Lost in space

Lost in space. I started this post weeks ago describing our non-existent tilers who were lost in space at the time. There was a week where they only turned up for about 4 hours of work... that's all. Nothing else happened that week. You'd think that if they were actually trying to finish our house on time they would organise to have tradies on site.

Now, fast forward to today, our house is nearly complete but we're still a long way off handover/settlement. I'm absolutely pissed off about it and have lost the will to produce a positive spin about the build.

We have a new building supervisor. I've been asking him questions and he has been very cagey with delivery dates. We can't get a straight answer as to when our house will be ready. He hasn't been contacting me as I have requested, so I ended up ringing their office to get some answers. As usual, their admin person was defensive from the start of the phone conversation and started pulling out rain delays, and delays caused by us, but couldn't elaborate on what our delays were.... I can tell you why, because it's rubbish. We haven't delayed anything.

There were also not the number of rain delay days they are claiming as I have photographic evidence of them working during these days. How can you claim an "industry wide rain day" if you're onsite working? I'm pretty certain that won't hold up in court and am seeking legal advice. How can they have started other builds after ours and have them already delivered? Why weren't those homes affected by rain delays?

I was informed that at the beginning of December they decided not to finish our house, but we're only just finding out now that others have been given priority - this is despite being advised otherwise by our previous supervisor who was promising dates before Christmas. The new supervisor is either incompetent or not wanting to give a straight answer to avoid conflict.

We have gone from them promising our build before Christmas to around the 12th of Feb now. There is only carpet, driveway, and some painting to go. Probably about 7 to 8 days of actual work, if that. Other excuses include a building industry shutdown of 5 weeks, however, they're only off work for 2 weeks and return on the 5th of January - our supervisor will be back at work then as well. So, I don't accept a 5 week shutdown, there isn't one.

Our experience has been one of delays right from day one (signed tender in March 2013, signed contract in Oct 2013, build started in May 2014).

I'm currently waiting on the construction manager to call me to discuss what can be done. To be honest, I believe they'll just throw more excuses out and there is nothing we can do about it, but I'm not going to make it easy for them.

So, how does the house look? We're happy with the design/colour choices we've made. The house looks really good but I'm not going to post any pictures at the moment as it's putting a positive spin on a company that I'm absolutely furious with. Slick marketing, awful delivery. That about sums it up.

Benchtops and painting

What a long, exhausting, emotional week it has been since the last post. It's nothing to do with the build, that's going OK, it's just that "real life" sometimes can be hard to deal with. I went to a funeral on Monday that really put things into perspective - life is short, make the most of it, be happy.

Enough of the life lessons, I know you're here for the bricks and mortar.

Our current home is finally on the market. We're reasonably confident that we'll be in the new house either just before Christmas or some time in January so it's probably the right time to sell. I can't believe how much junk we've accumulated living here over the past 14 years! The small fix up jobs like painting, cleaning, gardening, packing etc have been equally exhausting. If we could sell on the first open home, that would be great! LOL.

Back to the new build, the bathroom tile situation was resolved quickly and easily. Di Lorenzo admitted an error with the sizing/paperwork of the wall tiles not matching the size of the floor tiles and have agreed to upgrade the wall tiles (beyond the range we paid for) at no cost to us, to get the correct sizes. I must say, I'm quite happy with their service and willingness to fix the issue.

The following bits and pieces have been taking place on the house:

• Kitchen and bathroom vanity benchtops installed
• Laundry floor tiled
• Powder room floor tiled
• First coat of internal paint mostly done (still needs cutting in)
• Balcony railing installed
• Carpentry work almost done
• Random holes and bumps in the gyprock (not too happy about it because it'll result in delays towards the end)

The paint colour we selected for the walls is Taubmans Cloudburst. It's a light grey that doesn't seem to throw any blue or pink undertones. It looks very neutral - great, because this is how it was explained to us. mrskidsbuggingme and I are very happy with the colour.

Kitchen benchtops:

Bathroom vanity:

Balcony railing:

Tiling begins (and other stuff)

Maybe I'm just being negative but I can't see how the new house will be ready before Christmas. There aren't many working days left this year, yet there are entire days with no tradies are on site. This isn't an ideal situation but we can't do anything about it except wait and see. The issue for mrskidsbuggingme and I relates to the need to sell our existing home at some point (soon) - getting the timing and settlement date right is not easy if we can't rely on the new house being delivered. I also don't want to accept the house unless everything is done to our satisfaction. Our plan is to list our current house on the market in a week, and if we're lucky and sell quickly, we negotiate a delayed settlement. Fingers crossed!

Anyway, onto the build....

The following work appears to be in progress or complete:

• Bricks cleaned
• Gyprock on stairs and kitchen bulkheads installed
• Window frames, skirting and architraves done (and/or temporarily placed)
• Wet areas screeded
• Bathroom floor tiling underway
• Air conditioning holes cut out (although they missed the master bedroom)

With the tiling, I may have another post in a day or two. We have struck an interesting situation whereby the bathroom tiles are all meant to be 600mm x 300mm, and that's what's explicitly written on the quote from the tile supplier, only it turns out they're not the same size and now the person who quoted us is trying to say that it was explained at the time..... ummmm..... no, it wasn't. We have the paperwork to back this as well. It's a bit hard to explain, but basically, someone stuffed up and now the grout lines won't match up between the main walls and feature walls. If we knew the two different tiles weren't all the same size then we would've picked different tiles. The manager was on site today to investigate - we'll see what they come back with tomorrow.

