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 63: Outdoor room beams, and almost ready for roof!

Another great Tuesday, because I don't have to work on Tuesday! Went by the site after lunch, and there was a guy with a whopping great truck and a mini excavator doing a site clean - he flattened out more of the rear & side of the site, looks much neater now! Met one of our neighbours across the road who wanted some of the rubbish timber to use for shelving - better to reuse than to throw it out, that's for sure, so he managed to cart away some of the discarded timber. He was of the opinion we were pretty lucky in buying the old house when we did, because now prices in our immediate area have rocketed up another $80-100k in the last 9 months - and going from local prices, he's not too far off the truth!

Having a look around the frame, looks like the chippies did a bit this morning, including fixing up those dodgy loose noggins upstairs that I pictured yesterday, installed a missing truss over the family room window, installed a board over sitting room window, plus this:


Outdoor room now has the beams installed and timber pole that will be enclosed with brick. Near one of the beams though, a stud has splintered quite badly, will request that to be replaced. Haven't heard back from our SS since our first site meeting 2 weeks ago, but he should be in contact soon regarding the frame inspection. We have his mobile number, but haven't encountered anything serious yet that needs urgent attention.

Also this needs some kind of fix...


At the meter box, the bit of wood was cutout to allow for the power to come up through the slab. But now this means a stud to the left of the meter box has no support, so it'll need something done there, shouldn't be difficult.



Upstairs, there's a lot more temporary cross bracing installed, probably in anticipation of roof trusses coming... any day now? This is a view from the master bedroom, looking at the ensuite directly in front, and the WIR alcove to the right. Where you can see a gap in the floorboards is the stepdown to the ensuite shower flush tiled base. There's also a lot of long bolts installed through the first floor frame, connecting it to/through trusses and to the ground floor frame.

*edit* Apparently we have a new CSC and site supervisor, according to MyMetricon. Erm.. that would make it the fourth CSC in 3 months, and the second SS in 3 months? We've yet to hear from either of them, but hopefully the fast progress will continue.

sarahv: hmmm... we want timber floors to all the ground floor - but now we have to consider whether there will be a big step between the timber floors, and the tiled laundry & powder room! Tina wants a very dark, almost black timber floor colour and apparently you can't get that in a natural hardwood, so we may have to look at laminate - or even bamboo, if that comes in the right colour! Our facade isn't as fancy as yours; only render is on the balcony, and just cladding to the first floor to install, so if we can get to lockup within 4-6 weeks of frame, we'll be very happy!

T&T

Spoke to construction CSC, spotted 2 Metricon homes today

Missed a call from Gena, our construction CSC last night, so I called her back this morning. Seems nice enough over the phone, I just hope she's as organised as Mendo is!

With any luck our file is in estimating right now, and if we're super lucky she'll get back in touch with us end of this week to let us know a site start date - yaaaay!

*edit* Just checked My Metricon, and while the "estimating" box isn't checked yet, we have a site supervisor named - Brian! How exciting!

Today, had a temp job in St Kilda to get to, and I think I spotted 2 Metricon homes - one was on Riversdale rd near Highfield rd, and one on Whitehorse Rd, between Union Rd and Station St. But I could be wrong, was driving past them pretty fast but they looked awfully familiar!

There's also a messaive Metricon home going up on Doncaster rd, between the greythorn shops and balwyn road - looks huuuuge! Would be worth a fortune in the Balwyn North area too, certainly well into 7 figures.

Finally, we're moving into a house in Preston tonight for 2 weeks of housesitting. We're hoping to line up more housesitting gigs while our house is being built (we've probably got a month in Vermont housesitting in August 2010). If anyone is going away in Melbourne, and would like their house (and pets!) minded by two responsible, mature professionals, please let us know!

T&T

Building Permit Approved - 4 days in council, is that a record??

So things are really starting to happen now!

We received our "final" construction drawings last week, but had to correct a few things:
- ensuite had shower rail and rainfall head together, instead of at opposite ends of the double shower
- powder room door swung wrong way
- Light switch placed behind door
- some electrical items at wrong height
- added note that benchtop runs all the way to window splashback

and after 7 goes at getting it right, we finally signed off on the correct drawings yesterday!

