Day 221: Hooray - things are being fixed!

Tina was at the house yesterday and some more stuff was being done - of primary interest to me was hearing that the problems in the walk-in-linen data fitoff was getting fixed up already!


So, examining the picture above, the starserve enclosure has been moved nice & high to the right - excellent! Looking inside the enclosure, the incorrect unit has been removed, so I presume the correct one is being ordered in. Also the data returns now come through near the powerpoint, ready for termination.

Very happy to see how our SS has responded to our concerns so far & so fast - top marks to John & Metricon for that! Of course there's a few holes & gaps in the plaster to be patched up later on, but that's all part of normal completion anyway.

Other developments, the robe fitoffs should happen this coming week, as the shelving, chrome hanging rails & supports, and sliding doors have been delivered to all bedrooms.


We chose to upgrade to framed mirror doors in taller size (2340mm to match the doors), and deliberately stayed away from the frameless mirror doors - the frameless ones are just about impossible to slide open or close, since there's nothing to grab onto except for a little "handle" that's a few mm tall! Try before you buy, people. Plus having the mirrored doors look nice, they make the room appear much bigger & brighter, and are a relatively cheap upgrade per room to do. Another thing - if you get tall ceilings, get tall doors/robe doors too, to take advantage of the increase in ceiling height. We also raised the height of the shelves in the robes to 2000mm, so we can put in an additional clothes hanging rail later if we want to.

In the master bed, for the promotion we got two robe fitouts, which is basically some open shelves and a few drawers.


Not keen on the bow handles (actually I don't like anything curved or rounded!), will probably change them over to square handles later. In the future, may even take out all the robe fitout in the master bed and do one of those cool "designer" style robe fitouts, like you see in Howard's Storage World or Ikea :)

And our big cavity slider door has finally been installed. We added this in to separate the rear open plan area (kitchen, family, dining) from the front area, it's 1020x2340mm.

Been sitting in the family room for weeks, and it looks good - except for a little scar in the top right corner of the door which will need repairing later. Also there are gaps above all the cavity doors in the house, so we'll have to mention we want them closed up later on.

And today (Day 221) there were some fixing carpenters at the house most of the day, and they put in some beading around the outdoor room, and installed extra noggins/framing in the garage and portico, so that the plaster can be installed in both.



We've also got a site meeting with our SS and the construction manager on Tuesday morning, probably just to get an update on progress and to see how things are going for the final few stages of the build. Things are sooooo close to finishing, we can almost touch it! The house is looking better and better as all these little fitoffs are getting done. As we were leaving, my aunt and cousin drove past so we invited them in for a sneak peek - and they were very impressed with how everything looks so far too!

T&T

Day 162: Some plastering, and pre-paint assessment

Found that the plasterers had been in today, and installed the missing plaster in the kitchen.


However, the kitchen window still hasn't been moved, which will be an issue for when the ceasarstone benchtop arrives. It's meant to cover the side bench and into the window reveal, which at the moment is at least 15mm higher than it should be. Will bring it up with our SS this Friday.


In this pic, they've also plastered over the fridge alcove bulkhead. This is where our inspector picked up the bulkhead was in contact with the floor joists:

Item 11. The stiffening beams installed over the kitchen bulk heads are incontact with the floor joists which are therefore load bearing and are not end supported. As this bulkhead is not intended to be load bearing, there should be a clearance left between the floor joists and the bulk head.

So has this has been fixed? Who knows??!! *sigh* another item to bring up with the SS. Also where that bunch of cables are poking out through the wall - they're not meant to be there!!

For me though, the main item from our inspectors' report still to be fixed is Item 12. The sewer waste pipe over the kitchen area has been installed through the top flange of the smart joist. The manufacturers of the ‘Smart Joist’ do not allow cutting out of the top flange as noted on their ‘SmartJoist’ hole chart. Recommend the manufacturers supply a rectification design for the damaged floor joist. This item is still not fixed, and I want it fixed before any painting starts - mainly because this is a fairly serious structural problem. Come on guys, it's not that hard to fix! Find the upstairs toilet, and mend the damaged floor joist underneath it, rather than randomly cutting holes in the ceiling hoping to magically stumble across where it needs to be fixed.

