It's over!

At 5pm today the keys are officially ours.  191 days.

Oops

I think that might be what our SS said today (or perhaps something stronger?!). 

We were concerned that the expansion joint in our slab had received no termite protection treatments.  Our building inspector at work suggested I contact the company that issued the building permit as they are required to have all the termite treatment information prior to a Certificate of Occupancy being issued.  To cut a long story short the company contracted to provide the termite protection treatments were never told that we had an expansion joint and so it hadn't been treated.  We're furious.  It's like an all-you-can-eat buffet for termites.

I'm impressed with the service we received from Plan Scan.  I was put straight through to the surveyor who issued our permit - he listened to my concerns, promised to follow up on it and then rang me back to let me know the outcome.  I only wish Metricon's customer service was half as good!

We had our final inspection last Thursday and when I have calmed down a bit more I'll post about it.

Red dots

No pictures today.  The house is finished.  The Certificate of Occupancy has been ordered and it's time for the final inspections to begin.  Hopefully this isn't going to be a drawn out process as the sale of our house settles on the 8th December!

I went up to the new house today and there are red dots everywhere!  I'm assuming this means that the Metricon quality assurance people have been through the house and it looks like our tradespeople have some work to do.  We can't get inside the house so I'm not sure how many dots are inside but there are a lot of red dots on our windows.  There's a number of bent frames where is looks like they've been dropped before they've been installed, there's windows that meet at the top and have 7mm gaps at the bottom and yet other windows that have gaps at the top, meet in the middle and have gaps at the bottom again.  Short of pulling out the windows I'm not really sure what can be done to fix some of the problems - but I'm sure Metricon will come up with something.

Still waiting on a few other issues to be resolved.  They include:

• Obtaining a credit (or at the very least not being charged) for work we completed,
• Adequate termite protection,
• Payment of the electricity bills (as our land is larger than 700m2 we had to arrange the electricity connection so it's in our name, not Metricon's)
• Credit for the tree guards (temporary fencing to go around trees on our nature strip) listed in our contract.  When we signed our contract we argued that these weren't necessary and it would be better to put a guard around our water meter, but we were told they were mandatory and couldn't be removed from the contract.  The tree guards were never even on site, let alone erected, but our water meter did get run over within days of the site start!

Are we there yet?

We're so close now we can almost feel the keys in our hands.

As you can see the top coat has been applied to the portico.  The colour is Malay Grey.

All the bathroom mirrors are in and so is the bath in the main bathroom.

I'm already loving the shelving in the butlers pantry.  Plenty of room for anything I can think of.  We have plans to change the shelving on the left.  After handover we'll remove the middle two shelves and put in a benchtop.

This is the wardrobe fit out in the master bedroom.  The additional shelving and drawers were part of the momentum promotion we signed up for.

Here's the ensuite with the double mirrors.

So what next?  I spoke to our SS last night.  The kitchen splash backs should already be in (but aren't) so they should go in this coming week.  The painter is due back next Saturday and the Metricon inspectors will come through early the following week.  Our SS has said that we'll probably do our inspection on Friday 12th.  A neighbour suggested that we remove the 'chinaman's hat' light shades before we do our inspections as they make quite a difference to the way the finish on the ceiling looks.  We think that the plasterers have done a pretty good job but it won't hurt to take them down.

Had a look at some carpet options today - quotes ranged between $10,000 and $19,000 for 100% pure NZ wool carpets with premium underlay.  Now we're only putting carpet in the bedrooms, kids leisure area, theatre room, sitting room, study and walk-in-robe so $19,000 is a lot of money (and out of our price range) - but boy was the carpet beautiful!

Closer and closer

Thursday night I went up at the new house while a potential buyer inspected our current house. Hadn't seen any tradies there for quite a while so I got a pleasant surprise.

The portico has had two coats of render and is just waiting on the top coat which will have the colour in it. This was done about a week ago - I just haven't had a chance to post pictures. So far we're really happy with it. You can see our front door in the picture above - it still needs to be replaced due to the door handle issue.


The kids' mirrored robe doors have been installed and we think they look really good. We disagreed over the mirrored doors - I wanted the framed ones and Wade wanted the frameless. In the end we've gone frameless - I'll probably regret it because they only have a small handle for opening and closing but they do look good.

Excuse the poor quality photos - I had to take them through the windows. The shower screens and mirrors have also been installed. You can see that in the ensuite we've gone for two smaller mirrors with a bevelled edge, instead of one large one. Easy enough to change over if we decide we don't like it in a few years time.

