wet areas tiling

As of last Saturday the tiling of wet areas have been completed except for the powder room niche as these mosiac are on back order. What is included? powder room, laundry, upstairs main bathroom, toilet, ensuite and balcony.  Painting is still incomplete, this painter is not in or good books right now. We can already see signs of runs, debris in paint and non painted top and bottoms of doors. Also our guttering man can't seem to make good judgement when it comes to levelness as we have already detected a slanted downpipe.

caesar benchtops

We now have caesar stone in white shimmer in our kitchen, we didn't want to pay extra for the vanities to be in caesar as we will probably ditch the whole unit later on and put something else in. Being asian we have scavengde 2 sizable off-cuts from the sink and cooktop cavities. We see there may be a potential to use them as chopping boards in the future. Painting progress seems like most of the interior is done except for the edgings seems like this painter used a roller and not a spray gun. Colour seems a little on the browner side of things nevetheless still and off white colour. We had news today that mosiac tile we chose to the powder room is on backorder and the tilers may have to come back to recomplete the niche feature. And tiling should commence after easter break.

locked up

checked on last Thursday and it seems like we are officially at lock up stage. We now have our timber look garage door install from B&D, looks like there a merlin automatic door opener box in the rubble pile aswell. Its a shame they only include one opener as an inclusion when the house design must have two garage doors. As all the doors have been hung and locked I can't seem to erm break into our house, but I can see in the kitchen window that more things have been delivered including our kitchen. I can't see the details on the laminated cupboard doors, so from a distance they almost seem like plain grey. Things seem to be rolling along again, and this time the rain shouldn't really affect the tradies as they are working on the the inside now. Once thing i've notice is there is a lot of overlap in work. Apparently firstyle doesn't allow more than one tradie onsite at the one time, so i've seen some incomplete work whilst new work has commenced, such as all the cornices are not up yet but they have starting putting the doors in. Hope everything will keep rolling along and we will be moving in soon ;-)

Doors locked

Didn't mention but the previous day we had a peek and there was a few cornices going in. Also notice we now have a staircase, and today our lovely newington xs24 with frosted glass was covering our entrance. We discovered that all the doors have been locked, foturnately have a understairs access door which has no lock...so I crawled in there to gain access ;-). So far cornices are still incomplete but seem they can't delay other works so all internal doors have been delivered and skirting as well, skirting will only be tacked as we will be tiling the first floor after handover. Hopefully they won't wall off the under stairs so I can take some photos tomorrow.

walls and ceilings

At this stage our roofing is finally complete, this includes eaves and infills. We have done our pre-sheeting inspection last friday with the addition services of Howard Ryan building inspector. Everything was good, although a few things were outstanding. At this point we were advised by Howard, that if we were to wall mount any flat screen unit above 40" our wall frame would require blocking for reinforcement. I wish firstyle had told us this at the sales consultation. So the incomplete stuff included missing tripple grip on one of the trusses, incomplete shear blocking for ensuite wardrobe, and uncleaned weep hole in the brick work. Anyways i don't think Firstyle would rectify any of these problems unless it doesn't meet Australian building standards. We are still waiting for confirmation about the wall blocking. friday they were finishing off the electrical rough-in. And supposedly the insulation guys were coming in at 10am. We checked in the afternoon, insulation work only half completed. Well today we checked out the house and gyrock work has begun, pretty much the first level is walled and ceiling in gyrock. Except for the powder room, looks like they have run outta fibro for one of the walls and the laundry partition wall. No actual work on the edges and cornices have comenced. And looks like they will need another delivery of gyrock. That itself will probably take up one day of construction.

bricks cleaned

Checked the house out on friday and the scaffolding has been removed,  still no signs of the infills and roofing to the lower level but I guess every that needs extra reach has been completed i.e the eaves have been painted but the balcony ceiling hasn't (the painter can stand on the balcony and paint that at a later stage). They even did a half job on the gutter down pipes. I guess scaffolding is rented on a weekly term. So its the builders interest to get rid of it asap. On the bright side our bricks are now clean and the final colours are showing. I think the bricks have slightly faded in the wash. I remember the bricks looking a bit more on the grey side, but it seems more brown now. I've also identified a few chipped bricks, I wonder if this will be deemed defectived. Now back to the waiting game, more roofing, cleaning up and then PCI, then get the interior done and finish the house up.

roofing substantially complete?

Just had a closer look at our roofing, seems it wasn't all complete. They still haven't done the alfresco and rumpus room yet. Also infill are missing at the rear of the house. Firstyle has already demand progress payments number 3 now. Stating in the invoice that our bricks and roofing have been substantially completed....sure looking from the front of the house it seems that way. And our kitchen is supposedly ready made and in storage now. And today beechwood our neighbour on the left have over taken us again, they already have the insulation, dry wall/plastering, electrical and garage door put in. Seems like we are the only one on the street with a timberlook garage door, I wonder if they look is outta fashion already hmmm.