And someone else has been through the house with a pencil, circling hundreds of tiny little dents and scratches to be fixed up and smoothed over before painting starts.


Nice to know some small faults are being identified, but as I keep harping about, it's our inspectors items, in particular the structural fauls with the house, that we want fixed before any further work is done. We haven't received a fixing invoice yet, but I want to know how our inspector's items are going to be fixed before payment is made - only reasonable when you're spending a few hundred thousand on a house, that you want faults fixed!

T&T

Day 160: Doors & skirting installed, fixing inspection items

Carpenters on the job today, with almost all the internal doors hung.

First of all, our front door has been installed- a Corinthian 6G in 1020mm wide. Will be stained dark, with a 750mm pull handle and mortice lock.

Next up; home theatre doors. I actually wanted the doors hung opposite to how they are in this pic: if you look closely, the right door has the opening handle, and the left door has the mushroom stop.

I did mention to our SS that I wanted the doors hung the other way - admittedly on the floorplan, they're drawn to this specification. I wonder if it can still be fixed - would involve moving the mushroom stop to the right side door, taking out the handle mechanism from the right side door (and filling in the gaps), and putting it on the left side door.

Upstairs now, this shows the upstairs linen closet. For some reason we had to choose totally different handles for linen doors (we chose rectangular handles that match the vanity handles) as you can't put the door handles you use on normal doors. No big deal I guess. Can also see the architrave & skirting all around too.

The other thing too is that the internal access door is a plain flush door, but we specified at our colour appointment that all doors are to be Balmoral-2 design - we think someone at M head office counted the number of doors wrong! Will contact our SS to see if the missing door is going to turn up soon.

In addition to doors & skirting, a couple of the inspection items are starting to be fixed, yay!


Above, Item 17. The noggin in the wall of the kitchen, below the stair case, has been removed. A small square of plaster has been cut out, and the noggin replaced. Should be pretty easy for the plasterers to seal it back up. In addition, all the data cabling etc is poking out on the left side of the pic - this pic shows the fridge alcove, and the data cabling should be on the other side of this wall in the walk-in-linen. Easy enough to plaster over though.

Another item has been attempted to be fixed...


12. The sewer waste pipe over the kitchen area has been installed through the top flange of the smart joist. The manufacturers of the ‘Smart Joist’ do not allow cutting out of the top flange as noted on their ‘SmartJoist’ hole chart. Recommend the manufacturers supply a rectification design for the damaged floor joist.

Looks like the carpenters aren't exactly sure where this sewer waste pipe defect is, so this cutout in the ceiling is in the wrong spot. To make it easy for the carpenters to find the spot, they should go to the upstairs WC and poke a long drill bit directly adjacent the the waste pipe, and where it pokes through the ceiling is where they need to fix the defect - but I don't want to tell anyone how to do their job, so maybe we'll just sit tight and see how they go about fixing things! Ultimately the ceiling and kitchen needs to be replastered as most of the defects are in this area so the end result will be good - we hope!

T&T

Day 155: Garage roof done, and more work in the wet rooms

Turned up at 7pm and astonished to find someone still on site!

Anyway, we're thinking that the tilers came in the morning to finish off the garage roof - finally no more rain and mud in our garage area! Been keenly anticipating this part of the roof being done, as there's not much more to do for the facade to be complete.


However there's a couple of little things that need fixing in the garage roof - I think the rear gutter is incomplete, and there's a couple of noggins missing from the truss in the pic below. Easy to fix providing it's done before the plaster goes up!!!


The people who stayed back to dinnertime were working in the wet areas, just finishing off some cabinetry work.

In the ensuite (above pic), handles have been installed, basins placed in rough position (won't be sealed in until ceasarstone delivered) and a big backing board for the wall mirror mounted. Because of the little drawers in the ensuite vanity, the handles here are smaller than used in the other vanities; but still looks good.