We also received word that our building permit was approved - it only took 4 days! It helps we already did the legwork to get the building over easement approvals months ago, and that alone took 3 weeks for a rubber stamp! Our CSC says they use a private company to submit the approvals, and providing the siting and design is done in line with Rescode (which our house complies with) there is usually less than a week to approve the build.

We also received our plans in the mail yesterday with the energy assessment, and apparently we've got a 5.5 star energy rated house, which is nice to know! Didn't really design the house with energy rating in mind (even added a couple of windows on the west side, which is meant to be a no-no).

We're still waiting on our tile appointment results, about $2000 worth of feature tile upgrades. We were lucky enough to be able to use the original Metricon/Beaumont tile selection range instead of the reduced range brought in around August. We upgraded to a nice mosaic tile around the powder room mirror, the same mosaic in the ensuite shower niche, and also an aluminium stripe around the fully tiled ensuite. Will have to upload photos, but Tina has the tiles at her parent's place.

On other things related to the redevelopment:
- power pit being installed today - they say! We paid for this September 23 and was meant to be done within a month, but some delays here for whatever reason.
- Temporary fence for the demolition is being installed Friday. The annoying thing is that virtually all fencing companies will quote for a 6 month minimum, and they all want about $350 - all we need the fence for is 2 weeks or so!
- Demolition booked for week after Cup day - I hope they can start earlier, as we've got the fence up early, but it's all up to their schedule. Need to have a completion date before we can get a re-establishment survey completed.

And hopefully we'll be in the clear with a week to spare before penalty delay payments kick in!

Maybe the next time we post, it'll be with demolition pictures!

Construction drawings received, building permit applied for!

So yesterday afternoon (Thursday) we received an email from our CSC with our final construction drawings, and a standard email saying that we're to check they're correct, sign and return. With the additional line "Please note no changes or alterations at this stage are permitted"!

Anyway, we had a look through the plans and found a few errors, including:

• Laundry and powder room tiling not shown
• Wrong exhaust fan to powder room
• Data and cable internet access at wrong height
• FC infill noted where brick infill is
• Powder room door swings open the wrong direction
  

and the big one, a muckup in the ensuite shower layout. We swapped around the WC and toilet in the ensuite, so we could get a bigger shower (1600x900) and added a rainfall showerhead in. Anyway, the ensuite elevations were all screwy with the showerhead and rainfall located in all weird positions.

So we sent an email to our csc last night noting these errors. We got an email at 9:30am today saying she was on the case, and revised plans sent through 30 minutes later. Way to go Mendo!

Unfortunately there was one issue now caused, by correcting the powder room door swing direction, the light switch ended up behind the door. So sent another email through, and true to form another revised plan sent an hour later.

Now maybe we're just extremely lucky, or Metricon are desperate for us to sign & approve the construction drawings, but today we've had nothing but excellent service from Mendo and the Metricon drafting team - keep it up guys & gals!

Anyway, by the time I had time to check my email it was after business hours - things look good on the plans now, so we'll sign this weekend and email it back to M.

On other news, "My Metricon" has had a few updates;

• Finance approval has been received
• Sewerage/water permit has been approved
• Contract engineering is completed
• And Building permit has been applied for today! And Building permit approval is expected to be Oct 28!

Honestly, a few nights ago I had a dream (no joke) our slab was done, and I was walking the dog around it... can't wait for that to come true!

still waiting for our tile selections and costing to be finalised and emailed to us, though we're not sweating on this one, as it's not critical to the initial build stage. I also called our demolition crew to see if they could start early, seeing as the old house is deserted now, but they're flat out with other work and will hopefully start 2nd week of November as planned.

Anyway, the main message here is rule #1 for all home builders - READ, CHECK, RE READ, RE CHECK all your documents and plans before signing anything! And once you've done that, read and check again! Unfortunately I have this niggling little worry that no matter how thorough we think we've been so far, there's probably been a few glaringy obvious errors that we won't become aware of, until they become a problem we have to fix. But that's the fun and risk of building!

