The Chateau de BelleBeau

PCI Measles time!

2009-06-11T21:52:00.006+10:00

Hello all,
We had our PCI today, it took about 2.5 hours and at least a box or two of dots. By the time we got there, the SS had already been through and put dots everywhere he thought there was a problem. There was a serious case of measles!

Now for the geek admission, we had previously sat down and created spreadsheets to cross check everything in the contract, PCV's and BV's on a room by room basis. So armed with 24 pages of spreadsheet, we worked our way through each room ticking off light switches, power points, fly screens, key locks, etc on the spreadsheet to what was in each room/area. That's how we found out there were no HDMI cables fitted off on the walls and no push plugs in the bath or spa. We also found we bonused an extra alarm sensor and a double power point.

The block had been cleared (unfortunately) so instead of the sand/gravel that was in the driveway, the bobcat had moved all the dirt up and around, result?? 4 inches of mud!! OMG how are we ever going to move stuff in with all this mud and how am I ever going to get it clean?

Unfortunately we had some camera problems so I do not have a lot of photos.
Ensuite with measles..
Our SS was pretty furious with the plasterers. Seems that they did not end up coming back until yesterday, which meant that the painters could not come back to finish off either. Add to that with this colder weather the plaster is taking longer to dry. That means that the house was not up to his standard at the PCI. When we arrived the cleaner was there trying to clean it up a bit because she has been pushed back because of the plasterers as well. She was lovely and kept apologising because she had not been able to do a better job. She was booked for yesterday which was when all the trades should have been completed.

Bed 4 with a large plaster repair, you can see that the plaster still is not dry.

One of the heat lamps was blown in the Tastic, and it was not seated properly in the ceiling.

They forgot the shroud for the range hood cover. The hole should be covered by the shroud once it goes in.

More plaster bit fixes, this time in the lounge room. Also because I love this room.

I'd like to say it went well, and it kind of did. We did not find anything major, just lots of paint spots, dings, doors that needed adjusting, plaster issues, a missing man hole cover, lots of blow outs in the mortar, chipped bricks, grout touch ups, missing seals on doors etc.

In one way it was really a relief because of all the other arrangements for flooring, carpets, time off that would have needed to be juggled if we had to push it back. In another way, I too was really angry at the plasterers. It was "finished enough" but I was expecting to see a basically clean, completed house and to find the huge plaster bits in some rooms was really off putting and did not look finished at all. Not to mention the mud!

We have to trust our SS at this point when he says it should all be done by next week. He has been true to his word so far and has always said that there will be issues, but once he knows about them that he will get them fixed and he has.

So we are feeling quietly confident that we should get handover next week.

Good luck with your builds people!

Finishing off bits and pieces...

2009-06-07T23:54:00.005+10:00

Hello all, this post is really bits and pieces.

With PCI later this week, most of the week has been spent getting bits and pieces done to finish it off. Firstly, the insulation went into the roof. Bl**dy plasterers did not tie the manhole into the frame as they are supposed to, it seems. So when the insulators climbed up into the roof, the plaster came off and one of them nearly fell through it, one of the painters told me. I know it might sound callous, but thank god it was not us trying to get into the ceiling.
I think we have been pretty lucky with just about all of the trades we have had apart from the plasterers. You can see where they have put the surround back and just left the hole in the plaster.
According to the SS, he told them last Wednesday about this and about a hole in the laundry. They were supposed to have it fixed that arvo. Then Thursday, then Friday, as the painter is coming back over the weekend for the final touch ups and it's being cleaned Wednesday.

We were there Saturday and the plaster was still not fixed in the laundry, so I don't think they have been.

Any way, enough doom and gloom, shower screens now installed... This is the bathroom, love the feature tiles!

Ensuite with shower screen installed..

Feature wall in our bedroom, Dulux Enchantress, love it!

Feature wall in the formal lounge room, Dulux Enchantress again. It's a bit dark in this picture but it is stunning against the chalkdust white architraves and the 2pac mantel.

All the outside painting has now been completed, meter box, firebox cover, lintels and the laundry door.

Alarm box which to my mind is upside down. But apparently, it does not matter????

Kitchen under cupboard lights installed. Love that splashback (any excuse for more kitchen pics LOL)

Close up of the under cupboard bench lights, I think they look really cool.

And our mirrors are all in too. Couldn't resist this one either.

Had a call on Friday from the SS to let me know that it is all on track. So, Thursday is the PCI and fingers crossed, it all seems pretty good at the moment. Assuming of course, that the plasterers eventually show up and fix things!!

Cheers all and good luck with your builds!

We have a DATE!

2009-05-28T21:42:00.005+10:00

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We have PCI and Hand Over Dates!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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PCI is set for Thursday, 11 June and Hand Over for a week later on the 18th of June.

What a relief! That will give us a swap over time of just over two weeks so we will have time to get the flooring done and hopefully concreting as well before we move in properly.

Now comes the fun bit of trying to co ordinate concreting, phones, Internet, flooring, wardrobe fit outs, aust post re directs etc etc. I'm just really glad that we are not trying to move in 2 days before we settle on our current house.

I have been able to get in this week. The second fixing carpenter was there, so I took the opportunity to get a few photos before the camera decided that it's useful life had expired and up and died on me. Luckily I was still able to get some of the pics off it.

Lots of happenings this week..
Door and cupboard handles are on as are the door stops. All the electrical fit out seems to have been done. Lights, power points, light switches, flood lights outside, junction boxes, smoke detectors and down lights are all in place. Alarm has been fitted, although as we told PD three weeks ago, one of the leads for the sensor is in the wrong spot. This has not been fixed and now they have fitted the sensor to it in the wrong spot. The outside alarm box also seems to have been fitted upside down. I have never seen an alarm box with the blue light on top?

Now on to the pics!

Exhaust fan in the ensuite Looking for cables. These holes in the ensuite and others in the laundry were really the only "problem children", most light switches, power points etc seem to have been found in the right place, first go.

Love the downlights over the kitchen bench!! We also have downlights under the kitchen cupboards and in the study over where the desks will sit.

Just one of the 6 ganger powertainment powerboards, we have three in the house for TV's

Knobs are on all the cupboards now

Door handles and privacy locks are all on too. Really happy with the look of the two tone, just a little bit different.

Things looking a bit busy in the Study, all the network cables are terminated here. We'll do our own patch panel after handover.

I also found out that insurance is our responsibility from the PCI once we sign. I thought we would not have to have insurance until hand over so, I have to organise insurance for the new house a bit sooner than I expected.

Still waiting on mirrors and shower screens and the insulation too. We saw the insulation bags in the garage so I expect that will go in tomorrow. The painter has to come back and finish off the feature walls, apart from that I think most things appear to be pretty much done, it really looks like it is just finishing off bits and pieces now.

I am still a bit in a daze with getting dates, so apologies if this is a bit of a ramble. All of a sudden, it is real. We are really getting PCI, we are really going to have a house rather than just sometime in the future, all of a sudden we have dates and things have to happen around those dates. It almost feels surreal. LOL. After all the waiting and hoping, it's really happening!

Tiles, Taps and Toilets

2009-05-21T22:50:00.010+10:00

Warning, if bright colours offend, you might like to skip this post LOL.

This week has seen the tiling finished and grouted, taps, plugs and toilets installed and the ducted heating as well. PD certainly seem to be making up for lost time.

We now have the ducted heating return air vent and controller installed. We counted air vents in each of the rooms that they are supposed to be in and they are all there. But in quite a few rooms they are off centre??? Is this ok? I would have thought they would have been centred in the rooms?
The ensuite! The pencil feature tiles are a perfect match for the laminex bench top and the cabinet colour, although it maybe a bit hard to see from this picture.

Aubergine capping tiles to frame where the mirror will be. The capping tiles are a similar shade to the cabinet door colour "black tulip"

A picture of the ensuite before grouting, you can see the pencil tiles across the front of the spa and going up the shower wall.

Another picture before grouting showing the floor tiles as well. Can you tell I am happy with the way the ensuite colours came together.

The Bathroom, we chose capping tiles to create a frame around the mirror. S hates the mirrors "just stuck on the wall". Feature tiles are in a similar colour to the laminex "peacock" and believe it or not, so are the capping tiles. Flickmixer to the bath and to the basin. Tiled skirts in here too.

View from the bathroom door. Flickmixer installed and push plug is there too.

Other side of the bathroom. Mosaic feature tiles are in the niche. They have not been cleaned properly yet. Sonata hand held shower, with rose at 2m and flickmixer.

Powder room. The toilet with it's tiled skirts. Very neat job!

Powder room. Taps installed and the push plug installed as well. Rapt with the laminex as a match for the tiles. They look almost the same colours/marbled effect.

Laundry, now all tiled. Love those tiled skirts!

Taps are now fitted to the laundry.

Just because black and white are just gorgeous! I love the laundry colours.

Kitchen under mount sink, now with tap! and waste baskets. Yippee! I hate looking for the plugs.

Just for K, here are the pictures of the "feature walls". Actually the two "Enchantress" walls have not been done yet. The painter needs to get a grey undercoat otherwise he tells me it will take 5 coats to get the right colour. He is coming back to do them.

Well, we have been told by our kids that feature walls make the room look "incomplete", and "just silly" and that they wanted all the walls the same colour in their rooms. So, for a cash donation our painter did all the walls in those rooms. We decided that we can close their doors. Does this make any other parents think "the price of peace"?

Bed 4, our eldest daughters room, Wattyl "Catamaran". It is brighter than this picture. Amazing colour choice and we were a bit concerned, however we have been assured it is "awesum"

Bed 3, this was going to be "Love that pink" but after much pain and suffering (ours) our youngest daughter decided on Dulux "Favourite Lady".

Below you can see the mirrored sliding doors on the robe. We have these in Beds 2,3,4 all painted to match the architraves in "Chalkdust". They have not been cleaned yet.

Bed 2, this is Wattyl "Lavender Splash"

I hope to get a call this week with a PCI date. As far as I can tell there is only electrical fit off, door handles, alarm and home theatre wiring, gas fitting/fireplace, roof insulation and bits of painting to do. Surely it can't take until August 11 to do all that!

Have a great week people and good luck with your builds!

He's Baaaaaack!!!

2009-05-12T20:53:00.005+10:00

Well, our SS is back from sick leave and it is apparent with a flurry of things happening at the house. The outstanding list of issues to be fixed is now down to 6. Amazing!