All the fly screens have been installed and a bit of patch work has been done inside the house ready for the painters to arrive. The down pipes and toilets will go in on Monday (we're putting those in) so we're edging closer to the finish line.

So what's left?

The answer to that question is...not much.




We met our SS on site tonight and I was really keen to get a close up look at the tiles and the bathrooms and get a bit of an idea about what's left to do.



Firstly - the bathrooms. Really love the way they look. In the ensuite we chose to have the short wall of the shower (where the tapware is located) in a dark tile. The idea came from a Metricon promotional magazine, I know not everyone will love it, but we do.

All the electrical work is complete - we can now turn lights on! There was a small hiccup with the front door. The beautiful $450 long bar handle we selected wasn't installed, instead a standard lever door handle and lock were, so that means a new front door needs to be ordered, stained and installed. No biggie.

So what's left? Well we've chosen to install our own cooling, carpet and curtains after handover so all that is left is the installation of the shower screens, kitchen splash back and the pantry/linen cupboard/wardrobe fitouts and rendering the portico. The toilets and downpipes need to be installed - but we're doing those and they should happen within the next week. After that it's the touch ups and house clean and then it's on to quality control and inspections.

I started writing this post last Tuesday (12/12 and today is 18/10) and have only just had time to complete it. Since then the temporary fence has been removed, the undercoat has been applied to the portico, the bricks have been cleaned and a partial site clean completed. We're also in discussions with Metricon over the poor workmanship with the termite control and the slab. I will provide more details and pictures in my next post.

Double Whammy

I received a double whammy from Metricon yesterday - two invoices on the same day - one for Lock Up and one for Fixing. On the good side that means that all the bricks have been finished (yay) and that things have are progressing inside as well. On the downside those two invoices account for 45% of the construction price - the next loan repayment's going to hurt!

We met our SS up at the house last night. I was hoping to get a look around inside but the tilers were still on the job - they'd just finished grouting the tiles and washing away the excess so we couldn't go in.

I was so pleased to see the bricks finished. After all my worrying there wasn't a problem with the colour of the bricks and I really like the way the house looks. We're so glad that we mentioned that the half built portico pillar was too small, because the bigger size looks really good.

Peering through our bedroom window I could get a bit of a look at the tiling in our ensuite. All the floor and wall tiles have been completed and my spa has been installed. Shower screens are due to go in today - not sure when the basins go in.

Our SS has scheduled the rest of the things that need doing to complete the house and it looks like everything will be done by the end of October, so if all goes well handover should be around mid-November (touch wood) which allows time for any defects to be fixed.

Day 126 and we have tiles.

Pretty happy with the way it's all going so far. At the moment the tiles stretch from the garage internal access door all the way through the house, including the entry, kitchen/dining/family room, pantry bathrooms etc.

We've run out of bricks, so at the moment the bricking has come to a halt while we wait for three more pallets of bricks. One of the portico pillars is partially built, but will have to come down as it has been built too small. It's not a major problem and we probably could have left it, but we both felt the house would look better with the pillars the bigger size. Given all the dramas we have had with the bricks, we're very concerned that the new ones wont match the rest of the house!

Our SS has moved to a different area and we are the last house in this area that he is coordinating. In some ways that's good - he knows all the ins and outs of the job so far, on the down side there doesn't seem to be a lot of 'supervising' going on at the moment. Maybe that's normal? Everything seems to have really slowed down.

Just for Mum

Got back to the house yesterday with my camera and went a little bit snap happy. So Mum, here are some extra photos just for you (and me, 'cos I'm pretty excited about this house).

The bricks continue to creep around the house.

A few different views in the kitchen

Last, but definitely not least, my fabulous sewing room. Can't wait to get set up in there.

It's all coming together

Day 118. We're so excited, the house is all coming together and we think it looks beautiful.

Wade called in at the house last night to see how the bricks were progressing and the house had been left unlocked, so I went straight around to check out the inside.

All the internal painting has been completed, there are a couple of areas that will need a touch up but nothing major. The finish is just beautiful. Our gorgeous timber front door and timber bi-part doors have been stained and they looked fantastic. The front door won't go up for a little while yet, but it looks great.

The electricians have been and about half of the house now has lights and all our switches and power points have been fitted. So glad we went with the slim line option, they look fantastic. All our vents for the ducted heating have been installed and the remote is hanging on the wall.

All the stone bench tops have been fitted and the cabinet handles have been installed.

According to My Metricon and the internal communication board, our wall tiling will commence today. Of course my camera went flat after one photo yesterday so I've only got mobile phone pictures. Hopefully I'll be able to get back there later in the week with my camera and there might even be some tiles to check out!

Finally!