And in the bathroom, handles, basin and mirror backing board installed. Still no more items from our inspection fixed yet.

T&T

Day 151: Site clean, and noticing other work done during the week

Turned up at the house this afternoon to find a bloke doing a site clean - finally, all the broken tiles in the backyard are gone, and a much neater site for the trades to work on.

We were able to discover some other things that have been done during the last week; first of all, the missing garage roof truss has been delivered and installed.


You can just about figure which roof truss has been installed, as it's missing horizontal noggins on either side of it, just above the garage side wall.

Also, the shower bases in the ensuite and bathroom have been flush finished.

The cool thing about the showers we're getting, is that the tiling is totally flush and continuous from the shower base to the floor of the bathroom - there's absolutely no lip or raised guttering required! Very modern and minimalist - it'll look fantastic!

Finally, Item 15 from our independent inspector's report has been rectified.


From his report: "15. As per AS1684.4 for timber framing table 8.3, ply bracing requires fixing along all edges at 150mm maximum spacings. The ply brace on the kitchen wall adjacent to the window has not been nailed along the top edge. The structural engineers bracing design will also detail these fixing requirements. Recommend viewing the documents for confirmation of
the requirements." If you look closely in the above pic, you can see quite a few additional fixing nails in this ply brace - probably twice as many as required, but better too many than too few!

Still many other inspection items to be rectified, so as they're done we'll tick them off our list.

We're thinking that a few things need to be fixed before the kitchen & vanities go in - first of all, the remaining issues in the kitchen area need to be fixed, so that plaster can be finished before the kitchen is installed. Also, the laundry waste needs to be moved from out unde the cabinet position before that's installed too. Hopefully our SS is on the ball with that too!

T&T

Day 144: Plasterers working on a saturday - cornices installed

Thought we'd stop by the house after lunch today, nothing much has happened the last couple of days but apparently the plasterers were in this morning, as the cornices have been installed.

Hopefully the writing will be scrubbed off, or at least fully hidden by painting! This is a closeup of a weird little recess near the entry door.


Standing in family room looking at kitchen. There's still some frame issues to rectify before plaster is installed over the fridge recess & along the side. You can see the horizontal kitchen window splashback, which will have cupboards above & below there. To the right of that is the door to the pantry, then the huge fridge recess. Because we moved the laundry door from the kitchen, the fridge recess is now big enough for 3 fridges! One for food, one for wine, one for beer...

And this is why we still don't have tiling on the garage roof - we're missing a truss right here. The roof protection is on, the tiles & pointing are delivered, so I guess as soon as the truss can be delivered, the carpenters should stick it up, then the tiling can get started. Sooner the better too - with all the rain lately, there's a few inches of mud coating the garage floor!

Hoping to see some action with stairs in this coming week too!

T&T

Day 133: Roof tilers repairing damage

Went by after lunch to find a roof tiler working hard, throwing out broken tiles all over the backyard.


After running a few errands, came back a couple of hours later when it started pouring rain - a good chance to check there were no leaks!

Looking out over the ground floor roof, can see all the broken tiles have been replaced, with a small pile of tiles for later? The broken roof pointing has also been replaced but not cemented into place.


And some detail of the garage roof trusses. The garage wall is 150mm off the boundary, which means a regular gutter will fit and be right on the boundary, so no need for a parapet gutter. Will have to get the side fence put back after this roof is done - 4 sections of fence were removed, and 2 were destroyed during the site scrape, so we'll have to pay for some new sections of fence, hopefully not too expensive!

T&T

Day 132: Garage roof trusses put up

Carpenters came back today to put up the roof trusses, and apparently they started work on rectifying the internal frame issues caught at last week's inspection.


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 80: Happy 100th blog post! First floor roof tiling completed

OK, so I think this is the official #100 blog post - woohoo! And to celebrate, today was a beautiful Melbourne autumn day, just right for the tilers to finish off the first floor roof tiling including pointing.