Clean bricks:

Bathroom tiles:

Stairs closed in:

More Kitchen

All of the cabinetry in the kitchen, laundry and bathrooms has been installed now. It's looking pretty good - can't wait to see it with the stone on top!

Kitchen:

Laminex Burnished Wood in Impressions Nuance finish up close:

Lock up, Kitchen, other stuff...

Numerous little things have been happening at the house over the past week. It has seemed a little quiet to be honest but maybe that's because I'm used to being so busy in my own job.

Work currently under way and/or completed includes:

• Scaffolding removed
• Some doors have been hung and work is beginning on frames/architraves as well
• Kitchen and bathroom/laundry cabinets delivered and some installed
• Bathrooms waterproofed (don't know if this finished)
• Gyprock sanded

We spent a reasonable amount of money upgrading the kitchen. There are silly little costs that you don't find out until the kitchen appointment e.g., it costs to have two colours to cabinets, two different coloured benchtops, bulkhead above the rangehood. Some of the customisations include:

• Poly cupboards/drawers
• Extra pot drawers
• Soft close mechanisms
• Additional cabinets across the face of the sink part of the island bench
• Fitout of butlers pantry
• Window in butlers pantry
• Some cabinets we selected Laminex Burnished Wood in Nuance finish (it has a woodgrain texture)
• 40mm Caesarstone with a 70mm feature island bench (Osprey for most with Raven on the feature)
• Additional cabinet in feature island (the Majestic display wastes this storage space)

I've been following other people's building blogs for a long, long, long time and it feels surreal that we're finally at the stage where we nearly have a brand new house. We're almost ready to sell our existing house, and to be honest, it's pretty sad. mrskidsbuggingme, the two bugging kids and I will miss this place.

Hopefully I'll have another update later this week. In the meantime, here's some progress shots.

There is a lot of external painting to do:

Upstairs hallway with feature doors to upper lounge:

Kitchen partially completed:

Pantry doors (hard to see in photo, but really nice finish/texture in person):

Powder room waterproofing:

Stairs

Sadly, today could possibly be the last time we get to see the house from the inside before PCI. The stairs were installed today and tomorrow is lockup. So, unless one of the tradies accidentally leaves a window open we'll be taking pictures through the grubby mortar covered windows.

The stairs were probably one of the only things we actually left standard - pretty much everything else was an upgrade of some type. Oh, the window in the stairwell we upgraded to be wider. I wish it was higher, or even just centered (grrrrr....). Until today it was hard to spot that the window is installed closer to one wall than the other. I guess this was for structural reasons? It'll be OK though - too late to change now!

The water tank has also been delivered but couldn't be installed because the scaffolding is still up.

Stairs installed:

Gyprock finished

The gyprock was finished early this week and the build is currently sitting stagnant, waiting for the stairs to go in on Wednesday followed by lockup on Thursday.

Pics:

Gyprock

What a difference a few days make! In one single day the whole house has been gyprocked. Obviously there's still lots of finishing to do on it, but it's amazing to walk through what are now "real" rooms and get a feel for the size. We made the garage a little wider so the house is now 46 squares, or 431 square metres in new terms. Photos don't really convey the size of the house, it feels great.

Besides the gyprock going up today we've also had missing roof tiles installed and downpipes connected.

My concerns from earlier this week appear to have been addressed as well. I know I was a pain for our builder (I was stern, but polite and professional) but I'm very happy that he has actually acted on what I've asked for. Kudos!

Entrance:

Living, dining and kitchen:

Downpipes connected:

Lots happening

Since my last post we've had a fair bit of work done on the house, including:

• Electrical rough-in completed
• Most of the lower bricks cleaned
• Air conditioning rough-in
• Most of the insulation and soundproofing installed
• Balcony rendered (a surprise, we didn't know this was happening)

The build is travelling quickly at the moment - it's great to see the house taking shape. Even the garage was insulated, a pleasantly unexpected surprise!

Everything isn't all roses though as there are a couple of niggling issues bugging me (I won't mention them at this time). I know not everything goes smoothly, however, I always do my best to get things right and I expect others to do the same. So, I got a little cranky over the weekend and fired off an email to our SS because I want to make sure that things are done right, or fixed quickly, not at the end of the build when we're under pressure for handover before Christmas. Besides a few phone conversations and one face-to-face meeting, I don't know the guy so I don't know that I can trust him. People need to earn my trust - I've learned to be cautious through experience. Have I mentioned I get stressed out easily? Anyway, the SS responded to my email... I can tell he was peeved but at least I got the message across. We'll see on Friday if I've made an enemy, hopefully not though!

