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: