Our First Week

We have now spent our first week in our new house, we actually got the keys around a month ago, and spent the first 3 weekends building the deck.  Last weekend we moved out of little 2 bedroom duplex…you would be amazed how much crud you can squeeze into one of them.

The house has been great, and the landscaper Greg has been fantastic, pity I can’t say the same for the pool fence guys.  I won’t go into all the details, but lets just say the reason they call themselves “discount” is due to the fact that they don’t quote you on what you asked for.

Anyhow, here are some photos of the new house…enjoy.

The front of our house (hi Rene) from down the road a little. 

Our new couch (it is dark brown), and the future fish tank location

I thinks we need a bigger TV  

The kitchen, the dark colours work well.

Part of the pool, and fancy retaining wall (all our neighbours like the wall) 

Our new bed

The ensuite. 

With spa  

And rain water head 

The dining room and looking out to the outdoor room (look at that deck)

Looking into the lounge (left) and dining room (center/right) over the deck.  Still have to finish the deck edging. 

Looking down the eastern side of the house, with the stepping that matches the retaining wall…and all that new grass…I hope it takes.

The kitchen at night

The front at night 

And finally, the bedroom at night

Now all that is left is the pool fencing and pool….just in time for summer (fingers crossed).

To build a deck

The first thing you need is plenty of friends and family that are willing to work for peanuts.  Okay, I didn’t have any peanuts, but I had some good assistance from Rene’s brother Trevor, my mum and dad, friends from work Mat and Brendon, friends I don’t work with any more Paul and of course Rene.

Firstly, this is pretty much what we were meant to be achieving:

So Friday was spent having to dig around 16 holes on the edge of the house…all by hand.  A big thanks for Trevor for sharing in the blister exercise.  Also all the wood and cement (a “gross” of them).

Saturday was made up of two parts, completion of digging the post holes, this time with an auger attached to the rented Dingo, and setting out the framing for the deck.  The deck is actually made up of 3 parts, the area for the outdoor room, in front of the lounge & dining rooms and the other bit.

Brendon was doing a great job of cutting out the bearers for the first area, with my dad arriving just in time to help him square it all up.  After a bit of man handling it got set in position and all of the post positions were marked out.

Mean while the next part was getting cut and set out, with some egging by Mat, Brendon started to confuse him self, but eventually it all got done.  Two frame parts made.  Plenty of joist hangers the get set out now, to save some effort later.

Day three, and the workers had started to thin, Trevor got to play on the dingo levelling some area out the front for the fencing and I continued to drill holes for the post set out and nail in a heap of joist hangers.

Mat came back for another round, “rockstars” in hand so we thought we would set out and level the outdoor room.  By the end of the day, the outdoor room was all cemented in, ready to get some joists put in after hours this week.

Anyhow, just a couple of photos of it all. (sorry, didn’t take that may progress pics).

Trevor on the Dingo. 

My turn…I did manage to level out a fair bit of the back yard.

Some holes (yes, I hit the storm water pipe…on the last hole)

One of the frames (dang water pipe is in my way)

The first one down and cemented in…24 bags of cement mixed by hand…thanks Mat.

Anyhow, this week after work I hope to get all joists in and maybe even the 2nd frame set into position, or at least the third frame complete.

Oh, and after “desert storm” finishes, we shall get some completed inside shots taken.

We have the keys

Well on Thursday October 1st, we officially received the keys for the house. I must say Metricon do a great finish, and they would have really topped it off if they gave you a couple sets of keyrings to go with all the keys you get. The house warming pressie was nice (except we already own a set), but it was a nice thought…key rings would have been handy too.

A big thanks goes out to our friends and family that have helped us over this weekend to build the deck, the efforts are greatly appreciated.

I will get some photos up tomorrow night of both the house and deck.

Cheers,
Scott

Only 2 weeks to go…

Yep, that is right, according to our SS, we should have the hand over of the house on the 2nd of Oct. Not guaranteed yet, but that is the date that he is working towards. Which means that on the 3rd, I will be digging lots of holes for the deck

We had an independent person go through the house today (handovers.com), and they were very pleased with the quality. Only one main issue, which should be easily to fixes, and a couple of minor items that we had already found.

Our driveway was also being prepped today, and should be poured tomorrow…going to be interesting in the rain, given the slope of parts of this driveway…but I am sure Rene will get used to reversing into the garage (hey babe)

Next time I will post photos of the completed house

Practically Complete

Things are still steaming a head with the house build, to such an extent that on Thursday our Site Super called to let us know the date of practical completion…September 17th…woohoo.  At this stage that is an approximate date, but it looks like we could be in by the end of Sept, 2 1/2 months ahead of schedule.

So with that, of course we had to go up and get some photos of the place, and there are plenty of things to see.

• All of the wet area tiling has been complete, they just need to silicon seal the corners.
• Painting on the inside is 95% complete.  They didn’t have one of the feature wall colours, but are trying to find a match.
• Kitchen is 90% complete, just need appliances.
• Outside rendering is complete.

