PCI Measles time!

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...

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!

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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

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!!!

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

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 :-)