Living in the house

It’s been a while since I posted. To be honest the last few weeks of the build just left me feeling completely deflated and over the entire thing so I wasn’t in the mood to post any updates.

We’ve been in the house for a few weeks now. We love the space and are really happy with the layout we designed and all our selections. It’s still really disappointing though when you look around the house and see the poor quality of work on a lot of things. It’s just not how a brand new house should be finished by a team of so called “professionals”.. I use that term loosely.

Here’s a few examples of the “quality” workmanship we paid for.

We are still waiting for our shutters to be installed which should be in the next few weeks, so once that it done I will take some better photos to post.

Our driveway is under construction at the moment and will be poured on Friday/Monday which will make a huge difference to the front of the house. No more having to get out of the car in the dirt! Our retaining walls at the back are now also complete so next up there is the back fence then we can get started on a bamboo screen on the top tier and some turf.

 

 

Bathrooms + Electrical Underway

Last week saw the bath and toilets all installed. The bath installation meant getting yet another hole cut in our laundry ceiling because the plumbers had never actually plumbed the bath in even though we had told our supervisor numerous times. The supervisor asked them to go check a few weeks back and they said it was fine. It appears we were right!

Electrical kicked off on Thursday afternoon. All the downlights and powerpoints/light switches are in. Unfortunately they couldn’t do anything in the bathrooms yet as the ceilings are going to have another layer of gyprock so the cornices sit lower and cover the tops of the tiles (which aren’t straight). They still have quite a bit of stuff to do outside too. One of my kitchen pendants is also not hanging straight. Hopefully I can get that sorted out.

The gyprocker should be back (for about the sixth visit) sometimes this week. He has a fair bit of stuff on his list to get sorted. Tiler was there yesterday ripping down the kitchen splashback tiles (some of which were laid upside down and therefore didn’t line up!). The gyrocker will also have to redo that whole area before it can be retiled.

One coat of paint has been done but we still need another coat plus the girls feature walls to be done. There is paint on literally every surface. All over the tiles (as you can see in the photo of the bath), on the kitchen cupboards, all over the glass on my glass doors plus on the bricks. I think my five year old could have done a tidier job.

Not sure when the bricks are going to be redone around the front door. The list of stuff to be fixed just keeps growing and growing. Who knows when we will finally get the keys.

 

The good, the bad and the ugly… and over contract

It’s been a few weeks since I last posted and it’s been a bit of a rough trot. Kitchen is now in (except for kickboards and the back of the island bench as these will go in after flooring is complete to avoid needing beading/scotia).

Tiling is sort of done in bathrooms and laundry. We had a meeting with our Site Supervisor last week in regards to quite a few things we weren’t happy with in the hopes it can be dealt with now rather than later. Tiling was one of them. Quite a few of the tile that have been cut to meet the ceiling cornices are not even and particularly on the grey tiles it really stands out. Our Supervisor has agreed to rectify this by replacing the cornices with a new cornice with a lipped edge which should sit just over the edge of the tile and hide the tops so it will look straight. Another big problem is with our tiled splashback in the kitchen. Quite a few tiles have been laid upside down which means the pattern doesn’t line up properly. It also hasn’t been tiled right up to the window like it should be. They will all need to come down, probably be re-gyprocked and then done again.

There was quite a few bits of sloppy carpentry which should hopefully all be rectified, then comes one of the biggest issues.

Brickwork. Around our front door it looks terrible. I went to the show home to take a photo of how it looked there and it was like chalk and cheese. I showed the sales consultants and they were embarrassed by the finish of some of the things I showed them. Our Site Supervisor has agreed to get them to re-brick this section but of course the brickie is on holidays for two weeks.

Painting was due to start today but when I went out to let the painter know to also paint the leftover skirting boards so we can install them after handover, there was no one there. I can’t see him being finished by Monday like he was supposed to be now.

By my calculations we are now about 2 weeks over contract. At the start of the week our Supervisor said we were still about 5 weeks out from handover. Unfortunately Clarendon’s liquidated damages are only $15 per working day so not exactly a huge incentive for them to hurry up and finish! It’s a stupidly low amount particularly compared to some of the other builders paying $50 or $100 per day!

All we can do now is wait and hope everything gets fixed properly the first time and we get these keys soon.

 

Now for some photos..

 

Internals on their way

After no progress last week, it was good to see some tradies back on site this week.

Cornices and sanding was done yesterday plus the start of our staircase went in today. Tomorrow should hopefully see the kitchen start going in which I am a tad excited about!

Not the most exciting photos at this stage but here are a couple anyway.

Roofing complete + Air Con in

We did a trip to the house today to see how much had been done this week and were pleasantly surprised that 1. We had tradies on site working  and 2. the air con had been installed sometime late in the week!

Speaking to our SS earlier in the week he said we were looking at about 3 months. That will put us in around late August which will be a month over our contract date. I’m not surprised considering we lost 10 weeks in the beginning waiting for the slab to be poured.

The electrician is due back on site on Tuesday to finish roughing in and I”m hoping the cladding goes up early next week before the rain hits. Once that is on the exterior is then pretty much complete.

Here’s a bit of a photo update now the exterior is almost complete.

Bricks + Upper Roof Complete

Some good progress since my last post with the bricks completed on 14 April and the upper roof complete on 27 April. Fascias, guttering, eaves, some downpipes and whirlybirds are also installed.

I was hoping by now the cladding would also be on so the external paint could be done and upper bricks cleaned once the scaffolding comes down. Our SS has been on holidays and is back tomorrow so hopefully then I will have a better idea of when to expect the next wave of work.

Frames!

Finally we are moving in the right direction. Monday the plumbers turned up to do all the external plumbing. We also got them to put in some additional drainage around the side and back of the slab to help deal with any runoff from being on a slope.

Wednesday the lower floor frames arrived as promised, with carpenters due on site the next day. I went past on Thursday expecting to see some action but it was a ghost town. Lucky they turned up on Friday and got the lower floor sorted.

It was good to be able to actually walk through the rooms and get a better idea of the size instead of just imagining!

Slabbed at last!

It might have taken 10 weeks but yesterday we finally got a slab! We also got a phone call from management we had been waiting for (and an apology). 

We now have external plumbing booked for Tuesday, frame to be delivered Wednesday and carpenters on site Thursday all going well. Fingers crossed they can now start making up some time!

   
   

Ready to Rumble

After what seemed like endless rain last week, our tree guy was able to get to the block this week and chop all our trees down. Thanks Tim! The block looks huge now and much lighter.

We are hoping to get the final go ahead from the bank in the next day or two, then it is just waiting on Clarendon for consolidated plans etc.

I highly recommend Tim at Level It Excavation & Tree Services. Check out the website or find them on Facebook.

Here is a few photos of the block. The first is after the trees were cut, the second after the stumps were all removed.

After the trees were cut down.

After the stump removal. Standing at the back left hand corner of the block.

After the stump removal. Standing at the back left hand corner of the block.

The Waiting Game Continues

So our plans finally went to council however it will be three weeks on Tuesday since we signed off on our Kitchen Quote and we STILL don’t have updated drawings! We should have them mid next week we have been told. I’ll believe it when I see it!

The annoying thing is we can’t sign off on our electrical plan until we get the new kitchen plans, as there are quite a few lights/power points in the kitchen that need to go in. The poor lady at the company who does the Electrical is getting hassled by Clarendon to hurry us up to sign off our plans. Obviously there is zero communication within Clarendon. The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.

We are hoping we get council approval in the next few weeks so we can arrange for our block to be cleared before they start building the house next door.