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 :-)

So one snail said to the other...

...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!