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