Regular readers will know I was very frustrated with the delay in the last few weeks. Interestingly, I found out that the painter was responsible for the delay. He put on the undercoat and saw that the plasters had done "a pretty crap job" on almost all of the sheet joins so the undercoat was very patchy and there were quite a few cornice joins and corners that were not good enough in his opinion either. So, he stopped work to get the plasterers back to get it fixed.

The painter “B” is very particular and whilst he is happy to fix the nicks and dings, this was way too much for he and his mate to do. Very time consuming and costly. So the delay was waiting for the plasterers to come back and fix all the areas he had marked with the pencil. That way the plasterers wear the cost of their "pretty crap job". It seems that the plasterers were not too impressed with him or his opinion, but he won out in the end and it was fixed. When they had fixed the issues, "B" came back. After a long conversation with him, I feel very lucky that we have him as our painter. He takes a lot of pride in his work. Our tiler also told us we were lucky to get him as he is the best painter he works with. It made us feel better to get a recommendation from another tradie.

So, now I know that the delay was in order to get a better job, I feel a bit like a nutter for complaining. This is where better communication would solve almost all our problems. Although I can hardly blame the SS for being off sick!!

Update:

The outside painting is almost finished; the insert on the garage roof has been painted as has the alfresco timber beams. Only the Laundry door to go, the inside has been stained but the outside is going to be Ironstone.

This looking into the laundry, with the cupboards along the left hand wall. You can just see the first tile sitting in the bottom corner near the door.

Shelves have all been installed in the laundry and two linen cupboards as well as the Walk In Pantry. I suspect that the space for the fridge has been left too small to fit our fridge in, so we will need to measure that before we go too much further. It was a very pleasant surprise to find out that although the contract says “painted particleboard” we are told by our SS that PD now use a wardrobe company to do all of the shelving so we have white melamine shelves. Bonus!

Walk In Pantry shelving

Rear linen closet shelving. Shelves at my height LOL Notice the large expanse at the top!

Best of all, the under bench sink has now been installed!! The edge of the stone has been polished and the tap hole has also been drilled. It needs to be sealed around the edges properly, as it does not look like they have done that at all.

Not to mention the fact that it is flithy!

Tiles arrived on site on Friday afternoon.

They have all been labelled by some helpful person, pity that they couldn't be bothered to read and check all our selections.

We then met the Tiler "J" on site this morning. Hmm, National Tiles! I had dramas from the first with them. Firstly, not sending me the tile list/layout as promised, then when I did get it, sending me someone else’s tile plan. Then stuffing up the codes. They finally got it right in December when we did the selection in September!

So, after going through the tiles with "J" as he had laid them out, found out that they have sent double the quantity of floor tiles for the laundry and have marked them to be used as the splash back as well. Went back through the paper work and I am right!! The splash back tiles are supposed to be white. Wrong paperwork again! The paperwork the tiler was working off was an older incorrect copy (around October I think)

Popped back this afternoon and there were tiles laid on the ensuite floor already!

On another note, for anyone who is interested, I have been getting quotes for blinds so that we can install them ourselves at handover. I have got free samples sent from “BlindsOnLine” and took them to the house to look at them compared to the wall colour. We are happy with the quality of the samples and the savings buying on line and hanging ourselves is up to $1,500 difference in one case. I have done a comparison for what we need and I think I can do the whole house (minus bi folds) for about $1400 delivered from these people. And they are made in Australia, so I am supporting Australian manufacturing which makes me feel good and saving money which makes me feel even better.

Best news is that the tiler thinks he will only be a week to finish and then the SS has promised me I will get a PCI date. Fingers Crossed!

Movement

2009-05-07T22:05:00.014+10:00

There’s been movement at the station this week…

Things seem to be moving again, thank goodness. Apologies in advance for the poor picture quality, I only had my phone with me.

Our splash back has been installed and the colour is absolutely stunning. I am so happy with it! I know it is not everyone’s cup of tea but I LOVE IT!!

Splash back…

Our water tank was delivered on Monday/Tuesday and then today (Thursday) the plumbers have been and have connected it all up. We have one of the neat tanks that have the pump built into the unit, so cool. We think our solar panels have been installed as well. We can just see the corner of one of them. We are supposed to have two, so we may have to either take up a ladder or ask T&L next door, if they can see any solar panels on our roof. LOL

Water tank all plumbed in..

Plumbing for Solar Gas Hot Water

Met the painter on site and our feature walls were news to him, the Hopetoun sheet he is working off is 30 October, when the last revised one was 8th December. So he obviously did not know about the feature walls or the gable colour either. He said he cannot remember the last time he did a house with three coats, but that was at least what he’d do on his own house. Seems like a really nice guy. When we had a look around, he looks to have done a really good job so far. Told me to come back Friday, when it should all be finished to have a look then. Guess where I am going Friday morning before work.

We’re really, really happy with the wall colour too. Divinity, it’s not beige or white or sand or peach or pink or cinnamon but kind of all of them LOL. Really cool colour as it seems to take on the tones of what you put near to it which is great.

Bedroom 2, the wall colour looks so different in the different light, really amazing..

Doors all lined up to be painted.
So, no update from the SS or the CSC for two weeks, as the SS was sick and might still be for all I know. I have not rung him because if he is still sick, I think that’s a bit rude. I certainly would not want my clients phoning me. "N" our CSC was going to ring with an update when she caught up with him. I expect a call from her tomorrow ( Friday) and I will ring her if I do not hear by lunchtime. I want to know what is going on with the Kitchen bench/tap issue, I don't want this to cause an issue right at the end, I'd rather it was dealt with now. Nothing has happened so far and the fix invoice is still outstanding.

Have a great weekend people and good luck with your builds :-)

So one snail said to the other...

2009-05-03T21:56:00.005+10:00

...Gee things are slow around here.

Well, I am getting more and more frustrated. I think the painters were there this week as our eaves and the portico ceiling have all been painted. The internal doors have all been lined up and have been undercoated too. I am pretty sure this happened last week though. I am really impatient to see my wall colour as I picked it from a sample. You can see that it seems that they have cut in the wall colour just under the cornice in the pic below. They had done this early in the week.

The Front door and sidelight and the French doors, bi folds and the timber window in the alfresco have all been stained. However, they have not stained the laundry door??? Yep, it’s in the contract (had me doubting myself there). Love the look of the stained timber, the colour is really rich and the front door/sidelight looks stunning!

Outside the alfresco area...

Bi Folds and timber window from inside the family room...

French doors from inside the family room...

Friday the garage doors, both the roller door at the back and the panel lift at the front were installed.

House from the front with the panel lift door in ironstone!

From the inside of the garage, ceiling painted...

Still no sign of a tiler, and it seems that the plasterers have come back to fix up a few bits and pieces??? The undercoat went on and now inside there are new pencil marks again on the walls. Does this mean that “someone” decided that there was plastering that needed re doing?? Is that why there has been little painting action this week? We’d love to know but our SS has been sick all week and our CSC has no idea what is going on. According to her, the tiler started on the 22 April. Well, umm, no, he might have turned up, but there are no tiles, so he probably went home again.

Are taps and toilets part of the “fix stage”, this is a question we are asking ourselves at this point. Does anyone know? We are still waiting on the under bench sink to be installed before we pay the fix stage, when we realised that the taps aren’t there either. Also a bit of a worry is that the sink does not have a tap space, so we think that the hole for the flick mixer also needs to be cut in the bench top too. We have called/emailed but as the SS is sick, we can’t find out.

Have I said that I am getting frustrated? PD obviously have been going great guns until just before Easter, now it is getting really disappointing to see that night after night nothing has been done. Spoilt, yes I am! Or was! And I want to be again!!! Not to mention, that a number of blogs I am following are at or getting very close to PCI/Handover. Yes, I am aware that jealousy is a curse. LOL.

Have a great week people!

Move along.... Nothing to see here!

2009-04-25T22:46:00.005+10:00

Hello All and Hi to Grandpa in Novogrod, keep warm

Well interesting week, dare I say. The painter finally arrived on 22 April Yipee!! He obviously found the house after two weeks, marvellous things those GPS units! Ummm, missing the tiler that was supposed to start then....

Sorry no pictures, nothing to see because they have taped down all the windows and the timber doors with at least three pieces of thick plastic which is totally impossible to see anything through at all! We can't get in and we can't see in either!!!

We can get into the garage so we know that the ceilings have been painted and it looks like quite a tidy job. The cabinet maker went in on Friday while the painter was there to measure up for the quote for our study joinery. We also got the concreting quotes. Holy hell, prices have gone up from when we set the budget last June! Concrete and reo have gone through the roof in the last 12 months it seems, because everyone was around the same ballpark figure.

The best I can do is a picture of the type of driveway/walkway we are having:

It's called slatecrete and it's your basic charcoal colour. We'll have this for the driveway and paths at the front of the house, plain coloured concrete for the walkway down the side of the house and something a bit daggie for the alfresco. Shhh!! Only we and the concretor are supposed to know that.

We had our building inspector in for the fix inspection too. Result - fix invoice still not paid. The stone bench top got liquid nailed to the cabinet tops before they put the sink in the middle (it's an under mount) so, we're waiting for them to come rip it out, put in the sink and then put a new stone bench top on. What an absolute waste! It was obvious that the cabinet tops had been routed to take the sink, but no, they put it on anyway. Apart from that the house got the thumbs up at the stage which is good to know.

Apologies for the absence of pics, hopefully the plastic will come off sometime this week! It's like waiting for Christmas, all those presents wrapped up and you can't open them.

Fingers crossed for all of you not locked up that the weather does not slow you down or do too much damage!

Have a good one all!

SOLD!

2009-04-18T23:22:00.008+10:00

Hi all,

Big Hi to Grandpa in Helsinki, hope you are having a great time!

As you might deduce from the title, we sold our current house. I can't believe it, it went unconditional last night, We sold in 8 DAYS, for the amount we wanted and with a 90 day settlement. We put it on the market because a house across the road was on for nearly 7 weeks before selling (fairly similar type house) and we thought that it might take that long to sell.

Ummmm, No, on the market Friday morning, inspection Saturday, inspection Thursday before Easter and then sold on the Saturday. Can you tell I am still in shock that it has all happened so fast?

So we have to be out by 9 July, I really hope PD is finished by then. I am getting less confident, the painter was supposed to start Easter week, then straight after Easter and still no appearance your worship! Now we are told the tiler is supposed to start on the 22nd. Well, we live in hope!!!

