The shell starts to get some guts :-)

As per my normal daily routine, I drove past our house at around lunch time and didn't see much going on, although I did see some tradies in the house. And as per my normal daily routine, I took the boys to see the house after school. We were thrilled to see our windows and front door have been installed! It is looking so awesome and I love that we are able to see the house change and develop every day. 

The chose aluminium window frames in woodland grey, all with flyscreens with fibreglass mesh. The bathroom windows are a satinlite finish, not clear glass. I'm really glad I decided on the satinlite finish because the windows are quite large and initially I was going to choose clear glass, but privacy is a bit of a priority for me, so I'm glad I changed my mind :-)

I was also worried about the look of the windows on the front of the house because I kept changing my mind about what I wanted. But in the end, it's a panelled window and it looks fabulous. The rumpus room and living room windows are huge but because they aren't one single pane of glass, they look smaller than they are. I'm not sure I like them though. But we will have venetian blinds over them, so hopefully it will take away the divided window look. I did want a breeze through the house which meant I had to choose the divided window with sliding openings. I will just have to wait and see how it comes together at the end. 

All the cables for the lights and fans were done today and I had a long chat with Tim, the electrician. Apart from the fact that he was quite dishy, he gave me some good insight into how things work and the difference between a single and double story home and the differences between a timber and a metal frame, with respect to the electricals. He also offered to come and put our pendants up in the kitchen, once we have decided on them. I didn't like anything M had to offer when we did all our selections back in February, so I am able to choose my own and Tim offered to put them up for me at a fraction of the cost. I might just take him up on that offer! 

The bath frame in the main bathroom is in and the bifold door frames for the living/dining area out onto the outdoor room have been delivered. The stacker doors and frames and flyscreens for the rumpus room have been delivered too. It's so thrilling to see so much happening, I'm really glad I am able to visit the site daily to see all the progress.

Watch this space for the next exciting episode :-)

C xx

P.S. I have just realised that I am now calling the build our house and not the land anymore! 

Changes on the inside

The roof is finished now and it looks so good! We chose a flat tile, mostly because our covenant dictated a flat tile, in Horizon Barramundi colour. It's a lovely dark grey and goes really well with the Monument fascia boards and gutters. It took the tilers longer than expected to finish the roof because it's quite a large surface area and they were there on Saturday, finishing it off. It looks so good, but I can see 2 chipped and cracked tiles - I wonder if they will fix those. 

Our doors and windows were also delivered on Friday and it was great to see our very large front door in real life. Sometimes it's hard to visualise the actual size of things. The door is the wrong colour, but Andre assures me that the timber is stained on site and the door will be stained in due course. Either he just knows this stuff or he makes an educated guess. Either way, as long as it's done in the correct colour, all will be good.

While we were at the house on Saturday, we noticed that the outside tap was in the wrong position. We also noticed that the floor mounted spout for the freestanding bath in our ensuite looked a little close to the wall and not in the position we stipulated - at the end of the bath, not in the corner. The plan was to ask our ss for a walk through this week since we aren't actually allowed on site and wouldn't have seen these issues from the road. But you know, it's a little hard not to go on to site :-)

On my daily visit to the house yesterday afternoon, we noticed that the aerial has been put up but not the rotary roof vent. I assume that will be done at a later stage. I also saw that all the data cables are in and there was obviously a visit from our ss because there was pink spray paint everywhere. Each room was marked in pink, the doorway sizes were marked, the way the doors open were marked, the bottom of the frames where the doorways are were marked and a bright pink message on the outside tap, "move tap", with an arrow showing where it should be. I also noticed a message on the floor in our ensuite, "check level of bath to window". That was a strange one and had nothing to do with the floor mounted spout that I thought was in the wrong position. It was good to see he had been there. 

Today I drove past at around lunch time (luckily I only live 2km from where we are building!) and I didn't see anyone, so assumed nothing was happening today. But, as usual, I took the boys to see the house after school so we had a look around. I first noticed that the outside tap had been moved and then I noticed the supporting beams inside had been removed too. The frames in the doorways were cut away and then I noticed that all the light switch and plug point frames are in too. It was so cool visualising how to go from one room to the next, turning on lights. 

In the ensuite, the spout has been moved to the correct position, so obviously the cryptic message written on the floor meant something to somebody. The roof scaffolding has also been removed too, so the house looks quite different. 

