Our new house 2013: October 2013

The outside scaffolding has come down and now we see the outside of the house in its entirety. We have rendered the front façade but didn't render down the sides and back (it was fairly expensive). We chose all the colours for the house back in December so it is nice to see them in real life now and everything all together. We are thrilled with the render colour and think it is nice to see the contrast between the pillars and the rest of the house.

So while the outside is the star and the most visible thing as we drive past each day the interior has also moved along in leaps and bounds and we are so excited to start to see the inside taking shape.

The kitchen install has commenced - all the cupboards and the island bench are in place minus the bench tops anywhere, the cooker and the range hood. The butlers pantry cupboards have been installed but not the shelves yet. The laundry cupboards are all installed and I am just loving seeing how much storage I am going to have (my how things have changed when storage initiates cries of delight!!). The bathrooms are also starting to take shape with the cabinetry in the bathrooms installed and this all makes everything look real.

But the biggest change is the staircase. This is the feature of our entrance hall and has been installed. It looks amazing and we just look the double windows up the staircase that just bring so much light in.

So here are the progress photos.

Kitchen with island bench. Gap in the cupboards on the right is for the microwave

Another view of the kitchen the board at the end of the island bench shows where the waterfall bench top will come down (e.g. stone all the way to the floor).

Close - up of overhead gloss cabinets

Close - up of under bench cabinets

View of the Butlers pantry

The staircase from the bottom

The staircase from the top we love the two windows at the bottom of the staircase

The guest room downstairs it has wardrobe doors to the left and the sliding door to the ensuite bathroom on the right.

Guest bedroom bathroom cabinet.

Ensuite bathroom cabinet and bath cavity

The upstairs lounge room - love seeing all the trees

Family bathroom cabinet and bath cavity

Alfresco area (the pillars will be rendered)

View of the backyard from the Alfresco - just a little bit of landscaping to do

Surveying the house minus the scaffolding (that is what is sitting in pallets in front of the house).

Close-up of the render

Well it has been a while because we had a holiday to Singapore and then we were just extremely busy (mainly with birthdays) so this posting is a bumper crop that has photos from the start of September when we got back from Singapore and some from this weekend (early October) so I will do it in 2 parts.

Sept Update

We visited the house as soon as we were back and lots of progress had been made, the bricking had all been done up to the bottom of the first storey, the roof is finished and all the doors and windows are in (except the roller doors in the garage). They had re-dug the new sites for the waste pipes they had to move but they hadn't yet been inspected (you will read more on these in the next part of the post) and everything was starting to take shape.

The outside with the bricks up to the bottom of the second storey.

The master bedroom balcony starting to take shape.

The front entrance

The widest side

One of the waste pipes that has been moved - where it was to where it is supposed to be

Another moved waste pipe

A waste pipe moved quite significantly in the guest ensuite bathroom (they had to remove a little wall they had built over the top).

The family room where the tv niche will be

The rear of the house - alfresco on the left and the dining room on the right.

Alfresco taking shape.

The kitchen area, the pipes sticking up with be the island bench.

The hallway looking out to the garage (obviously you won't have this view when there are walls).

The family room from the end of the hallway

October Update

Well since we looked at the house in September there have been many interesting updates some good, some bad but luckily nothing too ugly.

Slab dig-up again...

The day after we took the photos of the moved waste pipes our building inspector checked them and then let us know that there was a couple of issues:

The pipes weren't joined correctly
And they weren't deep enough (only 20cm instead of 50cm)

The inspector had checked the engineers requirements - so back to the builder and whoops they have repoured it already! Asked them for the engineers sign off of it and asked them to respond to the feedback.

To cut a long story short it seems the engineer wasn't happy with them and they had to dig up the slab again and redo these pipes.

On top of these our builder checked issues from the framing inspection (things they said had been fixed) and it turns out they weren't fixed!! So I had a big phone call to our admin person with a please explain and complaining that we weren't very happy with this at all.

Time for a site meeting

So we had a meeting with our construction manager on-site last Friday and he walked through all the findings of their report. They also showed us the pipes before the concrete was poured and now they are joined correctly and the right depth. They offered no excuses but did say that it wasn't very well done and it wasn't something they had experienced before - the engineer will also take action as the junior engineer had signed off (hence they poured the concrete) but the senior engineer agreed with the inspectors findings. It was nice to get it all explained and it was good to actually walk through the findings in the house. We feel a lot better now and hope that we won't have further issues.

Lockup phase

So now we are in lockup and it really looks like a house now. I visited this Friday morning and met our site manager (who was also really apologetic about the challenges) and they had the base coat for the front rendering on and the plastering crew was in full swing. I didn't go upstairs but have some photos of the downstairs, the plastering really makes it look different.

The kitchen, the recess on the left is where the oven and hob will be - the one on the right is the fridge, microwave and more cupboards.

The family room with the tv recess

Other downstairs lounge room

Looking through the laundry to the butlers pantry

Plastering the hallway where the stairs will go

The outside with the base coat render

So in meeting with our site manager I asked when he thought we might be in. He said we were almost on track for Christmas and it will be very close but he says it will be late Jan into February (all going well) so that's not too bad. The plasterers were finishing this weekend and then next week the staircase goes in and then all the internal work starts.

We walked past today (Sunday) and just since Saturday morning there were changes - the render top coat with colour has gone on (we are so pleased with the colours and the plasterers are finished. So here are some more photos from this morning.