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: