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.

roof tiles

Our roof tiles were delivered last thursday. Drove past this afternoon and looks like the majority of tiles where up. Also spotted our requested sarking on the underside. Guttering and fascia also in place, can't remember the colour names were but I think the gutter was woodland grey and the fascia..honestly can't remember at all. Considering its only Monday, I don't think it would be a big expectation to have the roof completed, electrical rough-in, insulation and f/c for eaves and infills completed by this week.

speeding up

I have to say our bricky is picking up the pace this week, in 3 days he has completed the rest of the left and right sides of the house. The only major thing left to do is the alfresco at the back of the house and bricks under the windows. The top back of the house is FC infill so there isn't that much to do  I Think the right side of the facade is still missing a soldier course of bricks, this most likely because of the scaffolding being directly above this area. Hopefully all brick work will finalise by the end of this week or early next week so we can get the roof up!

its a new year

Well its a new year now 2012, and my predictions of completing the facade and brick work completed by xmas was a bit off...it didn't happen, I guess the raining here and there didn't help either. Despite the brickies working throughout the holiday season, minus the actual public holidays. We have just completed the front balcony on Friday 6th of January. I've also noticed they only put 3 holes for the up/down lights to the front of the house. We have requested 5 all up. Fingers crossed for the weather so we can get all the brickwork finished and by pass this bottleneck. One street away, another house double storey as well started building after us and manage to be one stage ahead of us. They already have alll the brick work completed, roof up, dry wall and electrical rough in. And we are still at at about 70% bricked.

bricking progress

Its been about a month since the last post. There has been some slow progress with the brick work. As you can see we now have scaffolding up and half the the balcony done. They also order another 5 pallets of bricks, not sure if this is normal but the bricky has wasted heaps of bricks. The other sides of the house are still only a little past half way up. At the rate that they are going, i'm predicting (weather permitting) the front facade will take 2-3 more days to complete, the left and right sides of the house will take 2-4 days per side, and the back of the house maybe 2-3 days considering half of if it will have fiber cement infills in place. Hmm and the construction manager was saying we should have all the brick work done before xmas, that only gives the brickies 1 week to work with.

Contrast in colours

Seems like our neighbour's house (on left or pic) is about to be completed and handover. They are getting ready for their driveway, can see the formwork happening. I Think they still have floor coverings to do and appliances to be installed and its all done. Standing between the two property we can see the difference in tastes. We are going with the times and sticking with more modern colour selections (darker browns and greys). Whilst the neighbours have chosen lighter bricks (which I reckon is from the 90s era) and dark red roof/guttering go with. Having a look at all the house in our street and neighbouring streets I think they are the only red roof. The only colour they chose that is sorta modern is the donkey grey from wattyl paints. Where they have applied this to their external doors and bagged accented areas. I guess whatever tickles their fancy.

Bricks again

This stage of construction seem to be taking the longest so far. Its been about one month now (one week of rain), we seem to be about half way bricking. Hopefull after one week of resting due to rain the brickies will be energetic and get more work done. Brick work is showing signs of good workmanship. My only discrepancy so far is the course of darker brick sitting a few bricks under the windows, you sorta see a dark line running the entire wall along the side of the house.

more bricks

Seems like bricking stage will take some time, especially with shitty Sydney weather (raining again now). Wifey went out to meet the bricky the other day, its a father and son team but looks like the father does all the laying. Predicted time frame for bricks to be completed will be around the 3 to 4 week mark. Just noticed they installed the meter box housing as well.

Bricks and Mortar

This week brick work has commenced. Seems like Sydney weather is playing up again.

Orpheus brick

This is a house that is built with the Orpheus coloured brick from Austral.

Frames / Internal Plumbing / Bricks delivered!!

So far the frames are complete. Internal plumbing was done today and our bricks delivered. We went with the standard offerings from Austral's Whitsunday range, a coloured brick named Orpheus. Not sure how to describe the colour sometimes it looks grey and other times it seems brown (well to me anyways). The wife reckons its brown, I see more grey. Looks like they ordered some cheap plain bricks for the facade, since its going to be bagged later.

Frames going up

Frames started going up on Monday with first floor nearly complete. By Tuesday the joist and upper flooring was in place. Despite the showering weather this week, we had more second storey framing happening on Wednesday. Looks like windows still need to go in place on the upper storey and roofing structure. Hopefully the skeleton of the house will be done by Friday. And fingers crossed for bricking to commence the following week.

Our windows/slide doors

We have chosen APO grey in satin finish. I would imagine one of these sliding doors will go in our rumpus/kitchen leading to the alfresco. And the other for the master bedroom balcony.

frames

still no signs of frames going up today.