Day 111 and I finally have some pictures of our bricks to show.

The bricks started going up last Tuesday and I had a bit of a panic when I saw them last Tuesday evening. It was just before night fall and in the low light the bricks looked nearly as patchy as the first lot. So Wednesday night we were back on site again with the brickie and the SS checking it out. We washed the bricks down and had a good look in better light and we were much happier with them.

I'm impressed with how quickly the bricks are going up, with a little bit of luck the bricks will possibly be finished by the end of next week.

I had a quick look through the house on Friday evening, but forgot to take the camera with me. Not a huge amount of progress on the inside. All the cabinet doors have now been attached and the ceilings, cornice, architraves and skirting boards have all been painted. According to My Metricon (which our SS tells us to take no notice of) our wall tiling is due for completion on the 20th. Hopefully I'll have some interior pictures to show later in the week.

The Brick Saga

So here's the house after the patchwork bricks were pulled down and the site cleaned.

Our SS and the Austral Bricks representative said that we were unlucky and unfortunately it was a bad batch of bricks, some had been in the kiln a lot longer than others resulting in the darker colour. Austral told us that it would be at least three weeks before another batch would be made and our SS suggested that we select a different brick.



The Austral rep dropped in some samples of similar bricks and we went back through all the brochures. There was nothing that we really liked so we called our SS and had a chat with him. The hold up with the bricks wasn't a major problem for Metricon because they couldn't find a bricky to do the job, all their usual guys were on other jobs.



The Austral rep came up with a solution. They would sort the bricks before they put them on the truck so that we had a consistent colour.



Here's what arrived.

You can imagine how frustrated and unimpressed we were. They were even worse than the first lot we had received.

We've now had a third lot of bricks delivered. By this stage we were quite wary of anything said by Austral. We looked over the bricks ourselves and there is still some variation between the pallets. The bricks are suppsed to be so similar that they don't need mixing.

On Wednesday Wade had a meeting on site with our SS and the Austral rep. They built a couple of 'walls' with the bricks to get an idea of how they would look. We gave our SS the go ahead to use them, he had a bricky lined up to start on Thursday.

Our SS rang us late Thursday to say that the bricky had been to check out the job and had decided that it was too big, he wasn't going to do it.

At this point we were beginning to wonder if our house was ever going to be bricked (bearing in mind that the bricking was originally set for early July). The SS rang us on Friday to say that he had a bricky lined up to start on Monday and that he is someone that he has worked with for years and will do a good job.

So cross your fingers for us, hopefully I'll have some progress to show you on Monday.

Cabinets

It's day 99 and it has been a while since my last post. There has been a fair bit going on. Nothing has changed on the outside of the house (update on the brick situation tomorrow), but the inside is moving along nicely.

Last time I posted the cornice was going up. Since then all the skirting and architraves have also been put up. The floors have been levelled, internal doors installed, the first coat of paint has gone on and our cabinets have been installed.

Kitchen

We're really pleased with the cabinets. It's always hard to tell how the final product will look when you select a colour using the tiny swatches but we love the way it has all come together. The 'templates' for the kitchen benchtops are still attached in the photos. Soon they'll be taken away so that the stone can be cut.

Ensuite

Our laundry benchtop will have to be replaced as they installed the wrong trough and the correct one has a smaller cut out, but that's no big drama.

The kitchen window is slightly lower than we expected. On two of the detailed drawings it shows glass splashback behind the sink, then the architrave and then the window. One other drawing has no splashback and the architrave flush with the benchtop and that is how our window has been installed. Not a big deal, just not what we were expecting. We were given the option of having a smaller window installed (at our expense) to match first two drawings, but I really like the big window so that is what we're going with.

Update on the outside coming tomorrow.

And they all fall down

Well not quite - but all the previous bricking has been removed. The Austral Bricks truck has been there a couple of times to check out what needs doing to remove the bad lot. They'll all need to be restacked, wrapped in plastic and loaded back on the truck before our new bricks can be delivered. Not sure when that will happen.

Yesterday the last of the cornice went up. The plasterers have done a pretty good job, there are some bits that could be better (a dip where the cornice is joined - that type of thing), but overall not too bad.

You can see the channeling that has been cut in the floor for the electrical conduit. Our SS was as annoyed as we were about this. You can see the black marks on the floor outlining where the island bench will be. All the had to do was channel back to the bench (approx 300mm) and the same on the other side where the conduit comes out in the butlers pantry rather than level with the wall. As you can see they chose to go right across the floor, which was time consuming and unnecessary. Thankfully they haven't cut through any of the reo. It turns out that common sense isn't always common!