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!