So since the last blog update there has been some action:

- The caesar stone bench tops have been installed = Good

- They forgot we are having an under bench mount sink so they did not put it in before fixing the bench top to the cupboards = Bad

- More back filling of our retaining walls = Good

- Only on one side of the block= Bad

- More washing of bricks so no more green bricks = Good

Um, and that would be about it. So for most of the last two weeks, zip, nada, nothing. So, no we have not paid the fix invoice yet. It's being insepcted Monday and we'll know where we are then.

Our CSC says we should be ok, she thinks, but they will not budge from 11 August, so we all may be sleeping in a row of sleepy bags on my father in law's lounge room floor if it goes past 8 July!!! Our SS had handovers on Thursday and Friday this week, so hopefully that means that he can concentrate on getting our house up to scratch and moving again.

News on the decorating the new house list:

We had decided on red ironwood floating floor. Our carpet store got in a box of the red ironwood for us to look at, so we could see exactly what we are getting. We thought a bit strange because we had chosen from a sample in the shop. As we are getting over 110sqm, which adds up to a bit, Neil wanted us to see a larger area and feel comfortable with it. So he ordered the packs and asked for one to be sent on approval. Well we went in last weekend and yuk, the pack was almost a honey brown colour instead of the red/pink of the sample. I know timber oxidises and darkens, but I am not waiting for 10 years to get the colours I thought I was getting from the sample they supplied. After lengthy discussions, we decided to look at a jarrah floor. Fast forward to this weekend and our sample pack of Jarrah arrived today. It's gorgeous! So we have now massaged the budget to include this extra cost.

On a brighter note, we went and choose most of the lighting for the new house and put a deposit down on them. So that is another thing off the list. Anyone else finding that it is just toooo easy to spend bucket loads of money quite easily when "shopping for the new house" LOL

Getting our concreteing quotes this week, so more ambulance action could be required LOL

Fix Stage Complete.... I don't think so.

2009-04-08T14:58:00.007+10:00

Hello all,

Hmm, PD have a very interesting way of invoicing people. We paid our lock up invoice on the Wednesday and in the mail on Friday I got the fix invoice. Seems that the house is supposed to be at the completed "fix" stage according to when the trades people were meant to be there and how long they were allocated for the job, hence we got an invoice.

So, we visited the house on Friday night. Hmm, er, NO, it's far from a completed "Fix" stage. Missing skirting boards, doors not hung, wrong doors, shelves not put in, the powder room cupboard is still in the kitchen not installed and the list goes on. Sent a polite email letting them know that I was not going to get this stage inspected until I could see that the Fix was complete to begin with then once it was inspected and any issues corrected, I'd pass the invoice on for payment.

Our CSC let me know that she has faxed the list to the SS and she should be able to update me Thursday. Supposedly the painters go in straight after Easter, but the plasters have not been back and there are quite a few things for them to fix. For those of you further along in your builds, did this happen to you? I cannot see the point of getting it painted then pulling down the plaster and getting it repainted. Why not fix it first????

Either way, when we went there last evening, it was clean. No sign of the fix carpenter. We thought that meant he'd finished, but we have no shelves and other things are not done either. We'll have to wait for the update.

On a happy note, the wonky brickwork was all taken down and re bricked on the weekend. The SS was having a meeting with the brick rep on site on Tuesday, so we should get an answer on our brick colours too this week. On the whole, we cannot complain, as issues are raised they are usually acknowledged or explained and then fixed in due course.

Our current home went on the market on Friday so fingers crossed we get a good price and that we can get terms that we want. Once we know how much we will have to play with once the settlement goes through, I think it will make me a bit less nauseous each time I look at the bank statements. LOL

Pics from this week:
Interesting view. Yep, a big chunk out of the window frame. Why can't they just take a bit more time and care?
Guess which is straight the plaster or the skirting board? Answer, neither!

Man (or should that be Person) hole, that's the platform that the heater is sitting on at the side there.
Ensuite, looking good. But our tiles are to go to the ceiling, shouldn't that waterproofing stuff go under all the tiling???

Yep, contract says 4 panel balmoral doors. I suppose since there are two doors, technically there are 4 panels. Oooopsies. They did it again in the laundry too...

I know this is a bit of a ramble, but this blog has become therapy (thanks Liana!) for the trials and tribulations as well as the joys of building. Thanks for coming on the journey!

Happy Easter all

It's Official we're locked up!

2009-03-31T23:48:00.006+11:00

Hey all, like the new look?? Since we are now moving into the interior, which will be painted "divinity" eventually, I thought should start with redecorating the blog (LOL)

Well, today the missing weatherboard (at least that's what I think it is) over the garage was installed. It was the final thing we were waiting on to complete the lock up stage. So today off to the bank to get a hefty transfer over to PD's account. Can I just say OUCH!!! I really hope that we get handover before 11 August,the interest bill just got a swift kick!.
The garage in all it's glory..
The fixing started today. My sidelight has been installed, quite a lot of architrave has been cut and left in rooms waiting to be put up. A few windows have already been trimmed. From the inside..

And from the outside. Sorry for the poor photo quality. I had to take these myself. DH was otherwise engaged.

The bath has been installed on a bed of bricks and the stuff that they make the shower bases out of has been used as a bed on top of the bricks.

This is the spa install. You can see they have used about half a pallet of bricks, they go right the way across the spa to the back wall and the entire length of it as well. Again a bed of the shower base stuff ( like my technical talk???)

Downpipes have been installed and the drainage has been moved. Now DH can stop stressing that there is a storm water pipe in the middle of the driveway!

It looks like the next BSS inspection has also happened as there are marks on the walls everywhere. You'd think that a really tall three year old had gone mad with a pencil in there.

I'm not sure whether to be concerned or not. Our SS has seemed to be on the ball with everything so far and has attended to most of our issues so we'll give it a while and see what he says.

Can't wait to see the doors hung!

Stopped Plaster and Cornice

2009-03-26T23:12:00.008+11:00

Well, although it does not seem like it, a lot has happened this week. As of today all the plaster has been stopped, sanded and all the cornice is on. We really like the cornice we chose for the living areas, it's Concerto.

The waste pipe was moved in the powder room, so I assume they can come back now and fit that cabinet. Bath has been delivered and installed. Doors and architraves have been delivered. Shower bases formed in ensuite and bathroom. Looks like the spa does not fit in the cradle through, oops.
Now for the pics!

This is the formal lounge room, they have cut out for the fireplace now, if you look closely you can see the cornice.

The bi folds are in and look sensational. This is the view from the kitchen looking towards the alfresco area and dining room.

Bath arrived and was installed in the bathroom...

Deliveries this week, firstly a heap of architrave timber...

Our gorgeous front door, with a side light. We like a fairly classic sort of look, so we chose these from the Corinthian catalogue. We're both also fairly individual so it suits us to have what no one else is having.

And all our internal doors. We LOVE the classic look of these doors, they are 2.5m high as DH is quite tall. Our mirrored sliding robe doors are supposed to be there too. We can see the frames but not sure if the mirrors are there. We'll have to wait until they are installed. You can just see the sidelight peeking out the back.

Now, at K's special request, the spa and ensuite layout. We were a bit concerned about this because PD did not have it on display and did not have one being built at the time.
Firstly, the spa, decina duo...

Looking from the master bedroom into the ensuite..

Then moving into the ensuite looking across the vanity, spa dead ahead, shower in the corner...

Looking towards the shower and spa area...

And finally the shower base..

Hope you enjoyed the tour, K!

On another note, we are getting a bit concerned about our green bricks.
If you click on the picture and look at it, you can see some of our bricks are turning quite a nasty shade of green. We have let PD know about this but it seems to be getting worse.

Have a good one everyone!

It must be love...

2009-03-22T21:30:00.028+11:00

Hello All.

Sorry for the long break between posts. Life has been hectic everywhere! We are trying to get our current house on the market. Culling, cleaning, trips to the tip, trips to a storage unit, stuff for charity, toy drives etc.

On the house front, we were supposed to be at lock up last Friday (13th, any one else a bit worried? LOL) As I pointed out to the SS, if I can walk through where the sidelight is supposed to be, it ain't locked up! Anyway they then nailed a bit of board across there as it will not be installed until "fix stage" apparently. Our friendly inspector was out there this Friday and PD still have one thing to do before we hand over the money. I have emailed the CSC to let her know.

However, he did note that the timber bifolds and the french doors in the alfresco are 11mm out of plumb and that the lintel and brickwork need to be taken down and done again. We have passed this on too. Perhaps we won't make that August 11 deadline after all ???

Our eaves (all two of them) are in as well as the portico roof. Almost all of our plastering has now been stopped. The only real thing left is to put up the cornice and, of course, fill all the bits they missed. From what we have been told they come back this week to put the cornice up and the fix carpenter starts mid week this week.

This is the master ensuite with niche. Lovely!!

The ensuite cabinetry. Bottom cupboards are Black Tulip and the bench is stipple burnished plum. Handles are black nickel bows. Quite happy in the end with the basins. Although I love the basins that look like a bowl on the bench, they are not practical for us. DH is very tall and I am vertically challenged. LOL. We have the benches all set to 900, with the bowl on top that would have meant that I needed a step ladder to clean my teeth LOL.

And another picture because I love the way it turned out!

The bathroom. Top is carrera and the bottom is Peacock. This is the battle I lost. Note a small win as I did get the drawers added to the unit. Trade off is that the basin is not centred. We're not worried. With two girls, we NEED storage in the bathroom.

The tiles we got at NT are almost an exact match for this laminex. We are using the tiles on the floor and the walls of the bathroom. they look like a white marbled with grey. Really happy that this turned out so well. The small chips of laminex make it hard to imagine the detail in the larger patterned pieces. We are having green shaded feature tiles.

Front on, the bathroom vanity showing the drawers on the side of the unit.

The kitchen, bottom cupboards are stippled burnished plum, top is antique white. Notice template for my sink. This is the battle I won. The colours look a bit washed out. It was quite overcast. The white stickers give it the designer look...

This is the back wall of the kitchen, with my pot drawers. Hmmm, not as big (wide) as I thought they were...
Kitchen bench from the side. We added an extra set of drawers here. Otherwise it was a "dead corner" cupboard as the other side is up against the sink. The open space is the Walk in Pantry.

You can just see, hiding in the dishwasher space, the powder room cupboard. The waste pipe is in the wrong place for the kicker and has to be moved before the cupboard can be installed.