Kind of hard to see from this angle, but the first floor tiles are all up there. Plus at least another hundred smashed on the ground! We'll go in on the weekend with brooms to sweep out all the crap from last weekend's hailstorms.



The other thing done today was that the carpenters came back to cut out the bottom part for doorframes - you can kind of see the trail of sawdust in the doorways above. Unfortunately the wrong door position from Bed 4 to the bathroom hasn't been corrected, so it's another thing to add to our list of things to be fixed. Plus there's a couple of doors which haven't been cut out, I think to the linen cupboards, and all the sliding robe doors, so the chippies will be back a few times for that anyway. I'm never quite sure why tradies turn up to do 30 minutes of work each day - wouldn't it be more efficient and practical to do one job at a time until it's complete? Anyway, not my responsibility to organise all that, as long as it all works out in the end!

We also got the frame stage invoice today, dated from yesterday - while officially the frame stage isn't complete as the external door frames aren't on, we'll just pay this invoice as there's a list of minor things which we'll raise as items to fix on Tuesday when we next meet with our SS. We're hoping that by our meeting, the ground floor tiling will be complete, and hopefully the doors all on too!

T&T

Day 78: Wrapping commenced, beams delivered, frame inspection booked

Got a call from our SS this mornin, and we've organised a frame inspection for next Tuesday. It'll just be us and not a formal building inspector - we're working on choosing a building inspector for the lockup stage. Our roof is meant to be complete by Friday (first and ground floor roof tiling) and hopefully doors in by Tuesday as well.

After a huge amount of traffic, got to the site to see our house has now changed colour, and is wearing a raincoat!


Yup, we've been wrapped! The wrap covers the ground floor all around, and from what we can tell has been done well except for an area near the meter box which is hanging loose - you can see it in the front right corner of this photo, on the side wall just flapping around a bit. It's stapled to the frame, joins sealed with tape, and sealed to window frames with tape as well. Internal surface is a reflective foil. When bricking is complete, we'll have a brick layer, a small air gap, then this weather wrap, then internal insulation (walls are R2.0 insulated) then plaster. Much better insulation than our old weather board, which had weatherboard, then plaster, and that was it! We're hoping that with our 5.5 star house, it'll reduce/minimise our need for artificial heating/cooling in winter/summer.

I got out my broom from yesterday and started sweeping out the ground floor - the amount of mud, wood shavings and general dirt was incredible! I think we'll spend our weekend just cleaning up the house, since I doubt any of the tradies are going to pick up a broom - and we don't want plaster going up locking in all the dirt/mud inside the frame! Also went around retaping the protective plastic over all the windows - right, I know it's a bit anal but wouldn't it be better for everyone concerned if our brand new windows stay brand new (and unscratched!) until handover?

Also had a delivery of some steel beams/lintels; these should support brickwork over openings like windows/doors. I think the longest one is for the garage front/rear doors, then the smaller ones to go over windows. We got rid of all standard infill for brick infills; just think it looks a bit better even though few people would ever notice it!

Other things done on site today: the water lead-in pipe has been buried (and someone removed our front tap as well?!).

Crossed fingers - hoping for no more rain until roof is complete (and ideally wrapping complete as well!)

T&T

Day 77: More roof tiling, windows finished, fence replaced

Last day of a 4 day long weekend, and I thought I'd go mop up the damage at our house... the ground floor covered in 2" of water (at least we know the frame is watertight!

When I got there, a bloke from Jim's Fencing was replacing the rear fence (which was infested with ivy).


Said he had been there from 7, and the tilers were there about 8:30 but couldn't finish the job because a truss was missing, or something. The ground floor roof has had the tile trusses installed, and the first floor is about 50% tiled now.

I went to buy a broom and misc things from Bunnings, and when I got back the carpenters were finishing up putting all the windows in. They installed all the remaining windows, as well as the master bedroom french doors.


View of home theatre. You can look out the window on the left to the backyard, and the window on the right to the outdoor room. I mentioned that the wrong window had been put in the family room, and they moved it so it was in the HT (double glazed awning windows).

