Floating floors, day...?

Did a bit more flooring since the last post - finished off the study on Cup Day.


We salvaged the temporary front door (it was going to be thrown away anyway!) and stuck a couple of trestle legs underneath it to turn it into our new study table. Not sure if we'll paint it, vinyl wrap it or do something else, it's a bit rough at the moment but looks nice and is huge!

Nearly finished the entry and hallway, and there's a few fiddly bits left under the stairs and towards the powder room and laundry.


Will need to find my jigsaw for some complex cuts near doorways, and re-arrange my dropsaw to do lengthway cuts.

Also finally got my iinet ADSL2+ connection established - bought a brand new ADSL router, and... well, nothing works. Lodged a fault report with iinet who will then take it up with Telstra if it's a Telstra wiring error. However, if there's a fault in the wiring internally, then it's yet one more stuffup to fix up. Unfortunately I think we got the worst data cablers in the world to do our house, with the antenna not connected to starserve and the data plugs not correctly attached - they all "fall in" to the wall cavity when I try to plug in a data cable. Meh. Anyway, should it turn out to be a problem with the internal wiring, I'll get it fixed up and send the bill to Metricon, who can then get the idiot cablers who stuffed it up in the first place to reimburse my costs.

T&T

Staining stairs, Day 3

For the final third day, Mark was working from 7:30 to about 3 filling in nail holes and other defects, resanding and applying the final coat of stain and tread.


Love the end result - a real feature in the centre of the house. Like a masterpiece of woodwork (which it is!) these stairs are functional, but also look incredible!


So if anyone wants the best quality result for your hardwood stairs, give Mark a call at Propolish Stairways (if you want a contact number, see the comments section below). Free plug for a great tradesman! One very important point about staining stairs - you get what you pay for. Anyone can say they sand and stain stairs, but without the proper preparation and attention to detail, you'll end up with a bad end product, which may not be able to be redone. And with about 17 hours of labour put into our stairs, very happy with the end result. Plus you will also want to have a certified product - we have certification that our stairs meet all safety standards for hardwood treads. Depending on your stair design, how much preparation is required, what the working environment is like, you could pay up to $2000 for a professional job like ours - so don't call Mark if you want a cheap result, but call him if you want a great result. No-one ever said building or finishing a house was cheap!

T&T

Staining stairs, Day 2

Mark was back for another long session on our stairs, from 8am to 1pm. We had the first two coats of stain applied today.

The stain brings out the grain lines in the hardwood, and with the custom mix of stain we chose it's slightly lighter than our front & rear door stain.


Tomorrow will be the final sanding and final coat of stain, and on Thursday we can remove the protective tape. For anyone who is building with raw hardwood stairs, ideally see if you can get them stained before carpets go in - apparently any new carpet will release fluff everywhere and it's very difficult to prevent the fluff getting caught in the new stain.

T&T

Staining stairs, Day 1

Mark turned up at 7am this morning and unloaded his ute of tools, and apparently worked all the way through to 5pm! Our stairs are Vic Ash hardwood by Slattery & Acquroff, and today Mark did the sanding plus first coat of sealer.


What do you think? Modern but still elegant, and a great dark feature colour against the wall colour. There are some sealer runs on the walls, but with three coats to go, we'll see whether we need to repaint the walls. I think we'll keep the wall colour the same here, which doesn't distract from the feature stairs themselves.


Close up details of the hardwood treads - woooo love it! The colour so far isn't quite as dark as our front/rear door stains, but because the stairs are hidden in the centre of the house with no natural light hitting it, probably better not to go any darker than this current shade. Two coats of stain goes on tomorrow, and a final coat and seal on Wednesday, and we should be OK to walk on it Thursday.

Also got a call today from Metricon head office to see how handover went. I did mention our antenna isn't working, and they said to call our SS end of the week if he hasn't got in touch with us by then. Otherwise, very happy with how things went!

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

Handover cheques and house insurance

Luckily I had a day off work today, as I spent most of the day on the fax & phone. Most of that time was spent on hold, waiting for Heritage to sort out their issues - anyway, the good news is, at 4:50pm I was finally able to log on to our account correctly and get the right amount drawn out to my other bank account for a bank cheque to be prepared! Still a bit peeved that things weren't working last night, but because this final payment is a little tricky to organise maybe that's why things weren't going smoothly.

Also called AAMI to organise insurance on the new house. Interestingly enough, the original insurance we paid was based on a 50 year old weatherboard/asbestos cottage that was lucky to be 10 squares.

And with our new 43 square brick veneer 2 storey house, the annual insurance premium increases massively... by $41. I guess not many houses burn down nowadays, so the risk of the insurer actually having to pay to rebuild our house is almost zero. Also added on contents insurance; haven't calculated what the actual content value will be, so will recalculate and re-insure contents at the end of the year.

Been planning to get our superduper home alarm with video surveillance/recording, mobile notification and internet remote monitoring installed once we've settled in. Sorry - not giving away any more details on this for obvious reasons! But if someone drops a coin on the footpath in front of our house in the middle of the night, we'll be able to tell if it's heads or tails!

Stopped by the house today, and noticed the overflow has been drilled into the rainhead. It was suggested to hide it around the side of the rainhead so it wouldn't be visible from the street or side of house, which was a good idea.,


Getting superexcited about handover now, not long to go! I even bought a shower caddy thing today - the plan is, Tina gets exclusive use of the ensuite shower (and niche!) while I use the bathroom shower; at least for the first 3 months, so we can see if there's any leaks or problems that need to be fixed at the end of the 3 month maintenance period.