Mortar Issues. There are a few places like this however this is at the front of the house and it does stand out like dog's / budgies you get the drift... The SS says it is an easy fix, but I am not so sure. Will find out if any of my bricks turn green over the next few days/weeks as the bricks were cleaned last Monday. So the brickie will be back to fix up all the areas where they have blasted the mortar out between the bricks I assume??? Can anyone tell me if this is what happens and if it really is an easy fix???

Hope you guys appreciate all these pics! Blogger is giving me hell uploading pics tonight but I LOVE my cabinetry colours. No offence to anyone out there but there are no neutrals in sight! Just vibrant colour.

I tried to upload the laundry, black with white. What a great colour scheme!!!! but it just keeps cutting out and quite frankly, I am over trying to upload pics.

Have a good one!

Plastered.. I wish!

2009-03-12T21:49:00.011+11:00

Hi all,

Bricking was finished last Thursday.

This week has seen some interesting developments. Our plasterers, who were supposed to show up on the 25th February finally found the house and started yesterday (Wednesday). I can say, without fear of contradiction, that these guys are only in it for the money. No pride in their work, no care factor, basically if they gave a continental, they would not be there. Perhaps we have been lucky with the majority of trades on our site, most of them have been pretty good.

We can only hope that when they stop the plaster that they can fix all the dings, dints, holes, crumbled edges etc that we are seeing so far. And that they are alot better at stopping than hanging. Also, we found sound screen on the floor where it had obviously fallen out, as you can see from the pic below

We know because we tried to put it back in the night before. The plasterers had trodden on it and it would not stay in. So much for the "plasterers are required to put it in, it's part of their contract". This is the room and it's been plastered, sound screen still on the floor...

Good news (I think) is that the bi folds have arrived and are sitting in the garage. Perhaps the bricks will get cleaned before they go on, but then again, perhaps not. Also the spa has been delivered and it is the right one!

Below is the lounge room with the larger windows and the spa there in the corner...

So, more plastering to come. Looks like they might have run out of ceiling boards.. This is the dining room with french doors to the alfresco...

On the still waiting front, nothing has happened with the guttering issues, nor with the holes in the roof/tiles. Now when it rains, the water will go down the wall, into the insulation batts and against the plaster that has now been hung. Similarly, the roof truss has not been fixed but the ceiling has been hung. The missing HDMI cable for the family room was not put in before they hung the plaster either. Looks like a call to the main man might be in order.

Sorry guys, feeling a little melancholy over this. Reading some other blogs with issues, I guess I am just waiting to have major issues as well, although secretly hoping that it will all turn out ok. We also have to start getting our current house ready to put on the market, not fun at all!!! Still no sign of a lock up invoice, they need to get the bi folds on, roof fixed and front sidelight secured still. So, no invoice this week. Much better that the bank keep their money for a bit longer.

Have a great week every one!

I love my bricks...

2009-03-04T21:34:00.016+11:00

Hi everyone,

Not a lot has actually happened since the last post. Some of our items have been fixed, we now have window locks on all our windows and the right glass in the ensuite window. Plaster is still sitting there, if any one sees my plasters can you please send them over LOL! We did get our internal garage door though. We also went up over the weekend to put in some extra sound screen. What a PITA, glad we got PD to do almost all of it for us.

But the best bit is that today the front facade bricking was finished. The mortar is not dry everywhere, that's why the colours look a little strange. But, how good does this look!!! We are not having render, so this is it and we love it.

This is from across the road,I know it looks weird with the cage and port-a-loo right in front of the house...

Garage has lintel in place and bricking over

This is my favourite picture so far

We are a bit concerned at the bricking over the timber doors/windows. All the aluminium windows have the lintels and bricks right over the top of the window frames. The timber window and timber doors all have an "extra" area above them (about a brick or so in height) then the lintel, then the brickwork. Have a look at the picture below. This is the timber window and the bi folds in the alfresco area.

Same with the french doors (below) and the front and back doors which are also timber.

Can anyone tell me anything about this? Is this normal?

We also had some rain YAY! so we now know that the roof leaks in "bed 2", surprisingly the rest of the house appears to be water tight.
Hopefully, plastering next. "J" told us it was supposed to happen on the 25th, but I think he meant February, otherwise we'll be waiting a while longer.

The bifolds were also supposed to come this week, so once they close up the sidelight, we'll be at lock up. I feel a massive invoice coming on....

Have a good one!

Meeting the Man in charge..

2009-02-26T19:51:00.009+11:00

Hello all,

This morning we met with our SS for the first time, "J". All our communication thus far has been emails and phone conversations. We had a long list of issues and questions, as everyone does. So, bright and early at 7am we met at the house.

We are both really pleased with our SS and his approach. He went through each of our concerns individually and let us know what would be done in each case. As we went through other things cropped up and those were listed. "J" was meeting the chippies on site after us so he was going to get them to address these issues and he is organising a roof check too.

Our most worrying issue, cracked roof truss..

"J" also spoke about what happens from here outlining what will be happening in the short term. Wisely, he refrained from venturing an opinion on when he thought it might be finished!! Still cannot see how it could take until August 11. But lots of things can stuff up from here. (Hope they don't of course!)

Anyway, bricking has continued this week and we are really happy with the way that the bricks are looking now...

The insulation both sound and wall is now in, it went in Monday and these guys were amazing. Every little space everywhere was packed. No hole went unfilled (leave that alone!!) and we were surprised at how good a job it was.

Insulation now installed..

Plaster has arrived. Supposedly the plasterers were supposed to show up on the 25th, (Ummm... No Appearance Your Worship!) "J" is going to chase them up.
From the front door, looking down the hallway. Plaster stacked in the family room...

Then came the sparkies, without a doubt, the messiest, could not give a continental, lazy B*'s, you'll ever come across. Insulation pulled out and ripped off around power points, holes, section. Some places they just pulled the bottom half of the batts completely off. One thing about sound screen, if there is a hole; sound will travel through it, rendering the rest of it as useless. The sparkies left the house littered with sound screen "bits", wall bat "bits" and crap. "J" said that it is part of the plasters contract that they put the insulation back in if it has fallen out. But the insulation has to be there first and we went up each night and put all the insulation back in where we could. We will get another packet of sound batts this weekend and fill everywhere else.

Lots of plastering and cornice to come...

Have a great week everyone!

Bricks and Spaghetti

2009-02-19T20:52:00.016+11:00

Hello everyone!

What a fun week it has been so far this week. I fear we are becoming spoilt, as when we went to the house on Monday nothing appeared to have happened and we felt quite disappointed. I can't complain about our SS, he has the trades lined up to come in bang, bang, bang and so far everything has been great with the build. If it keeps up at this pace, I am sure that handover will be before 11 August. Fingers crossed!

I spoke to the SS on Tuesday, as we have to move the cold water point in the WIP. S has a bulging disc in his back from, you guessed it, moving a fridge! So, our cold water point has to go above the fridge so that we can change the filter without having to move the fridge every 6 months. He said he'd speak to the plumbers. He also said that we have to have the gas meter at the front of the house as it has to be 1 meter from the meter box and 600 from the HWS. He seems pretty pedantic about things, so it's going to be on the side of the study.

The Ducted Heating unit and the ducting were installed on Tuesday. S climbed into the roof to make sure it was the upgraded unit (while J had heart failure!!!!) and found that PD place an alarm on the heating unit. Makes sense I suppose given the price of these things, but it is a sad comment on the world we live in.

There's a heater up there somewhere...

Fit off of the plumbing inside the house...

The Gas lines to the hot water service were put in...

The offending cold water point in the WIP...

Then on Wednesday, the Plumbing was finished off and the brickies gear arrived on site. no brickies, just the gear. Thursday night we rocked up and BRICKS!!!!!

We have Nougat bricks by Austral. Like many other bloggers, when the bricks arrived I was not too sure about the colour. When we got to see the bricks laid up close, I was still not too sure and a bit disappointed. Then I saw the bricks in full sunlight and they were exactly what we chose. The colour looks soooo different in shade/filtered light compared to full sun. One thing though for anyone contemplating Nougat bricks, go the Off - White mortar, it really completes the look with the bricks.

Bricks!!!

From the front which is in the shade, the bricks look much darker ...

The brickie is really neat so far. This is full sun, bricks are much lighter..

When we got inside, the electrical rough in has started!! Spaghetti everywhere. We were trying to remember the data points, power points,foxtel cables etc. Need to take the plan up and compare.
Some of the spaghetti for the HT area...

More spaghetti and they are not finished..

And the last pic is of our timber window which was stolen and has been replaced!
Now that the electrical is in, we are going up Saturday to put in extra noggins where we need them for pictures, hand rails etc.

Have a great week everyone!

A Roof over our heads

2009-02-14T17:06:00.011+11:00

This week saw a slow down in activity at the chateau!

The roof tiles went on, which took two days and then then capping and "pointing", as I am told it is called. For those of you who are not au fait with all building terms, capping are the tiles that go over the ridges on the roof and "pointing" is the goo, cement like stuff that they use to hold the capping tiles on and basically make it waterproof.

We also had more bricks arrive and sand as well. We have asked for off white mortar but this sand looks very dark, so I am a bit worried that the "off white" will look decidedly "dirty grey". Only time will tell as the bricking has not started yet.

Friday we went to the house and found that the cavity frames, for the cavity sliding doors had been fitted. Our back door is on, and the french doors from the dining room to the alfresco are on too.
The back door..

We also have a temporary front door as well. Our timber bi folds and timber window are still missing. Apart from that I think once the bricks go up, it will be at lock up. I'll need to check the contract definition to be sure.

Amazingly as you see below, the sticker says "this side out", and guess what, it's inside of course! Any one see a problem with that?

We need to make some changes to power points (we need them moved higher on the wall) and the water point in the walk in pantry (need it higher as well). Am I likely to get a better reception from the SS rather than my CSC? Has anyone done this successfully? I'd rather get it done now than have to get it moved after hand over, when I will need to replaster and repaint when I move it.

We're wrapped!

2009-02-08T01:04:00.016+11:00

Firstly, I am sitting here and we can smell the smoke from the bushfires just up the road at Yering and Yarra Glen. Friends of ours live two streets away from our block and they can see the glow from the fires in their back yard. I just want to say Thank You and Stay Safe to all the CFA guys and girls who are doing a wonderful VOLUNTEER job fighting these fires. You people are ace!