On another note, not sure if I mentioned before, but every house being built has a place for rubbish to be thrown away - either a makeshift one out of wire or a skip, but it's quite big and can hold loads of rubbish. I assume M arranges for rubbish to be collected at some point. And removing rubbish costs time and money. I am starting to learn that the neighbours know this too because there has been some really strange rubbish in our bin. At first it was old baby equipment, some wood and even an old toothbrush. A few weeks ago there was a bath! A brand new, slightly scratched bath that must have come from somebody else's build. Why they didn't throw it in their own bin, I will never know. The ss told me that to repair a few scratches costs $150 when they can buy a new one for $130, so it's easier to throw it away. Hmmm, not sure I like that kind of waste. This week there was a whole washing machine in our bin! It looks like it has seen better days and has been stripped and pulled apart, but it's still in one piece and very obviously a washing machine. The mind boggles. 

Oh, and the bath has since disappeared....even stranger! 

C x

It's been nearly 2 weeks since my last blog - quite a long time in the building world. I didn't realise that it's been so long since I last blogged. How the time seems to fly when you're having fun. And we are having loads of fun with this house! 

So quite a bit has happened on our house and we are very happy with the progress. Right after the frame for the full house was complete, we had those torrential rains in Queensland at the end of that week (1 May). I have never seen rain like that in my life and it was far worse than the last cyclone rain we had. The roads were literally turned into rivers, parks into ponds and bridges became non existent. The entrance to our new estate in North Lakes, Club North, is a bridge over a stream and that was flooded too. Our soon-to-be neighbour tried to drive through it and the car stalled. She had to walk with her children in the pouring rain only to learn later that the car couldn't be repaired and was written off. That made me a bit nervous because I'm not familiar with such hectic rain and I probably would've tried to drive through too. That night it took people 5 hours to get home, if they were coming from the city. Andre drove home on his motorbike and managed to get home, soaked to the bone, in 1.5 hours. Needless to say, there wasn't any work done on our house those 2 days that it poured. Fortunately Saturday dawned sunny so it gave everything a chance to dry out. 

The following week (last week), the roof trusses went up as well as the gutters. I managed to visit the site on the day the roof trusses were going on and it was a fascinating thing to watch. The crane was massive and I'm always amazed at how few people it takes to do a job. There was one guy guiding the truss into place and 2 on the roof, using a staple gun to keep it in place. It was all securely put in place and then we really got an awesome feel for the house. It feels so spacious and airy. But that could just be because there's no roof, so obviously it feels airy! I even suggested to Andre that we have a glass roof installed because I loved how the sun came through the whole house. But he reminded me of the Queensland summers and I changed my mind :-)

On Monday the scaffolding went up around the roof and the roof tiles were delivered. There were loads of them...22 pallets, each with 250 tiles per pallet. That's a lot of tiles! I thought the tiling would start yesterday, but the sarking was done only. Today the house was wrapped which was a real surprise because I didn't expect that until later. The roof tiles were also put in position on the roof, so I can only assume they will start tiling tomorrow. 

It's been a delight to drive past daily and see how things are progressing. Our ss has been very good too, calling every week like he said he would and giving us an update on the progress. I had to meet him on site last week to sign a variation (more on that later) and he didn't rush me, explained everything well and took his time. I also raised an issue with the height of our ensuite shower niche and he let me on site with him to measure it to make sure. On the first set of plans we have, the height of the shower niche says 1300mm and on the second set of plans it shows 1020mm. We never made the change so we are still not sure how it just changed but it just looked low to me. Upon measuring it, it's actually 950mm high, so not correct at all. But luckily for us, 1300mm is too high, so 1020mm it will be when it gets fixed up. 

Back to the variation we had to sign. The fly screens Metricon were going to supply to us were awful so we had to sign a variation to take them out of our contract. Not too much of a big deal because it is a credit on our contract, but I am waiting to see if they charge us for taking it out. The order for the stacker doors had to change because the original order included a track for the screen and now we don't need it. But it didn't mess Metricon around because they hadn't yet placed the order anyway. I was really hoping we could install the track from the new supplier we found during the build, but it seems that because the new supplier doesn't do work with M, they aren't allowed onsite until after handover at the end. It's not the end of the world because we are doing our floors after handover too, so it will allow our new supplier to have access to the raw slab before the floors go in. The new supplier needs 30mm to install his screens and M only allowed 20mm so the slab will have to be chopped by an extra 10mm. But not the end of the world, at least I get what I want. 

It's all going well so far, can't believe it has been 6 weeks since we started building, such fun. 

C xxx