It's a wrap

You guessed it, the weather wrap has been applied to the house. It doesn't feel like a lot has happened since my last post, but at least we're still moving along.

Excuse the pile of rubbish - not sure if this is normal but apparently it's too far to walk to the rubbish cage.

Our front door

Here's what has happened:
* All the roof trusses are up,
* Fascia and guttering have been installed,
* Safety railing for the roofing has been installed,
* Weather wrap has been applied,
* Plumbers have started,
* Bricks and sand have been delivered,
* We received our Frame Stage invoice (thanks to the Reserve Bank for not lifting interest rates this month, much appreciated!)

Brickies sand all ready to go

According to My Metricon, the roof was due to be completed yesterday. That hasn't happened, however the colorbond and whirly bird have been delivered.

Can you see the rusting steel and all the water just sitting around the house, rather than draining away from the house?

The brickwork is due to be finished on the 15th. Not sure if we'll hit that timeframe either. There are still some issues with the slab that need fixing before the bricking can be completed. Out Site Supervisor (SS) is aware of them, but there doesn't seem to be any degree of urgency in fixing them even though some of the problems seem quite significant to us i.e the exposed, and now beginning to rust, steel reinforcement in the slab.

Bricking will hopefully start tomorrow - fingers crossed.

Progress Pictures

Not too many words today just a few pics to show the progress so far. Due to the weather and it being dark so early, I haven't been able to get pics of the house with the roof trusses on.

The plumbing has been completed and crushed rock put down in preparation for boxing the slab. You can see how wet it has been by the amount of water pooling in the garage.

Here is the completed slab. Due to the length of the house the slab is actually poured in two halves with an expansion joint in the middle.

We were so excited to see the frame going up. In this pic the roof trusses haven't been delivered yet, and of course the garage frame isn't up.

The girls and I at the internal access door between the garage and the house.

Looking down the length of the hallway. Gives you a good idea of how long the house is. From this doorway to the end wall is approx 32 metres.

I'm so excited...

Just a quick note, will be back later with some pics.

The slab has been poured, most of the frame is up and the windows have been delivered. It feels so good to actually be able to see the progress being made. The kids are really excited because they now 'get' how big their rooms are and where they'll be.

We do need to send our CSC a quick email letting her know about the few things that need fixing, but it no longer seems quite so overwhelming.

Some good news

After several false starts, we have finally signed off on the final plans and have been passed along to construction. We're hoping that construction runs more smoothly than pre construction did. We're trying to stay positive and this is a step in the right direction.

I haven't forgotten about the selections and will post them soon.

Colour Me Happy

Warning - very long post! I have no new pictures so I've snagged some of the Denver from Metricon's website.




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This made me think it might be a good idea to list all our colour selections in case anyone is interested. I'll list the colours and then you can scroll down for our experience at the Studio M appointment.





Exterior
Traditional facade
Bricks: Austral Harvest Malt (an upgrade to Category 3)
Mortar: Natural with rolled joints
Roof: Colorbond Woodland Grey
Gutter: Colorbond Paperbark
Fascia: Colorbond Paperbark
Windows: Colorbond Paperbark
Front door: Merbau stain
Bi-part door: Merbau stain
Garage sectional door: Colorbond Paperbark
Portico render: Dulux - Malay Grey


Interior:
Walls: Dulux antique white USA
Ceiling, doors, architraves and skirts: Dulux Lexicon (quarter strength)
All cabinetry: Laminex Burnished Wood
Laundry benchtop: Laminate Ash White
Kitchen, Ensuite, Bathroom, Powder Room benchtop: Caesar Stone - Osprey
Kitchen Splashback: Mist Silver metallic (upgrade - Cat 2)
Floor tile: Vibe Mocha 400x400
Wall tile: Gloss Stone 300x600
Bath/Spa hob: Studio brown 300x600




Here's the low down on our appointment...


The Studio M appointment is the biggy, the one everyone says you have to be really prepared for. Metricon warns that this appointment will take at least three hours and asks you to bring along images of colour schemes, kitchens, bathrooms etc that you like.


We did our homework. We went around every Metricon display home in the district looking at colours, cupboards, benchtops etc. We had magazine pages and catalogue pages and we were really looking forward to the consultation, both excited and oddly nervous.


The Good - we love all our selections (listed above)


The Bad - hmmm, over all I have to say this was not one of the best experiences.


We were the first appointment of the day and our consultant was running late.

We felt like we were being pushed/rushed through the appointment. We walked out the door 2 hours and 15 minutes later. After all the talk about taking your time and being happy with your choices - we actually felt very uncomfortable during the session. Our consultant went on to tell us that she had spent 5 full contact hours with a client who had a house half the size of ours on the previous day. That didn't make us feel any better.


We asked to see our external colour selections all together on the computer - this is a major decision and one you want to get right. Our consultant tried to talk us out of this and when we insisted we were made to feel like we were really putting her out. She was then unable to quickly find the Studio M site (I had to tell her the web address!) and then said that it would take her too long to actually find our selections so she'd just put in something pretty close. Except it wasn't.


As we'd already signed our contracts, all selections were raised as a pre-construction variation. The paperwork was shocking. Make sure you double check yours. We were charged for items that were included in our promotion and there were multiple duplications.

Electrical Appointment

Ok, so it's not the most exciting appointment. At least that's what I thought before I went. It was so cool. For the first time it made the whole new house thing seem a bit more real, rather than a game of 'i wish'.

I was sick as a dog, but we had a fabulous consultant who was really down to earth and fabulous. Like most people we have a budget (a small one!) that we have to stick to. As we were discussing things we were unsure about we received plenty of helpful advice about what we would be better off doing now and what could be done inexpensively down the track.

I won't go into the ins and outs of what we chose, but what I will say is that this was the best organised consultation of the lot. Our consultant was on time, had a correct version of our plan and didn't try to rush us through. All up I think we were there for about 2 hours - the time really flew.

Given that we still don't know exactly what light fittings we want - I though I'd leave you with a few pics of fittings that I like.

For outside

Our girls would love this

I love this one for the dining room, maybe in a lighter colour.

Another one that our girls would love.

All images are from Beacon Lighting.

Progress!

Very excited! We received a copy of our building permit in the mail last week. Hopefully that means something will happen soon.

We've now completed our selection consultation and our tile consultation. However, there have been a few annoying delays. Changes we made at our colour consultation weren't updated on our plans, so when we attended our tile consultation 2 weeks later, we weren't able to be given an accurate cost for the additional tiling we requested.

One week after our tile consult I received an email from our CSC asking me to sign off on the final plans. Problem was the plans didn't reflect the changes made at the colour consultation or the tile consultation.

In more positive news, we have met our site supervisor and he seems like a good bloke. We've been told that the site start should happen by the end of April. I don't see how that is possible, as we still haven't received a correct version of our final plans to sign off!

The latest view of our block

I will write a separate post for each of our consultations soon, including our colour selections.