Asking about when the remaining doors would go in (front door, rear bipart door and internal access doorframe), they said they were waiting on something, but should be done this week sometime - and that would mean frame complete! Hopefully a wrap will be added this week, that might stop some rain coming in.

T&T

Day 73: Roof tiling commenced

Despite the intermittent showers today, we've had a bit more work done on our roof.

The first floor has had all the tile trusses installed, and lots of little piles of tiles have been moved up to the roof (hard job, I wouldn't want to have to lift all those tiles up!).

Seems simple, doesn't it? Screw together some lengths of wood, then lay tiles across them, and that's a frame and roof done! Love these tiles, seeing them up close again they have these cool lines of different widths running through them.


This pic is standing in the master bed, look up & out of the french doors. Some roof tiling installed up here.

Won't expect anything to be done until middle of next week - unfortunately predictions are for constant showers for a few days!

We also received a variation for the ensuite vanity - just need to change to slightly narrower handles, no big deal. Tina says that there's a sticker on the house saying the kitchen had been measured up for cabinetry already on 2.3.10, so it looks like things get organised quite far in advance!

T&T

Day 72: Happy 100...no, 95th blog post! Ground floor roof, gutter & fascia installed

*edit* Apparently this is not blog entry #100 - there were some draft entries still hanging around. Anyway, we'll probably hit blog entry #100 by next week at this rate!

Missed a call from our SS this morning - apparently carpenters would be onsite today, and roof tiling to start tomorrow, and hopefully finished by next Tuesday! Tried to call her back, but no answer on her phone - need to organise a frame walkthrough end of next week.

This pic is standing in the backyard, looking at the corner of the home theatre. We're loving the two-tone combination of gutter & fascia still! You can see the eave width on the ground floor roof is standard, compared to extended eaves on the first floor roof. There's no protection to the ground floor roof - I guess it's not that far to fall!


This pic taken from Bed 4, looking out over the home theatre and to the backyard. There's meant to be roof access from Bed 3 to this ground floor roof area, but from the looks of where the roof trusses are, there's not going to be enough space for that - add that to the list of things to check on. No windows installed today, but at least all the remaining windows/doors are undercover on the ground floor so they won't sit out in the long weekend's rain that is predicted.

The chippies didn't install any tile trusses to the roof - I'm not sure if that's the chippies job or the tilers job. Forecast for tomorrow is for occasional showers and the odd thunderstorm, so we're hoping for clear skies over our little patch of land!

T&T

Day 71: Scaffolding & bracing removed, first floor windows 80% installed

Another glorious day, stuck indoors at work. But at least every hour at work is an hour closer to 5pm, when we can leave to go check on our house progress!

Today we found that the scaffolding for the roof trusses/gutters had been removed, just the railing to the roof top remains. Also, all the internal bracing has been removed, but it's left quite a few small holes in the first floor that you can see right through to the ground floor! Of course, it'll be covered up by carpet, but it's still a little offputting but what can you do?! Also, most of the upstairs windows have been installed.


This photo shows two fixed windows in the upstairs leisure area, and I'm standing where the garage will be looking up at them. From this angle you can also see how wide our extended eaves will be - all 600mm of them! There's also a black pipe hanging down the right side of the photo, I think this one will connect to a water tap to be installed behind the rear garage roller door.

This photo shows a little awning window that will be over the bathroom bathtub, then to the right of that a loop of black piping which is carrying hot/cold water to the mixer tap for the bathtub. The last window on the right is the Bed 3 window, which we relocated to the south facing wall (rather than the hot west facing wall). To comply with rescode, it has obscured glass up to about 1700mm, then clear glass in the opening awning part.

Windows still awaiting installation: Home theatre windows x2 (relocating one from the family room installed incorrectly), leisure area sliding window, master bedroom awning window and french doors. Plus waiting on installation of the front doorframe, rear bipart and internal access doorframes.

T&T

Day 70: Scaffolding to roof, more trusses, roof tiles delivered

Turned up this morning around 10am, and a truck pulled up to deliver some more roof trusses for the rear of the house. No carpenters were onsite this morning, which was surprising to the roof truss delivery driver, who was told the carpenters would be onsite waiting for his delivery. Anyway, soon after another truck came along with some blokes to install protective scaffolding to the roof.


