DIY: Recovering another filing cabinet

So I recently scored a few old bits of furniture from a warehouse relocation - I'm a big fan of reusing, redesigning, saving things from the rubbish tip where possible! This filing cabinet has a file drawer and is meant to have two upper drawers, but one is missing.

 Not the most attractive for a modern home! Never mind. Just had to unscrew the rails for the missing shelf.

Bit of offcut of yellowtongue; trimming to size.

 This will form a fixed shelf where the old drawer used to be.

 Think I'll cover it in a matching silver vinyl that I used for a similar filing cabinet recover.

 Fixed into place with 4 countersunk screws - leftover from the rear deck construction.

 Recovering the outside of the cabinet too.

Finish off by covering the drawer fronts, and 99% done - just a little more to cover and the old cabinet will be updated!

There's also a matching huge desk that will get some kind of treatment - I won't cover it in vinyl, got something a little unusual up my sleeve for that one!

As for our garden design, Dave at onlinegardendesign.com.au has been great with rapid responses to our questions, and has come up with some very practical thoughts that we hadn't even thought of. We're working on getting a final layout organised, and for a bonus offer Dave is offering $100 off landscape design packages - but hurry this offer ends July 15!

t&t

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

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 51: Wild weather, but trusses about 80% complete!

Woke up this morning and happy to see clear skies and warm weather. This all changed by about 4pm, when the skies turned black and solid sheets of water fell from the skies - cutting out power to my office block, so I left early to check on the site.

And happily it appears the chippies were able to get a heap of work done in the morning prior to the storm - lots of trusses installed, maybe 80% complete? Just trusses over the sitting room and entry gallery to be completed.



Only had time to take a couple of photos on my iphone before the rain went mad again - here's a pretty wonky photo standing in the hallway ;looking towards the back of the house - study is to left, laundry to right. Void in trusses for the future staircase. Having the trusses in lets us get an idea of how large the rooms will really be. I'd highly recommend to anyone building a house to upgrade to higher ceilings if your budget permits - you definitely can't add this later on, and it gives a much more spacious feel to the house! I've heard of huge variations in how much builders charge for higher ceilings. I think ours were great value, only about $2000 more for 2.7m ceilings to the ground and I can't remember how much (less than $2k) for 2.55m ceilings to first floor (Metricon apparently don't offer higher ceilings than this for ground & first). One builder on H1 wanted $10k for 2.7m ceilings to a single storey house - wow!


The pic above shows floor trusses in open plan rear area - the kitchen area is covered by trusses, the open area to the left is the dining area (no first floor above here). You can see two pipes for the kitchen sink, but for some reason there's a big pipe near the frame and we can't work out what it's for - there's no plumbing void marked on the plans, so we'll ask our SS next week about that.

Hoping the weather will hold off tomorrow morning so the remaining trusses can be installed, and maybe the start of first floor trusses, though maybe scaffolding will be needing.

And for anonymous who wanted to know what the payment breakdown is, it's like this:

• $1000 initial deposit; covers site survey and soil test (well, it did for us anyway)
• $3000 at preliminary contract acceptance to cover cost of custom plans
• 5% (less the previously paid $4000) at contract signing
• Base: 20%
• Frame: 20%
• Lockup: 25%
• Fixing 20%
• Completion 10%

Now that we've started along the journey, it's plain to see the payments are clearly biased to having most of the money upfront -ie by the time you get to lockup you've already stumped up 70% Perhaps that's why (for most builders not just Metricon) the first 3 stages go by quickly, then things tend to slow down at fixing & completion. Would be interesting to hear if anyone has successfully negotiated different payment percentages? Of course, ultimately you end up paying 100%. Also, note that things like postcontract variations are added/subtracted on you completion payment - we'll have to pay about $15k more for various additions, less $1000 for power pole, plus $x for retaining wall and whatever other little things turn up.

Anyway, we're pretty happy about progress on the site - at the start of last week we had a few plumbing pipes in the ground, now we're starting on the first floor frame! Providing the weather holds off, we're fairly confident our SS's predictions of frame completion by end of February will work out - and of course, another bill for 20% of the build in our letterbox!

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