Stair guy called me today to confirmed he's booked in our job for after handover - it's 3 solid days of work, with the first day being 7am to 5pm for preparation, taping, sanding and hopefully the first coat of stain. Given the amount of hours of work involved, his quote actually seems quite reasonable now - so we're just hoping the final result will be good! Will also need to buy some small pots of our wall colour - Dulux Natural White - so we can touch up, or repaint walls where the stain will run. Or maybe change the walls adjacent to the stairs to a feature colour, depending on how much repainting is required.

T&T

Stairs: Organising sanding & staining

So we upgraded our stairs to cantilevered hardwood stairs and stainless steel balusters; but they come in a raw finish. We want them stained charcoal to match our front and rear doors - in fact, we want things to look pretty much like this picture below;


...with nice dark wood floors through all of downstairs, and dark stained stairs & handrail. Got in touch with a guy recommended to us from our earlier SS, and hopefully he'll get back to us with a quote. Ideally we want the stairs sanded and stained pretty quickly after handover, and before the carpets go in. Hopefully won't take too long - stairs will need sanding first, then a few coats of stain with drying time in-between each coat. Maybe a day's work?

Also the picture above is from the Nolan on display in Point Cook, which apparently has just been sold. Don't know if it's still open as a display home; we only visited it once. Just looking at the picture above, it's got huge entry (external) doors placed to the sitting room on the right - expensive! The bulkhead in the entry hallway is about $1000 option.

T&T

Day 150: Stairs installed! Kitchen, vanities, sinks, doors, skirting/architraves delivered!

Wow, what a day of activity at the house! I didn't get to go due to work, but Tina got to catch all the action today.


A couple of guys from Slattery & Acquroff installed our stairs today. I was always a bit unsure about these stairs - big upgrade from the standard stairs, but looking at them now, they're worth every cent! Will get brighter photos of the finished product tomorrow. The great thing is that because of their slim design, they make the corridor adjacent to the stairs feel even bigger, and the cantilevered projection of the stairs makes them a real feature that you can just see from the front door too. LOVE them!

Also a whole bunch of big internal doors delivered - Tina thinks we may be one short, as for some reason our internal access door is a standard flush door and not a Balmoral-2 design like we've specified for all doors. Also the door frames and fittings also delivered. Not everyone likes the Balmoral-2 design (small panel on the bottom, large panel up top) but they're a major feature for our house, love them!


And our family room is absolutely packed full of cabinetry - we've got a whole bunch of kitchen cabinets, plus all the vanities and laundry bench here waiting to go in. Exciting! Also some skirting/architrave delivered today, and a manhole cover. Woo!

And also the laundry sink (Clarke), and the Caroma Liano basins. We've decided to have inset sinks everywhere except for the powder room, which gets a semi-recessed sink. Looks nice, but you get a lot less bench space - so only suitable for the powder room.

Very happy to see so much activity going on of course - it's really starting to feel like our house now that the internal selection items have arrived, and will be exciting to see how they look!

T&T

Day 149: Stairs delivered

A nice present for the house - the delivery of our expensive upgraded stairs!

Looks like the stairs are prefabricated in the factory, then installed on site. Made by Slattery & Acquroff - our design is the upgraded Contemporary 17.

These are the KDHW treads - Kiln Dried Hard Wood. They're raw finish, and after handover we'll get them stained to match the front & rear timber doors. They look stunning in display homes - although having this paricular stair design means no understairs storage area :(. Though maybe in the future (if we need the extra storage) we can figure out a way to add a small access hatch to this small understairs area - not really a big deal right now, as there's huge amounts of storage elsewhere!

The handwriting above this sign refers to Item 17 on our independent inspectors report - there's a noggin missing between the studs behind this area of plaster. Glad to see our SS is taking on board the items from our report and getting them noted for fixing!

We got a new building CSC, Laelle - so far she's been more useful than the other CSCs (admittedly we've not had to contact any of the CSCs in the past), as she was able to forward us some interesting construction detail diagrams - thinking of printing & framing them up for some quick decorations when the house is done!

T&T

Day 111: Lockup carpenters on site

Got a voicemail from Monique this morning for our weekly update. Apparently the lockup carpenters are working on the eaves today, and hopefully will start on the balcony floor and cladding for front & rear tomorrow!


A minor job, but an important one - the bipart sliding doors have been installed in the frame. They look great already, can't wait to get them stained!



Also a very elegant sign from Slattery & Acquroff stairs! Check out their website for some of the stair designs on offer, many pictures of stairs from Metricon display homes. The stairs we chose is the Contemporary 17 design - cantilevered with stainless steel balustrade and continuous handrail, which we will stain dark to match the front & rear doors.

At the rear of the house, some timber framing has been installed outside the wrapping to which the linea board (weatherboard cladding) will be fixed to. You can also see the eaves installed, and when they're painted they should match the Surfmist fascia well. Plenty more broken tiles on the roof... but with a lot more work to be done above the roof, all the broken ones will be replaced after work is complete.

This view looking up at the front shows how the eaves have been installed -the lockup carpenters fixed extra battens under the roof trusses, to which the eave plastering is fixed to. Only a few more sections of eaves to be installed tomorrow!

Finally, went back at night to see how the house looks - things are moving along well, and I think I'll spend my day off tomorrow hanging around the front, watching the carpenters work! Monique thinks the lockup stage should be done in a couple of weeks, right on time for the end of April.

T&T