Also a big WHOOO HOO to K, who finally got her building permit. Another gorgeous Illoura is soon to be built!!

Now on with the house stuff. Today (Saturday) we got an email from our lovely neighbours T&L to say that our house was wrapped today! They must have done it early because I would not want to be working in 46.4 degree heat!

There has been so much happening this week. The roof frame has been entirely finished, the windows are in!!!, majority of gutters have been put on, the scaffolding for the roof has been put up, the roof tiles have arrived, the plumbing has been roughed in AND some pallets of bricks have arrived. I really think it starts to look like a "real' house when the windows go in.

Like most of the other blogs I have read, I am not impressed with the bricks, now that they have arrived. We chose Nougat and on the wall at Austral Thomastown they are a white silvery colour. On the sample board, they are more of a beige/cream/parchment colour. I was told that the wall is the correct colour sample because they have changed quarries. Our bricks look like the board, not really a white silver colour at all. I know others have not been very impressed with Nougat once they arrived. (Hi G&A!!) so I will wait until they have been laid with the off white mortar and decide if I like them or not!

This is a brick sitting next to the fascia/gutter/downpipe colour. There was a smudge on the camera, which is why the colour is not clear.

We have received the frame invoice and we had our building inspector check this stage. He says "overall well constructed" and only found two minor issues, which we were really happy about. So, off this week to the bank to pay the frame invoice and do our bit to help the economy along.

The house on Monday, windows are in!

Wednesday, notice anything different? The portaloo was moved, they emptied the rubbish cage, "they?" swept out the frame, collected all the wood off cuts and rubbish from around the house, and used a bob cat to clear the footpath, graded the driveway and put down more gravel!

This is now the cleanest building site I have ever seen!

Friday, and we have scaffolding, roof tiles and bricks delivered.

And from the back

After they wrapped us up on Saturday. We extended the study by a metre so it sits out from bed 2..

The bit I was really hanging out to see, how big the entry was going to be. Because we extended the study, we were not sure if it was going to look a bit weird. We think it looks fine!

Have a great week everyone, stay safe!

HOT? ... DAMN HOT!!

2009-01-31T21:42:00.009+11:00

How hot???? DAMN HOT!!!! Wow, was it hot this week or what? We expected very little work this week because Tuesday was an RDO for the building industry and Wednesday, Thursday, Friday it was around 45 degrees out at the house. However, we must have super chippies who are able to withstand immense heat as most of our roof frame is now on and the alfresco has also been framed.

On Wednesday they had the alfresco frame up..

And the back of the house had the start of the roof frame as well.

After seeing that they had been working on Wednesday, I dropped out there on Thursday about lunch time with some coldies but they had already gone.

This is the front of the house, almost all the roofing done.

Alfresco has the start of it's roof done.

The house from the side showing how far the roofing has been done.I went out again on Friday about 11.30 with the beer again, but nothing further had been done, so I assumed that they must have melted on Thursday. I got a call from our SS and he told me that the chippies had decided it was too hot to work on Friday (???) and would finish the framing on Monday. He said we are a little behind because of the heat. I told him I was amazed that they had done anything at all!!!

Gutters are booked in for this week it seems and roofing to commence the week after that. So, it seems that things are certainly moving along at a cracking pace.

Honestly Officer, We've been framed

2009-01-23T19:57:00.011+11:00

At the request of my DH, for Aunty T and Uncle W, this post is titled "Honestly Officer, We've been framed". And since it was his birthday this week.

This week has been really hot in Melbourne, most days have been about 30-34 and Tuesday was 43 out at the house. Monday they started putting the frame up, and they got about half of the house done by the time they knocked off. Amazing work in the heat.

From the front

this picture shows how much of the house was left to go on Monday night.

Tuesday, in the 43 degree heat, they finished it off. This is from the garage looking across the house. I can't imagine working in the sun in that heat.

The back now framed. Side view.

Other side from our back corner, showing alfresco area. Looks like we will have a big enough area there when it is finished.
After Tuesday not much happened. Windows were delivered Wednesday and the roof trusses were delivered on Thursday. Quite a few trusses were delivered onto the top of the frame and the rest were left on our block and next doors block as well. Can I also mention at this point that chippies are pigs!!

Interestingly we have a very small bathroom window that has been dropped off with our windows for a court address in Melton, I hope those people are not waiting for it!!

On that note, our timber frames for the doors and a timber window were delivered when the framing timber was delivered. Since then we are minus a timber window, it appears to have "grown legs and walked"!!

Have a great week everyone!

Framing has begun..

2009-01-16T22:57:00.009+11:00

Little bits have been happening most days this week. A couple of hours, at most, most days, but at least there has been progress. Today there was excellent progress!

On Monday, a great big delivery of timber arrived at the block. The timber for the frame and posts had been delivered. Excitement!!

On Tuesday, they started cutting bits of timber. We know this because there were piles of sawdust everywhere! They just seemed to be cutting to specific predetermined lengths in piles? Boring!

On Wednesday, they had put chalk lines on the slab showing where the walls were to go. Wow, now the rooms look very small. Panic stations, what have we done!!!!

On Thursday, the finished the retaining wall down the right hand side of the block. This was the smaller retaining wall. Hmm, perhaps they had a better offer somewhere else?

Today, they finished off the left hand retaining wall (32m) and they have laid out most of the outside walls of the frame on the slab and started to put the frame together. Now, the rooms look bigger again, Phew!! I must say the frames are very neat and I could not even see any stray nails on the noggins. To my untrained eyes, they looked very good.

From reading other blogs (Hi WBH!), it seems that it takes about a week to get the frame up. So, hopefully by the end of next week, we will have a completed frame. They question is, of course, will it be panic stations again, or Phew, it looks an ok size.

Some pictures of the slab, with the frame laid out on it. As you can see, there is still a fairly large amount of timber waiting. I imagine it is for the internal wall frames.

This is taken from about half way down the slab looking across to the back. The large hole in the frame in the foreground is the window for bed 4. They have not finished the bottom of the frame for the window yet.

From the front looking towards the back.

Have a great week everyone!

Slab Par-tay!!

2009-01-07T22:36:00.009+11:00

Whoo Hoo our very own slab party!!!

Yes, the slab was poured today. With big apologies to T&L next door because they started at 6.30am this morning. Which was a bit of a rude way to wake up I think!
So, DH and the girls got there just after 8 and they finished pumping around 11.

They started at the front of the house...

Looking from garage at the front of the house across the front of the block almost half way now..

From the side of the block, getting towards the back end of the house..

Almost at the end now, just the back corner and the water tank pad to go...

Finished levelling off. This is from the rumpus room looking across the slab...

And a final picture of the slab this evening, with the boxing removed. It's pretty big! And the best bit, no slab invoice yet!!! but I am sure that PD will send the bill pretty soon and it will be big too no doubt!
No further word from the SS as yet, so hope to hear soon what will happen next, in the thrilling saga of the Chateau de BelleBeau.....

Slab Preparation - We're Boxed

2009-01-06T21:46:00.007+11:00

Well the boxing has been done and boy, it's going to be huge!
This is from the front of the block, we'll have 6.3 metres from the footpath.

As you can see in the picture below, we'll have 6.2 metres from the back of the house to the fence. That "bit" hanging off the end is the slab for the rainwater tank.

This is from the front corner looking towards the back, it was the only way we could get it all in.
We met our building inspector, Peter today on site. He seems a very nice bloke and was able to explain a few things to us. He was very approachable and knowledgeable too. Really happy and would recommend him to anyone else considering an inspector along the way.

Tomorrow, they pour the slab! Most of the family is going to watch, but I have to work, someone has to pay for this after all. So, tomorrow for your viewing pleasure, slab photos (we hope!!!)

Preparation for the slab

2009-01-05T21:05:00.004+11:00

Could not resist... Just a quick update today, we went to the block tonight and yes, they have started to prepare for the slab! The site has been levelled again and there are stones down across the block. There are also really, really, deep trenches where the footings will go as well as the three piers across the back where there is fill.

There were no piers along the side of the garage on the boundary, so hopefully that means that the test results said that we can have a normal slab with out the piers. This was the only possible item we could be hit with additional costs for. PD did say, if we need them, then they would be charged by variation and it would be "a couple of thousand". So fingers crossed, a win for us!

There has been no further action on the retaining walls, so all we have to date is the uprights, but I expect that they let the concrete dry right out before putting in the treated pine.

Tomorrow they "box" the slab and it is due to be poured on Wednesday. Will get pics tomorrow when we can see how big it is.

Can you believe it?

2009-01-04T00:13:00.006+11:00

From the back - left hand side of the block - 17m of retaining wall
From the back along the right hand side - 33m of retaining wall

Perfectly straight, hard to imagine after Christmas and New Year drinkies!

Can you believe that it is Saturday, 3rd of January 2009 and there were guys at our block this morning starting on putting up the retaining walls??????

Although our SS had said that the slab was due to be boxed on the 5th (Monday) and poured on the 7th (wednesday) I thought that nothing would happen until then. If, in fact, anything did happen then, given that it is Christmas/New Year's holidays etc. I expected most tradies to be off until the end of January Post Australia Day, anyway.

It's all happening...or not...

2008-12-19T21:27:00.007+11:00

As the title suggests, there has been lots happening or not as in the case of the retaining walls.

Site scrape was finished on the 10th and retaining walls were set to go on the 15, 16, 17. As those of you in Melbourne will know, we had a few buckets of rain on the weekend which led to our new pool below. This is the side of the cut:

Just to give you an idea of the depth:

so obviously, no retaining walls. Although Monday night we saw they had dug a trench from the side across the front and down the driveway so that it could drain.

Then on Tuesday - Our MOST EXCITING EVENT SO FAR - THE PORTALOO!

Wednesday - no appearance your worship!. Getting worried at this stage that the rest might had to be delayed because of no retaining walls, then yesterday we had some pegs.

Today (Friday) We have a meter box and pipes!! yes, all done and ready and waiting for the slab on the 5th. I hope this means that they can do the slab without having the retaining walls done. Has this happened to anyone else????

I am uploading these as "large" images so I hope everyone can see them. If anyone knows how I upload them so that they are larger when you click on them, please let me know! Never too old to learn things I say.

As I believe that there will be no more work done until after Christmas, I would like to say

Merry Christmas

and a Happy New Year

to all my readers and contributors!!

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa claus..

