy to have tiles now, I think! Plus the new houses in our street (the Porter Davis design across the road, and the Ashford home 3 doors down) both have tiled roofs.



I've also mentioned big eaves to our sales consultant, and she's put in 600mm eaves all around the first floor as an upgrade, which is about $3,300 additional. The standard plan has 450mm eaves to the front half of the first floor. I've been researching lately, and since the front of the house is facing north, eaves to the north give the most benefit compared to eaves all around - so potentially this is another area we could save some money in.

By dropping the colorbond roof, and having the standard eaves, save $7,500 or so? Mmmm... decisions to be made! Comments anyone?

I'd also be quite interested to hear about other people's experience with timelines since leaving their deposit - eg how long did it take to hear back from M about colour and electrical appointments, and how long until the prelim contract appointment?

Thanks for reading!

Tim