Also, mrskidsbuggingme and I made our first purchase specifically for this house - a new lounge! (Homer Simpson voice) Mmmmm..... leather. I'm looking forward to sitting back and chilling out with a nice cold beer when this is all done. Or a donut. Or a donut and beer. Mmmmm..... beer.

Rendered balcony:

Insulation:

Soundproofing on kids bedrooms:

Cladding, electrical and more

The past few days have been a flurry of building activity. mrskidsbuggingme and I had a day off work on Monday so we arranged to meet the SS onsite. There were loads of tradies at work! It was good to finally put a face to the voice on the phone. We went through a few things on the build including handover dates/plans as we need it a little time before Christmas in order to line up the post-settlement stuff like the oven, hot water, air-con etc. This stuff gets installed within two days of final payment... we might need to pay early to get it installed before handover. Also, I managed to get an extra power point put in the garage on a wall that I somehow missed during the plan - yay, now I can build the workbench I've been planning. It was a positive experience meeting the SS, seeing heaps of tradies at work, even got some advice from the framing guy about where they put the manhole etc.

So far this week, we've had:

• Cladding installed
• Most electrical rough-in done
• Rear eaves completed
• Remaining framing and frame fixing done
• An internal cleanup
• Fireplace installed
• Cavity slider frames delivered

I have to say, we're very happy with the pace of work at the moment! If it wasn't for the gutter guard guy we'd be at lockup by now.

Anyway, I'll have another update later this week. For now, here's some pics:

Delays

I knew there would be some delays during the build but I had no idea how frustrating it would be. Since the last post we haven't had a great deal of work completed on the house. We added gutter guard as a variation a few weeks ago which meant that the scaffolding had to remain up and would delay work on the lower roof etc. The problem we've had is with the gutter guard tradies - they showed up for half a day of work, installed it across the back of the house, and then...... nothing. So the build sat stagnant for two weeks until our SS had enough and ordered the scaffolding taken down. The gutter guard guy will now have to use harnesses etc at his own expense to finish off the install.

So, what progress has there been? Not a great deal until the past week:

• Upper bricks cleaned
• Eaves and drain pipes painted (well, mostly done)
• Garage roof installed (still needs finishing on the back of the parapet wall)
• Rear roof mostly installed (they ran out of tiles)

Being two weeks behind schedule is going to make handover interesting. We've been advised that handover is still scheduled pre-Christmas. Christmas Eve actually. This date will need to be brought forward slightly because some items are done at settlement i.e., oven, hot water etc. We can't live there until everything is working and I won't accept handover if there's no chance of getting it all done before Christmas. For now, I won't share the upcoming milestones but the dates we've been given for lockup and PCI seem reasonable. We may still make it in time!

What's happening over the coming week? We should see the installation of electrical rough-in and air-conditioning ducts now, lower eaves installed, and framing fixed/finished. Gyprock is scheduled for the 8th October, which means we should also see the house cleaned up inside, lower brick clean, the cladding, insulation and soundproofing in some walls installed.

This is all the gutter guard tradies could manage:

Upper bricks cleaned and eaves painted:

Garage roof:

How it looks today (bottom roof almost complete):

Upper Eaves

Bricking is done, the clouds have mostly cleared, Spring is in the air and the house build is going along pretty smoothly at this point.

The plan for this week is to complete the upper floor eaves (done), install cladding, painters to paint the eaves, remove scaffolding and upper floor brick clean, air conditioning tubing and electrical rough-in. It sounds like a lot of work - I will believe it when I see it! We also threw a spanner in the works by ordering gutter guard - the pricing was a little higher but I feel more comfortable getting it done during the build. That might delay things by a couple of days, but we're OK with that.

So today, the eaves were installed along with merbau balcony posts and additional framing in preparation for the gyprocking.

Eaves and posts:

Extra framing around spa for gyprock:

Roof

It's been a while since the last update because things got a little behind schedule due to the rain and it can get pretty boring looking at posts about bricks. So, mrskidsbuggingme and I have an update about bricks, fascia, guttering and a roof.

Even though it has been cloudy with a chance of meatballs over the past two weeks, The brickies were on site at every possible opportunity and almost finished the bricking. They would have been done, had they not run out of bricks again. Did I mention torrential downpours too? Arks? Swimming lessons anyone?

Only the rear corner of the house still needs to be bricked - I guess that'll happen over the next few days as another pallet of bricks was delivered today. Hopefully there's some good spares left over.

Anyway, the fascia, gutters and roof were put on this week. What a relief! It's starting to look a lot more like a house! A few of the roof tiles have chipped corners which seems a bit lazy to me. I counted three without walking around completely because I really, really, really don't like heights. Maybe they didn't think I'd notice? Well, I'm pretty fussy about things - they will need to be replaced. These things are minor in the grand scheme of things but they still need to be done properly from the beginning.

Also, there was a massive downpour again last night and the gutter above the balcony was still full of water this afternoon, so, they'll also need to adjust the fall of the gutter. Most people probably never check this stuff before handover? Like I said, I'm fussy :)

Anyway, pics: