Day 214: Review of the last 3 days of work - Electrical fitoffs!

First time back to the house since Tuesday - and wow, people have been busy! Electricians, plumbers, brickies and heating contractors have all been working in the last 3 days, but today's post will focus on lighting first.

Externally; the silver aluminium handrail has been installed over the balcony. Plus a downpipe has been run from the balcony gutter, though no connection has been made to stormwater drainage. Also you can see where the electricians have roughed in connections for external lighting on the balcony pillars, and a double floodlight I'll put in over the garage door.


Internally, the electricians have been very busy fitting off all the powerpoints, light switches, batten lights, downlights and exhaust fans. Unfortunately while most of the work has been excellent, there's a few of these moments going on as well.


For example, in our sitting room there are two lights. Most people would accept that having them lined up in the middle of the room is boring, yet necessary. However, ours are at least 70cm away from the midline of the room... not acceptable!


However it gets worse upstairs, where there are two lights in the open area/leisure room. So, you would think the light in the leisure room should be centred - rather than placed 40cm away from the wall? And the other light should be placed in the middle of the "hallway" leading from the master bedroom to the bathroom? Erm, no. I brought this up with our last SS, Monique, that the electrical roughin had left the lighting wires in the wrong spot. "No worries, the sparkies will put them in the right place!" I was told...... erm..... fail.


Anyway, that's the major issues with lighting, thankfully most other things have been done well.
The stairs have 3 step lights installed - upside down I think, as the light is placed facing up, just right for blinding you as you try to walk down the stairs. However, we may leave them like this (!), as the lighting makes an unbelievably cool shadow of the stairs on the ceiling when dark, which of course is impossible to photograph. Anyway, simple to flip them around if we want to.


Next pic, upstairs bathroom. The single batten light/"chinaman's hat" is wired in series with the exhaust fan, which is massive but fortunately not too noisy. We've got quite a few of these standard light fittings to replace after handover, but won't choose any light fittings until after handover is complete.

In addition, I think the powder room exhaust fan is meant to be externally vented, but no evidence of an external vent is present. Another issue to bring up.

And we've saved the best pic for last... we went with a whole lot of downlights in the open plan area - 5 over the kitchen, 5 over the dining table, and 9 in the family room, each with 2 way switches and dimmers. Expensive.... but we waited until early evening to turn everything on, and it looks incredible! Our colours are pretty much all cool grey neutrals which can sometimes look a bit stark, but with the downlights, everything is surprisingly warm (and definitely not as beige as the photo may represent)! Very happy with how this has turned out in this area.


So, adding to our list of things to check on with regards to electricals are:

• Sitting room lights not centred
• Leisure room, hallway lights not centred
• Damage noted: home theatre rear powerpoint (plaster damage), heating duct in entryway (split ceiling plaster)
  
• Laundry splashback tiles only 20cm high instead of 30cm high (not enough tiles were provided for the job)

Fantastic to see so much work done in the last few days, and though I've highlighted some errors, at least they're relatively easy to fix. Move light fittings, replaster, repaint, add tiles to laundry splashback. Next post will focus on plumbing.
T&T