T&T

Final contract received - post contract variations?

Our CSC called me this afternoon to let me know the final contract was going to be emailed out soon (we had it by 5pm), the only issue is that our electrical plan isn't done. This is because we only did the electrical appointment 10 days ago, and they're taking their time getting the drawings done - but she said we can just add it on as a variation after the contract is signed - how does this sound to everyone?

Otherwise, the contract and drawings were done pretty well with only a couple of issues to address, such as;

• We want Cat4 bricks to the whole house - in the contract, we've only got Cat4 bricks to sides & rear. Wonder what can be put on the facade, if not bricks?
• 2365 framed mirror doors on plans are marked down as only 2065mm high

And for a few very minor issues, the glass splashback is smaller than we thought (200mm high instead of full height) - since we have a big window splashback it's not a big deal, but we'll ask about it. Also, we added in at late notice a trilock handle to the internal access foor from the garage, but it's a knob instead of lever, and it might be better as a lever to match the other door handles.

One nice thing is that we asked for an additional rainfall showerhead to the ensuite, and we ended up with 2 rail showers and a rainfall showerhead - it looks excellent on the plans, can't wait to get using it... in 15 months or so, or however long it'll take to build!

I guess the main thing on this final contract, provided our CSC says our electrical plan goes through as a normal post-contract variation (with no further penalty fees to pay, since it's not our fault they haven't got the electrical plans drawn up properly) then we're pretty much set to go for contract signing on Tuesday.

Just got to prepare payment of 5% less the $4000 already paid (I wish they took amex, all them credit card points would be worth something)! So, bring my chequebook, copies of bank statements as proof of funds for half the build, call my demo guy to get a copy of demo permit for M, and a big fat pen to sign a thousand pages. We were meant to receive our finance approval today, but it hasn't come through yet - if it doesn't come on Monday, I'll call our broker again to get a hurry up!

And drove by the old house a few days ago, the overhead power line has been cut, so just the gas service line to be removed, and evaporative cooling to be relocated.

If anyone has any comments on how to approach final contract signing please let us know!!

T&T

Initial contact from Metricon - let's get things underway!

Got back from Mt Hotham on the weekend to find a pile of letters - junk mail, bills, and one from Metricon dated July 9. This letter just stated that the deposit had been received, paperwork is underway, and a CSC would contact us "soon" to organise some appointments! Of course, "CSC" = Customer Service Consultant, so let's just hope that the first two words actually mean something! What we need to do is figure out who we liase with to make any further changes to our house... in particular...

Over the last week in Hotham, surrounded by plenty of snow, I did read up a little about water, and how rates/bills etc would pile up as all the water companies increase their charges by up to 60% over the next 2 years! Monopoly, Duopoly, Multi-opoly?

All new homes have to be at least 5 star energy efficient (how this is rated I have no idea) but from what I know, the new house has to have either solar hot water or a water tank. Most project home builders choose to incorporate solar hot water, and M is no exception. They do offer to install a water tank as an upgrade, but even our sales consultant reckons you should do it after handover for a better price. However, I do want to find out how much it will be to "pre-plumb" the house for a water tank - so we can easily add in a water tank later, and importantly have the water usable inside the house, and not just for the garden (eg for toilet flushing). This would require some sort of plumbing from the roof to the tank, and then from the tank to the toilets... and a pump of some kind? Yep, I need to do some more research here - or can any readers please add a comment?

We're also wanting to re-arrange the laundry door as described by a reader of the blog (thanks again!) and also arrange the powder room so that the sink and toilet are in the one small room, rather than having the sink on the outside. I'm on my laptop so I don't have the drawing I did of this variation, but will add it to the next update. Also realising right now how uncomfortable a laptop keyboard is compared to my big ergonomic keyboard on the server!

Anyway, we'll probably arrange another tour of Studio M, mainly to pick up all the samples and try to pin down colour choices, and also drop by Beaumont again in Oakleigh sometime. And of course, the spectre of unknown site costs is still keeping me awake at night, so the sooner we get some firm answers on this, the better!