2008-12-09T20:16:00.008+11:00

Well, I have to take my hat off to PD. I did b*tch about the "miscommunication" over the dispensation, so now I have to hand out the bouquets.
Today I received a call at 10.45am from our Site Supervisor, "J" to introduce himself and explain how things work. Site cut is scheduled for 11 December, retaining walls for 15,16,17 December and then the slab to be poured on January 5. (January 5? replayed message, yep definitely 5)
Unfortunately, I was earning a living at the time and it went to message bank as I did not recognise the number! Returned his call and got his message bank!

Then just after 11am, I received an email from our fabulous neighbours to tell me that SITE SCRAPE HAD STARTED!!!!

WHOOOOO HOOOOO!! Scooted up there quick smart (well as soon as I could) and snapped a few photos...

From the back of the block

From across the street

Had to get back to work and about an hour or so later the heavens opened up. Went back past with DD2 after the school pickup and they were still working in the rain. Then went up again after dinner (got my boots bogged!!) and the machine is still there, so they must have more to do tomorrow.

The way I figure it, I am on a roll so please Santa, can I please, please have a Zonda in the garage for Christmas and if that is too much, I am partial to the Murciélago.

Ladies and Gentlemen for your viewing pleasure...

2008-12-05T13:40:00.004+11:00

TA DA....We have a tap/water meter!

Given the excitement when we saw it, I hope they have oxygen on hand when we get a port-a-loo or maybe even a MICA paramedic, if it comes to that.

Our CSC said our SS only got the file Wednesday and then Thursday morning at 8.30 when we did a drive by on the way to school, there was a plumbers ute finishing off putting the water meter in. I was so excited and started calling everyone, spewing I did not have the camera. Then DD said " mum, you have a camera in the phone" Umm, yeah, forgot, oops. LOL

When we got home later in the day T&L next door had taken one and emailed it to us. Thanks T&L for the happy snap! I just hope the rest of it goes as well as this LOL.

We still have not commenced, as excavation works have not started. According to the contract, the date excavation works start signals the commencement of contract days.

How excitement!!

Alleged site start date - premature celebration

2008-12-02T21:13:00.010+11:00

Whooo Hoooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is me doing the happy dance!

According to 24/7, we have a commencement date of 11 December 2008. Next Thursday. We are waiting for another set of construction drawings, but something is allegedly happening! Not to mention, my mate Glen Stevens is doing his best so that the delay is not hurting my mortgage loans as much, Big round of applause for Glen. Thanks Glen!

So, I am hoping that commencement means site scrape. Can anyone help me out here???? Is that what it means? I am excited and I hope that I can trust them this time, I don't want a repeat of the issues we had with the building permit and dispensation time line.

On a happier note, we also got a copy of the building permit today as well.

Questions for those of you who are much further down the track.

Did things happen on site before your commencement date? Like water meters etc, or did things only start happening on that date?

Did your SS contact you before you started?

How did your SS take the fact you were having inspections? (if you are)

How long after the earthworks was the slab poured (obviously hoping for a slab for Christmas) Is it a case of "tell 'im 'e's dreamin'?

Good thing we were up at the block on the weekend getting sun burnt slashing it again, there are now 2 other blocks, one across the road (TK Old builder)and one two doors up (NBG - Infinity builders) who have been scraped, so looks like we will all be building together.
Bring it on!!!!!!!!!

This really nice lady at the council...

2008-11-26T23:07:00.005+11:00

Not that I didn't believe PD when they said that they had put in the dispensation this time but... So I rang the council last Friday and just asked if they had received it. Had me on hold a while and it was not looking good. So we chatted and I explained about the first time around when PD told me it would happen, so this time I was ringing to make sure. I found out that the council only do site inspections for set backs once a week, on a Tuesday. Yes, they found it. It went in under someone else's address with my plans and my lot number on all the other documentation. (Am I surprised????) Sorted that out, and the very nice lady said it was possible that it could get done this Tuesday (24th) but that there was a bit of a backlog but she would see what she could do.

Today I get a call from my CSC and we have the dispensation , it is approved!!! Yeah!!! They have to get the "in writing" from council and send it to their building permit people and we should have it end of this week/early next week. PD East do their construction meetings on Wednesdays, so next Wednesday I should have a construction manager, SS and some idea of what is going to happen when. As you may have been able to tell from last post, I was getting a bit stressed at having to finance the build for potentially an extra 2 or 3 months because of the delay in starting.

Fingers crossed for a slab for Christmas....

lies, damn lies and builders promises...

2008-11-20T22:23:00.006+11:00

Hey all, thought I should update the blog as we have not posted for 3 weeks. This is because we believed PD when they told us they were going to put in our dispensation early. The scenario goes something like this...

We found T&L (the cherubs) on the net, and worked out we had just bought the block next door. As they are the first house in the street, their setback set the standard for the street. (7.5m) As we are building a loooong single storey, we wanted to build closer to the front so we have some backyard to fit a trampoline and maybe later a lap pool. We have a 3 metre easement across the back of the block.

No dramas, we spoke to T&L who were really cool about the whole thing. Spoke to the council, we need a dispensation $205. Had discussions with PD PRIOR to tender and they said that they would apply for the dispensation when we signed the tender so it would all be underway for a November start. Told PD we knew the neighbours etc and we could take the plans and get them signed etc. No thanks we were told, we'll mail them.

So at tender we are charged $462 for the dispensation ($205 is the council fee) not happy. Will not budge, as they have to copy plans, mail costs and put it through their building permit people. Ok, as they are doing it early for us, ok.

Got to contract and saw that the permit applied for is 10/10/08? hmm, suppose that is the actual permit. We ended up bringing settlement on the land forward because everything was done, we were just waiting on the dispensation, which should have already been through as it was started on 24/9/08 at tender, we believed.

Waiting, waiting, come 10th November, I ring the council, spoke to a lovely lady on the phone for 45 minutes there is definitely NO application for our block.

Rang PD, not happy, in fact, quite hot under the collar. Despite being told that the dispensation was going to be started on 24 September, it was not started until 10 October. Then they had to apply to the council to find out who owned the blocks of land either side of us. I had told them, but THEY CANNOT BELIEVE ME, they have to apply to the council for this info and it took 3 weeks to get this information back. They did send to T&L who kindly signed and sent back. The other block is not sold, therefore it is still in the name of the developers.

These guys have made their money, this is stage 21 and they cleared the 25M mortgage in 2005 so every block from here is pure profit. Consequently, although there is a salesperson, they only "attend" the office every week or so. It took two weeks to get the contract of sale for the land signed and returned to me! We have to wait for 2 weeks to give them a chance to object. Taking us to 17 November, then PD wanted to wait until 19th, to give Aust Post a couple of extra days "in case". Graciously, then have supposedly sent off the application "early" on the 17th.

Now my bitch is that the council have people on holidays and their current turnaround is 3-4 weeks instead of 7-10 days. This means we may not get back the dispensation until 9th December and then it takes two weeks of organising to get to site scrape. They will not get anything done in December, which means at the earliest a January start (we got a letter saying 19th January is when trades are back).

So, we have to pay the mortgage on the land for November, December and half of January as well as our current house all for nothing. AND the bloody contract days do not start until site scrape, so this time is not even eating into our contract days. IF they start on 19 January, our contract days mean we should be in by the end of September 2009.

Our CSC is doing her best and it is not fair that I vented at her for someone else's undertaking. But as the saying goes, "you take their money, you take their sh*t".

Now I have had big vent, according to murphy's law, I should get a phone call tomorrow telling me they have the okay from council and the file will go to construction Monday and all this angst has been for nought.

Yeah, then the alarm clock went off...

Tie a pink ribbon round....

2008-10-30T20:56:00.005+11:00

Whoo Hoo!!!! Land settled today and everything is now ticked off at the PD 24/7 website except the dispensation for the set back. Once we have that we can start to rock and roll.

Our re-establishment survey has been done. We have gorgeous pink ribbons at the edges of our block marking the pegs for the boundaries. So, bring it on!

Also, lawyers have confirmed $3k back off the stamp duty!!!, so I will have to mark 30 August 2009 in the diary to make sure I put the paperwork into before the 12 months are up. Will certainly come in handy when we move in.

Dare I say, the end of the paperwork???

2008-10-20T16:36:00.005+11:00

Ok, so this is the second try to post this entry, here it goes...

We spent a fair chunk of time Friday evening and over the weekend trying to make sure that all the paperwork was right. You see we got Post Contract Variation (PCV) 2 and this one is serious. It says "The client acknowledges that no further changes or client variations will be permitted."

So, we compared the sales quote to the first tender document, to the tender document we got at contract and the first PCV that we signed at contract and looked at all of the drawings. We then looked at all the emails, letters, printouts etc and tried to make sure that we had thought of everything and that everything that we asked for was there. From reading other blogs, we knew that sometimes things magically appeared and, more importantly, disappeared, or were moved when they were not supposed to be and because they were not picked up before the build started, they just had to live with the consequences. I'd like to think we got it right, but who knows. Sometimes it all just becomes a bit much. So, we signed PCV2 for the whopping sum of $245 and "acknowledged that no further changes or client variations will be permitted".

The ironic part of me notes that it says nothing about PD variations not being permitted. Hmmm, strange that.

Now all we have to do is pay for it....

2008-10-09T21:38:00.009+11:00

As the title says, today we signed the contract and now all we have to do

is pay for it, perhaps we need to plant a money tree?

Over three hours of pouring over documents and comparing them to our lists of requests, emails and the actual drawings. None of the things we had missed in tender and asked for immediately the next morning after the tender were in the contract nor were they in the drawings. Start Post Contract Variation 1.

A few things needed to be cleared up. Firstly, when I asked to upgrade the paint. It seems that I only asked for the paint on the walls to be upgraded, not the paint on the skirts, architraves and doors. Ummm?? Ok, Add that in.

Changing the window in the Alfresco to timber, yes they let me do it BUT the cost was the same as for the DOUBLE glass timber doors opening into the other side of the alfresco. That I just can't quite understand, but I am not going to quibble given that they let me change it.

The bigger windows in the lounge were not in the contract or the drawings and the doorway that we asked to be moved was not there either.

