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!

Plastered

Day 76. Our dodgy bricks were pulled down today - I don't have photos of that yet and I'm not sure I really want to see it. It was necessary but it still feels as though we're going backwards instead of forwards.

In the picture above you can see the amount of variation in the brick. It's not Metricon's fault, we just got a bad batch. Austral tried to get the brickies to toss out the really dark ones, but with the bricks being wet it's incredibly difficult to tell which were too dark. Our SS did mention that we could let the bricking continue and then have the house rendered at the end, but we really preferred the bricks.

On a happier note - the plaster is just about complete. It's all up and the cornices were all cut today and should be put up tomorrow.




Our SS also mentioned that the kitchen floor will levelled this week, ready for tiling to start. Not sure when that is due but hopefully not for a few weeks yet. According to the engineers our slab needs to sit for at least three months before tiling commences.

It's enough to make you cry

Day 71. As you can see from our time line over on the right hand side our bricks started going up on Tuesday. Today we talked to our SS and they will have to come right back down again. To top it all off our new camera has disappeared. It really is enough to make you cry!

I stoppped in at the house at lunchtime on Tuesday and the brickies had done about three panels. They'd done a great job - really neat and clean. I wasn't really that concerned by the dark patch, I thought it was a combination of wet bricks and shadow. Tuesday night Wade had a look and took the picture below. We chose Harvest Malt from Austral Bricks - they are supposed to have only very mild variations and don't need to be mixed. You can see from the image below that they're not mild variations!

Before our SS inspected the bricks it was suggested that we could have the darker bricks bleached to match. When we were down at the house tonight our SS said that the walls looked like a checker board (and they do) and would have to come down. If they don't come down now the only alternative is to render the whole house on completion and that's not what we want.

Our SS said that he'll keep pushing the inside along but it could be another month now before any more bricking is done.

On a more positive note the wonderful lady in accounts got back to me very quickly with an amended statement of account which included the credit and we were also able to talk to the cabinet maker and get the laundry benchtop and cabinets fixed up - just in the nick of time too as they were starting to build the cabinetry this week.

Check and double check everything

Still no action on the brick front, apparently when our SS was off sick the brickies decided they no longer wished to work for Metricon, so now we have brickies from another area coming in to do ours. Our SS talked them through the job on Friday so fingers crossed we'll see some action this coming week.

Our insulation was installed on Friday so there was some progress. We decided to add some additional sound proofing insulation and luckily we were able to deal directly with the contractors.

Here's the link in to the title. I was flicking through our colour schedule today and I found an error. The colours for the laundry benchtop and cabinets had been reversed. so our benchtop will be brown and our cabinets white (yuck - not the look we were after!!). We'll call the cabinet maker directly to see whether the cabinets have been built or not. If they have, I'm not sure there is much we can do - it's their mistake but we did sign off on it. If it hasn't been built then we have a chance to get it fixed.

Must have been the day for finding errors. Every time I looked at our statement of account I felt a little niggle that something wasn't quite right, so I sat down and went through all our variations and compared them to what was listed. Turns out I was right. There is a $965 credit missing from the statement. Needless to say I've sent off a couple of emails today.