Now time for the gripes:

• Some of the feature wall paint (little drops) have splashed onto the normal wall.
• Various other little paint issues.
• There is something missing from where the garage steps are.
• You can see the silicon glue that is holding up the glass splash back.
• The render colour above the windows and doors is a different colour.

Anyhow, I shall be calling the SS on Monday to let him know.

But on with the photos.

The ensuite, with the olive feature wall:

The Kitchen (you can see the glue/sillicon marks):

The dining room, with the leaning tower of bath tubs:

The missing paint will eventually be a maroony colour:

The nook (future fish tank location):

The entrance way:

The garage:

Oh, and we have the other half of the hot water system:

Tiling and stone

I stopped by the house this afternoon, just to see how the tiling is going, and to my surprise the caesarstone bench tops have been delivered and installed.  I will have to take some photos on the weekend, I think they look great.  Meanwhile, I would say the wet area tiling is about 90% complete, really just around the bath and spa to be done.

Now if only they would give us a better estimate of when the house will be complete, instead of the contracted date (Dec 8th).

Its been a while…

..since I have updated the blog.  I keep taking photos, but just don’t seem to find enough time to update the blog.

So things seem to be chugging along.  Last week (or was that 2 weeks ago) the kitchen, laundry and bathroom cupboards were all installed.  Still waiting for the Ceaserstone bench tops, but they don’t come until the finishing stage.  Our tiles arrived about a week ago also, and the tilers are busily putting them in a the moment (I hope all of them, but probably only the wet areas).  All cornicing, skirting and architraves have been installed, and we were happy to see on the weekend that the shelves in all the cupboards have been put in too (good work chippies).

There is still a little work left to get completed on the outside of the house, and a bit of rendering.  They also still have to paint the front of the study (I can’t remember what colour, but I am sure it is a shade of brown).

Anyhow, on with the pictures….enjoy

The front of the house:

A view of the lounge and kitchen:

View out from the dining room over the outdoor room and pool:

The ensuite (and Rene’s wardrobe):

The laundry: 

One of the bedrooms:

Bet you can’t guess:

The Main bathroom:

The junk cupboard:

Another bedroom:

The kitchen, still awaiting the tops:

A quick update

Was meant to meet a person at the house this morning to quote for connecting gas to the house.  Unfortunately they had another emergency to attend to, so tomorrow it is.  I thought I would take a couple of happy snaps of the house, pretty much all rendered now.

Over the halfway mark

We must be over the halfway mark by now, we received out invoice for “Enclosure stage”, which leaves us with only 2 stages left; Fixing and Practical completion.  Now I don’t really think that is going to take 4 months to achieve (our contracted date was pushed back to 8/12/08), so maybe (fingers crossed) we might be there in a couple of months or less.

The weekend update

Okay, better late than never.  So progress has been going along nice an smoothly.  You wouldn’t think that only a couple of months ago we were wondering if we would ever get to start this build.

All the bricks have now been bricked (got me beat what it is called), and surprisingly at the same time, all of the plaster has been roughed in (I heard that one from somebody else).  Oh, and the missing gutters have been put

I just can’t believe how far things have come.

On a side note, here is a lesson for anyone building their house, it is bit of a long story, so you are welcome to skip it and go straight to the pictures   So the display house that we based most of our decisions on, has a 20mm island bench with 40mm edging including the gable ends.  The options on display item reads:

Provide 20mm Caesarstone Quartz benchtop with 40mm edge to freestanding island bench to kitchen in lieu of standard laminate.  Price includes 40mm edge to gable ends with mitred joint to bench top (Note: Caesarstone to be selected from Builders standard range).

And the promotion includes:

Caesarstone Quartz kitchen benchtop.  20mm thick kitchen benchtop with square edge 2-3mm radius or aris.

Our sales person mentioned that he thought that the 20mm edge looked better than the 40mm, and after looking at a couple of photos (and later a different display house) we agreed with him.

So we move forward to now, I was looking through the colour selection the other day to check on the feature wall colours, and was shocked when I found that the ends of the kitchen bench were laminate, not Caesarstone, WTF??  So it turns out if that you don’t choose the 40mm edging, you also seem to lose the gable ends, something that I cannot believe.  At no time were we made aware of this fact, or the fact that we didn’t have stone ends.  Even at the colour selection we had a picture of how we wanted it to look, which had the stone gable ends.

And of course it is a variation to fix, and cost to us, and now just too late as they have already ordered the kitchen.  So a tip for those building, make sure you check every single item, and if you need more time, don’t sign it.

Anyhow, on with the photos (there are a lot of them)…A picture of the front of the house, still waiting for them to fill in the hole under the front door.

Looking out to the bi-folds:

 

The future fish tank location (it is about 3 meters long)

And the future really big TV location (I am sure Rene will see it my way soon)

And then out to the back yard (not a fan of that fence/great wall)

Looking from the dining room, over the kitchen to the front door

From the front door back to the dining room

Looking past the study to bed 3 and the main bathroom

Study, bedroom 3, main bathroom and bedroom 2

 

 

Looking out through the garage

Out to the laundry and the laundry

And finally to the main bedroom and ensuite

And finally, the outdoor room and pool

  

Sorry if it took you a while to get to here.