If you read this and have not been to contract, make sure that you check all specifications to the drawings. Whilst the written word takes precedence over the drawings, in a lot of cases the contract refers to the drawings. My DH is tall, so we asked to have the showers set higher on the walls and the benches at a minimum of 900 high everywhere. In theory, no need to state that in the contract, as it will be shown on the drawings. Kitchen was fine but the ensuite/bathroom were all left at 865. Ensuite shower was higher, but the bathroom shower was still at 1800. I realise that a lot can get changed on site if you ask for it but I would rather that it was right in the plans so that it does not have to be redone later.

We tried to get a copy of the contract documents prior to signing for our solictior to look at, and whilst PD would give us some parts including the HIA contract and extra schedules, we could not get the full set until contract presentation today. So after discussions with PD, our solictior requested that PD acknowledge that we had not had the benefit of legal advice, so we could take the contracts to him this afternoon for him to review and not loose our cooling off period. So, after we signed, we took them straight to him.

I hope that he is happy with everything because, quite frankly, it's been fun but now it's a bit been there, done that, and glad it's over. I really do not want to start again with someone else, so hopefully we get the big thumbs up. Then a start sometime in November and 242 days later, a house!

Colour my world...

2008-10-08T21:54:00.013+11:00

Had the electrical and Hopetoun appointments today. Electrical first and managed to blow the entire budget and even then we did not get some things. Just got junction boxes for the outside lights and fairly basic outdoor lights. 11 downlights, chinamens hats everywhere else, a connection for a fan in the alfresco and speaker wire everywhere. 7.1 in the family 5.1 in the games room and 2 speaker runs in the alfresco. Wow, it adds up quickly.

Although we might (?) be able to do some ourselves during the build, we are having sound screen in almost all of the internal walls, so we had to get most of it wired during the build.

From speaking to other people, you have the luck of the draw if your SS will let you in to do it or not. Either way, it would probably happen when one of us was not in the state so we'd be stuck. One thing we did do, was upgrade almost all of the power points to 4 points instead of doubles and powertainments where the tv's are.

So, then onto the colours:

Interior walls: Wattyl Divinity - 3d Paint system

Architraves,skirts, doors - Wattyl Chalkdust -3d paint system

We will have Dulux Enchantress feature walls in the Lounge room, Rumpus room (which we are using as a formal dining room), Games Room and Master bedroom. We will also use it as the splashback colour in the kitchen to tie it into the more informal areas of the house. All other colours have been chosen to compliment this colour throughout the house. We are selecting carpet, curtains, blinds etc all to work in with this particular shade. It just makes everything so easy by having a central colour theme to highlight throughout the house.

Laundry - Cupboards - Laminex Black, Benchtop - Laminex White

Bathroom and Powder room benchtop - Very similar to the tiles for the walls and for the floors in these rooms.

Bathroom Cupboards - Peacock. We actually chose Blue Variation from the laminex book they had there. But guess what, you can only choose, flint and natural finish laminates for cupboards. So we had to choose something different, lucky I took the tile samples with us. Not what we would have chosen, but goes surprisingly well with the Enchantress.
Kitchen - Stipple Burnished Plum. It does not look the right colour on my monitor. Too purple, it is an unusual colour, it is acutally a lighter variation of the splashback below. The Benchtops will be QQ New Diamond White

This is the splashback colour - Dulux Enchantress.

I am not even sure that you will see this, it is New Antique White, which will be the overhead cupboards.

The powder room cupboards are Cyclamen, a much lighter shade/tone in the enchantress vein.

The ensuite has the Stipple Burnished Plum as the benchtop and Black Tulip (shown here) for the cupboards. I thought about stone benchtops, but I like colours. Most of the stone tops are a white base.

Not sure if all of these colours will come up "truely" on your monitors at home, so you may need to clean up some sprayed coffee off your screen at our colour choices. But we like them "in the flesh" and hey, it's our mortgage!

We actually upgraded very little as we had organised with our CSC most of the things we wanted before this appointment anyway. (See large list at the side of the blog!) That way we knew what we could afford before we went to Hopetoun. We did end up upgrading the tapware and kitchen handles, and put stain on the laundry door, but that was about it. Hopefully after the electrical bill, it won't be too much more..
Contract tomorrow and hopefully the final prices.... Hmmm... wonder how many of my children I will need to sell.....

Waiting, Waiting...

2008-10-02T22:42:00.003+10:00

It seems like, from the moment you decide "this is it, the one I am going to build", you are forever waiting for something. Wait for a new sales quote, wait for PD to contact us, wait for the soil test results, wait for National Tiles, wait for Tender, wait for Hopetoun, wait for electricals, wait for contract. It's as frustrating as hell, till I want to yell "FFS finish something".

We are waiting for hopetoun and the electrical appointment on the 8th then contract on the 9th. We are waiting for land settlement, we are waiting for the results of the garage footing probes.
When these are done, we'll be waiting for a site cut and then a slab, frame, lockup fixings and hand over.

Half of me wants it finished yesterday, the other half says if it was finished yesterday it would be thrown together so quickly that it would come down tomorrow!! Hmmm.... maybe this is sending me schizophrenic.

In the meantime, while I have been waiting, I have been trying to make sure that I have thought of everything, so when we get to contract it will all be there and we can sign and be done. I put up a list of the things we changed/added and I left out most of the promo stuff and I am fairly sure after reading every blog I could find that I cannot think of anything else. But I am sure there will be something...
Did anyone else really want to add something later on that they wished they'd thought of before?

Tender Time..

2008-09-26T21:39:00.004+10:00

Firstly, apologies this is a long post. I guess this blog is cathartic for all the frustration and tedium, so I do ramble on a bit.
Hmm, how do you approach tender? With trepidation, angst, confusion, fear, worry, joy, relief? Many emotions ran through me on the way to the tender appointment. Although we have built two houses previously, we have never been through the "tender" system.
We got there pretty much on time and then had to wait about 1/2 an hour -45 minutes because the morning appointment was still going. Our appointment was for 1pm. Nothing you can do, but it seems like forever, waiting, waiting Note to self: make all further appointments first thing in the morning!

It will come as no surprise to many of you reading this, that the first thing to blow us away was the amount of the site costs. Hmm, 12K sounds OK (our sales quote had 20K) then the slab upgrade and the services upgrade and holy cow, the retaining walls. All up just over $27.5K. Bend over sunshine! After the shock of that, our presenter "D" started to go through each item we had requested. Good news was that most of them were under what I had budgeted them to be! I had a few swings and roundabouts but mostly pretty positive UNTIL I got out the laptop (yeah I know, I prefer to think of myself as a detail person ;-) The first item extended the front of the house. Not there on the list? Hmmm, flick through the file, there is the layout on the block from the sales appointment with red pen scribbling this out and NO written on it.
Excuse Me???? If you have read previous posts, you will know that PD took quite a while to contact me, supposedly because this specific request had to be approved before they would accept and prepare a tender WTF? We did not go ballistic, we told "D" what had happened previously and what we had been told. This was hardly his fault but we were polite and firm and informed him that this was a deal breaker; minimum was we add AT LEAST 1m into the study and some into the bedrooms, or he was wasting our time, have a pleasant life and we will leave now thanks.

To his credit, "D" took off to see what the situation was. After about 10 minutes he came back and asked us for some time to work through with drafting, estimating and all the areas to try to come up with a solution for us. We took off for an hour and then came back.
Good news and bad news, firstly he explained that they are volume builders not custom builders, once we ask for too many changes or change the basic structure etc then we are falling into that category, fair enough. No harm, no foul, po'd that we'd wasted over a month but whatever.

So, he then came out with the compromise. The could extend the study ONLY by a metre explaining that this was because of roof pitches, tresses and angles, but they could in turn put 1m into the body of the house and we could then move the walls in bed 2 and 3 down to get 500mm in each. Also means an extra 1m in the pantry (yipee!) and in the lounge room. We think that this was a really good compromise. PD are a volume builder and we recognised that and would have walked away, but they came to the party to do the best they could do within their systems for us, which was great. Bad news was that "S" has had to sacrifice extra space in the garage that could not be accommodated due to the roof trusses/pitches/technical thingys.

On a further note, because of these couple of issues it was well after 6 when we left and we missed things. I emailed "N" our CSC the next morning about some but pored over the plans today and realised that I think PD have missed some things (swapping alum windows for timber in the alfresco) that I had asked for by email on the 15th. Emailed again today to ask if that was the case.... we are waiting to hear back.

I really think it is very difficult to try to do everything in 3-4 hours especially when in shock! I also realise that if you don't have a cut off people will change their minds 4 times a day. I have changed my kitchen colours at least three times this week alone...still not sure....

Bemused by National Tiles

2008-09-23T11:54:00.004+10:00

Well, we did our tiles appointment on the 12th. "N" was busy so she promised to draw them all up, plot them and quote them either that day or over that weekend. She did not have the Illoura 36 loaded into her computer. So, instead of waiting, seeing it all, getting a quote etc, we went home and waited for the email.
Today is the 23rd and I now have an email. The tiles are about $400 under my budget which is good. But, (isn't there always a but!)

The drawings she has used to "plot" them have someone else's name and address on them. Personally, I would not be happy if they start sending my name and address to other people.
The ensuite on the floorplan does not have a spa and we do, although she appears to have drawn it on the elevations, so I am not sure that the sizing, therefore will the quote be correct.
There are codes on the drawings that do not match the codes on the quote, so which one takes precendence?
There are wrong codes and wrong tiles.

It seems that this all gets requoted again once we get contract drawings anyway??

So, my question is did anyone else have any of this happen to them with national tiles and did your tile quote change much between the quote before and after contract?

Exterior Colour Selections

2008-09-21T19:59:00.005+10:00

For weeks now, I have been driving my children demented. I could not settle on the brick/exterior colours for our new home. We have driven to heaps of display houses and done drive bys of numerous houses and it just was not working! Today I was told that "we are fed up with looking at bricks!!!" in no uncertain terms and basically that was it.

So S and I left the children with Nanma and went on another quest looking for bricks and an external colour scheme. I liked Austral's Newport but there is another PD house just around the corner from our block. I knew I wanted white or off white windows, as I want a clean crisp look to the house both inside and out, so that too affected the brick choice. I liked La Trobe but we have seen so many variations of colour with this brick, it appears it has really changed since they moved factories. Homestead Tan looks good, but there appear to be a lot of brown brick houses around us. I liked canterbury, but we have it on our current home, so I did not really want to take it with us to the new house.