Came back in the afternoon, and was surprised to see a whole bunch of roof tiles had been delivered already!


Bristile Charcoal Grey in "Shake" profile - almost flat, with cool lines running through them. Can't really see much as they're all tied up on pallets, but the colour is great - a good match for the Woodland Grey gutters. But before these can be installed, still need extra truss things across the roof for the tiles to lay on. We're hoping a bit of tiling might even start before the weekend, though the forecast is for some rain on Friday. The sooner these tiles are on, the sooner the first floor is protected from rain, dust, and bird crap! These tiles are also "colour through", instead of just having colour on the surface. The great thing about these tiles is that they won't need repainting, as when the surface wears down, they'll still be the same colour!

Finally, received an unexpected call from our colour consultant this morning - we optioned in a bank of 3 narrow drawers to the ensuite vanity, and we also chose a wide square handle for all wet area cabinets; but they're too wide for the drawers. Just need to give our OK to switch to a narrower handle, and that should be fine. Apparently the cabinets are being made already (!!!) even though we're not even finished frame stage yet. A good sign, I think!

We've also been tracking a Laguna being built in Blackburn - they started a week before us, but we've overtaken them now as they were only getting their roof installed today -woohoo! Just in time too, as the RBA has increased the cash rate 25 basis points to 4% today, meaning everyone's mortgages go up a notch...

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

Day 66: Ground floor windows 80% installed

Phew, what a day - too much stress at work = calm evening with a cold beer! But of course, before beer comes house (though not alphabetically) , and this is what happened to our house on another slightly warm 35 degree day.


Most of the ground floor windows were installed today:

• Sitting room (awning) windows 2x, horizontal fixed feature window
• Study window (sliding)
• Family room (awning)
  
• Kitchen window fixed splashback
• Dining room (sliding)
• Powder room (fixed) x2
• Laundry sliding door
  

Also the upstairs windows were all moved upstairs, but not installed yet. Might go by the site tomorrow - wonder if they'll do anything on a Saturday? These windows are by Southern Star in Pearl White; we picked this colour to contrast against the dark brown Austral Hawthorn bricks, and to match the off-white mortar.


This is the family room window - same as for the home theatre room, except the home theatre room windows are double glazed. This window has two windout awnings on either side of a fixed pane of glass. I was thinking sliding windows would be better as there's more airflow through them, but apparently there's not much difference between sliding and awning windows for airflow? We're getting flyscreens to all these windows, but they'll probably be the last thing installed before handover to avoid damage. If you look above this window there's a fair amount of wall height still (because of the 2.7m ceilings) which is good - as we're planning to put in a big split system aircon here, with evaporative cooling to upstairs.

Hopefully the remaining windows/doors will be installed by maybe Wednesday next week! Can't wait for the front door frame to go on, as well as the rear bi-part doors, they look fantastic even in their raw wood finish!

caroline: as far as moving in goes, our official finish date is the end of December 2010 - but we've got our fingers crossed for an August or September handover!

T&T

Day 65: First floor roof complete and windows/doors delivered!

Couldn't wait to get to the site after work today - and woah! Heaps of work done today - well done boys!


The roof trusses were all delivered this morning, and the first floor roof has been installed (though I suspect more bracing is yet to be installed as there's still heaps of precut wood left on site). You can also see some windows lying in the front of the block, awaiting installation tomorrow!

Closeup of roof trusses. These are all premanufactured, coded and installed like a jigsaw puzzle onsite. Gotta look carefully to see where our "increased strength" trusses are for our evaporative cooling unit.



Here's a pic of our master bed french doors (with black protective tape) lying on top of our entry doorframe.

Heaps impressed with all the work done in just one day - good co-ordination somewhere, and to have the windows & doors ready for installation tomorrow; excellent! Things are moving along rapidly, and on track for frame complete stage by end of next week!

T&T