Today's trip took us to Cranbourne North and we saw a display house with "Nougat" bricks and flush off-white mortar. We both really liked it but we were sure that it would be "another upgrade". We had already upgraded to cat 4 bricks ($2.3k) when we thought we would have the Newport. So off we went to Hopetoun to find out how much more this was going to cost. Whoo Hooo!!!!! They are a cat 1 brick, so just saved $2.3K. However, we decided that the Tudor roof tile would look best, so we need to upgrade to cat 2 roof tiles. Bet that wipes out any saving on the bricks.

So the exterior colours are: (drumroll please)

Bricks: Austral Nougat - cat 1

Roof: Monier Barramundi in Tudor profile - cat 2

Gutters and Fascia: Colorbond Ironstone - Upgrade to colorbond from Zincalume (still think that on a Prestige house, you should get this standard!)

Downpipes: Colorbond Ironstone (upgrade)

Garage Door: Colorbond Ironstone

Windows: SouthernStar Birch White

We are having the Traditional Facade with no render anywhere and no portholes (if you see the sketch you'll understand) all in all the house will be a house, clean lines in crisp colour.

Tender on Wednesday, fingers crossed all goes well and we get a November 2008 start.

Now, if I could just decide on colours for the kitchen.....

Colours, Tiles and Cash

2008-09-12T23:10:00.008+10:00

Today I went to National Tiles for our tile appointment. If you have read earlier posts, you will know I was not happy that I could not choose any tile I wanted if I was prepared to pay for it. This was because they had brown, tan, beige,cream, with colours of black, white and red. So NOT me. Neutral is something for a gear stick, not for a house.

What a fabulous surprise it was to meet "N" who was simply sensational. I had chosen some ideas for laminex colours for the wet areas and I needed to pull these together with the tiles. No problems. She looked and found exactly what was needed.

For the bathroom, I was able to choose a feature glass tile which is 5 different shades of blue/green which matched the laminex I wanted for the cabinet and a white marbled tile for the wall/floor which matched the laminex for the bench top. If you look at the picture you can see them all together. The feature tile will be the background for the niche in the shower and two rows will be used along the top of the bath. It seems that mirrors now come down to the benchtops, so I asked to get a row of tiles above the vanity (can't stand water marks on mirrors from hand washing). I also chose a "capping tile" in the deeper green to go around the mirror, to "frame it".

The powder room is going to have the same floor/wall tile on the floor and as a row above the vanity. I am thinking I may have the same laminex for the cabinet and benchtop, but I am not sure yet. I use black as the cabinet and stay with the "carrara" for the benchtop.

The laundry is going to be black and white, here is the floor tile. It is a black marbled effect with the lighter colours swirled through it being a purplish/grey colour. I actually chose a white rippled tile but you don't get samples of those because everyone knows what a white tile looks like. I am thinking of laminex "burnished plum" cabinets with a white benchtop otherwise it will be black cabinets.

And finally, my favourite, the ensuite tiles. I chose a cream marbled tile for the main tile in here, for the spa, the shower and above the vanity. I also chose glass pencil tiles in aubergine and lavender as a feature to being out the purples and aubergines in the marble effect. Lovely!

The picture shows the marbled tile at the top, the black tulip laminate for the cabinets, burnished plum for the bench top and an unusual coloured tile for the floor. It is almost a plum/brown toned tile, that seems to take on the colour of what it is near. Putting the plum/purples of the laminate near it makes it a plum based colour. Unfortunately, this picture does not really show the depth in the marbled tile.

I also chose an aubergine "capping tile" for the mirror surround as well. Although "N" had to go find if they had these anymore, but she found them! And the best bit, apart from the capping tiles, pencil features and glass features for the bathroom, the lot were standard tiles. How good is that! Just have to wait on the final pricing now but I am sure that I am within budget.

Off to hopetoun for a bit of investigation over the weekend. Toodle pip!

Contact at last...

2008-09-10T23:41:00.003+10:00

Time to give you an update. S has "done" his knee (last Friday) so things have been a bit of a write off since then. Yesterday, we had a call from N at PD who introduced herself as our Customer Service person (CSC). She was great, I sat on the phone for about an hour with her as I was pretty PO'd that we had had no contact in the nearly three weeks since we signed.
Apparently, as we added 1.5 mtrs to the length of the house, it needs to go through some approval process where they decide if they will actually accept our request to build it.
Well, it seems that they have because N, now has the file. I told her that we were going to pull out because of the no contact issues etc, reasoning that if this was the service level before we signed, what would it be like after???
But now have had a rethink and looked at this dispassionately, we want this house, they build this house, at a price we are willing to pay at the moment. so, we will take it through to tender and see how we go. It maybe too rich for our blood, but if we don't investigate we will not find out. We made appointments for tender and contract on the basis that we will go ahead.
We have made the tile appointment so then we will know what we are up for as far as tiles goes. Hopetoun is supposed to ring later this week so we can tee that up too. We may go down there this weekend and get a feel for how many upgrades we'll see there too.
All in all feeling much more positive now we know what is going on. N certainly has gone out of her way to make us feel better about the whole process.
But just to make sure, we will investigate the custom builder price as well and go with what feels best at the time. That should be some time next week.

Feeling a bit uncomfortable

2008-09-01T11:33:00.003+10:00

The title says it all really. We went back to the display over the weekend to check out some areas of the house and to check room sizes, as I am concerned at the really small bedrooms. S and I spoke about it and we are feeling a bit uncomfortable with the "PD experience" at the moment. The tiles thing is really worrying me, basically we can only choose from what they say we can have regardless that NT have others available in their showroom. We have a lot of provisions in our sales quote and the provision for site costs has jumped from 15k initially to 20k and it is still unconfirmed until tender.
From reading the forum at HomeOne (http://forum.homeone.com.au/) PD seem to be very bad at the communication bit and very good at saying "no", even when they have said "yes" to the same thing on other builds. That is our experience at the moment for sure. It also looks like quite a few upgrades are the opportunity to bite a bit harder. But that is the price for a volume builder. We are questioning if that price is too high for us.
We have decided to keep our options open and keep looking at other houses, the Metricon Bel-Air 37 looks a possibility or the 33 with some changes. We have also given a sketch plan of the best bits of all the houses we have seen to the guy we bought our land from, as they work with a builder and we will see what they come up with. We'll get to tender with PD and then assess it at that point.
We are not committed until we sign on the contract and PD would do well to remember that fact, and a bit of service (or a returned phone call) would go along way.

We have holes!

2008-08-29T21:38:00.007+10:00

I never knew I could be so excited about a hole in the ground, or three to be exact. But I am! We have three holes in our block, so I assume that the site survey is underway. Whoo Hoo something is happening . I know that the $600 deposit has hit the account because I checked but no communication from anyone. At least this proves that something is happening. PD certainly don't seem to be too hot on customer service.

On the down side, I visited the National Tiles showroom in Port Melbourne today to have a look before I have to make decisions. Really, really disappointed. I am NOT a brown person and if the tile was not white it was brown, there were very little coloured tiles at all even in the upgrade area. I asked if I could have some tiles that I had seen at another NT store and the girls said I would have to get the code and she would check if I can upgrade to it. Seems strange to me that I can't have any tile in the store as long as I am willing to pay for it. And I was willing to pay for what I wanted.

The tiles in the ensuite in our current house were laid wrong and the builder went broke 2 weeks after our handover. We spent over a year trying to Home Owners Warranty to fix the tile issues and other issues as well (The tiler laid all our tiles wrong, the patterns did not match in any of them) Of course the builder told us it would be fixed after hand over and we had two small children and were being kicked out of our rental accommodation as the build had gone so long over, we believed him.

Home Owners Warranty would only fix some of the tiling not all, so we had the foyer and the powder room fixed and decided we could live with the ensuite. But every couple of months, I look at those tiles and it really p's me off. So tiles are important, I don't want to have to be p'd off for the next 10 years.

On a lighter note, here is the block in daylight

and a sunset over the block.

A chilled chardy and that for a backdrop each night, where do I sign...

And so we begin...

2008-08-28T14:11:00.006+10:00

We have decided to start this blog to document the journey through building our new home.

But first a bit of history. In the beginning.. we decided we would spend money on the current house and not move. We looked established and could find nothing. So we updated the kitchen, repainted yada yada. That was 18 months ago. Since then time and our family have moved on.

Now we were looking to build again (third time). First thing was to look at the market, what our $ would buy and in what locations. We looked at everything from 500m to 4000m, from Nunawading to Healesville. We came across 2500m in Lilydale up near the lake that was absolutely magic and we started to sound out the estate agent and went looking for designs to complement the block as it has a 36m frontage. Then reality set in, great block, love the location but site costs would be 100K. We could not neogiate a good enough price on the land to be able to cope with that especially because that was "a rough estimate" and could be up or down by 15% roughly.

Ok, so we start again. This time we seriously thought about why we were moving.

First, our current block is 650m but it is the side of a hill (very steep) so although we have terraced the back, we really don't use it much because of the slope.
Second, our neighbours at the back overlook directly into our backyard. I mean their living room, and 2 bedrooms can look down into our entire back yard and into the back of our house. When I say that, these rooms are over two storeys off the ground so think google earth. We have no privacy another reason not to use the backyard.
Third, our current home is a double storey. It means that our girls are "upstairs" and we are "downstairs" much of the time. Maybe I am weird but I would like to see the girls occassionally besides the school drop off and pick up. So we need zoned living were we have our space and they have theirs but we can meet in the middle.
Fourth, our street is now a main road that people use for short cuts so we are getting more traffic noise.

We decided we needed a house about as big as the one we have now, but on a single storey (no more stairs) and a relatively flat block. We also decided we did not want alot of land (no more 3 hours to mow lawns) but needed an outdoor area. So, we looked at a 700m block in Lilydale in a court location off a main road.

From there we went looking at houses that fit the bill. Initially we went to see the Porter Davis Sainsbury in Mernda, looking at the floor plan the girls would have their own rumpus and we'd be able to "close off" that part of the house when (if) they ever move out in the future. Well, great on paper but I hated it. Kitchen was too small and so were the bedrooms, it just did not flow at all for me. I know I'm weird :-)

"G" the sales person suggested looking at the Illoura 36 next door. I immediately felt home. The whole design just worked for us and how we like to live. Only issues were that the study was too small and the bedrooms could be bigger. Talked to "G", all this seems possible so after a few back and forwards for other "cannot live withouts" we signed up for soil tests on 24/08/2008.

Tomorrow, once I workout how to get the pictures off the camera, I will post pictures of the block.

so now the story continues...