Building the Adelaide by Statesman

It’s only been a year

2011-03-14T23:53:00.001+10:30

We moved in a year ago this long weekend, and have finally gotten around to putting some plants in the front yard. My husband told me that if I weeded the front yard I could get some plants to go in it!

We have a deck sitting on top of two layers of kapunda bluestone. What I need is an idea of what to plant in the spaces between the rocks.

I hope you get what I mean from the pictures!

The original plan

A view across the front - looking from the driveway to the neighbours

From right to left we have - Hardenbergia violacea in white

Oleria (something, we couldn't get the ramalosa but thought this looked closest to it)

Then a big empty space for some Dianella 'Little Jess' when we can find it.

Then some 'brown-eyes' as my husband delighted in calling them. Leacophyta brownii

Then some more Hardenbergia violacea "Happy Wanderer" in purple.

So here are the spaces in between the rocks looking along the deck

Then there are these spaces around the steps that lead up from the driveway to the deck and the front porch.

We are still keen to plant the Pyrus Calleryana either side of the deck with the Dianella Tassie Red's under them.
So I guess I am looking for a native plant that likes full sun that will fill the spaces and hide the bottom of the deck but not hide the rocks.

Thanks

All Decked Out

2010-12-19T23:53:00.001+10:30

I realised I hadn't put finished photos up.

Excuse the wonky Christmas bows, it has been gail force winds the last few days, as evidenced by the neighbours fallen letterbox.

The wood is Swan river red gum. The rocks are Kapunda Bluestone.

Goes well with the western red cedar shutters

I love these steps up to the front porch. The landscaping guy did such an amazing job placing them, we sit on them in the evening and have a quite beer after putting the kids to bed.

Beginnings of a Deck and the Rock Wall

2010-10-01T19:30:00.001+09:30

You can scroll down and refresh yourself with our landscape concept. We have finally saved up enough to start.

Given the cost though I am wondering how and why we are doing it. We have 12 months from when we move in to do the front landscaping and I can tell you some of the other houses in the estate are definately not adhereing to this encumberance rule!

I think hubby and I both got sick of the dirt pile out the front at the same time. Also he works from home and has had a few customers come around lately to drop of machines and watching them clamber up the dirt pile whilst amusing is not really good for business. So we got 3 quotes for the deck and 2 quotes for the rock wall. There are only 1 place in Adelaide that we could get the rock that we wanted from, and only them and 1 person they knew who would work with it, so we where a bit limited with those. Unsprisingly they quoted the same price! so we went with the person who was available the soonest.

For the deck we went with the middle priced quote, mostly because the guy seemed to know what he was talking about the most! and had the most experience.

The dirt pile before.

The start of the deck. The front support beams had to go in before the rock wall, so that the rocks could sit ‘under’ the deck and give the illusion that the deck is ‘floating’ above the wall.

I told my daughter to take some photos during the day when they where laying the rock, she's only 10 but there not to bad.

Steps leading up to the house and the deck

My 3 year old having lots of fun running back and forth over the rocks

The boys playing

My favorite shot

The last of the Plantation Shutters

2010-09-09T21:23:00.000+09:30

Bouyed by our success with the shutterkits (www.shutterkits.com.au) in our bedroom we decided to do the rest of the rooms we had planned to put shutters in. The 5 windows across the front of the house, the ensuite, the main bathroom and the toilet.

After much discussion hubby decided to just do what I wanted and we oiled the front ones rather then paint them. He wanted them white, I wanted them wood to match the deck we are putting out the front, I argued that we could always paint them if we didn't like them, but that once painted we couldn't go the other way.
I am so glad I won this argument as I think they look amazing! They bring a real warmth to the look of the front of the house.

Toilet (obviously)

Main bathroom

Now I had bought some cheap undercoat paint to do the kids beds, since we had some leftover hubby thought he would use it on the shutters, EVEN though I had bought the Expensive undercoat paint recommended by the shutterkit place and had told him to use the other one. Would he listen NOOOOO
So this is what happened in the bathroom. The red cedar bled through

Guess what his job this long weekend is going to be!!!

My Busy Weekend – Curtains and Stickers

2010-08-08T22:37:00.001+09:30

I finally finished the curtains for my daughters room today!
They would have taken me a lot less time if I had less help from the boys!
At one stage the baby was pressing down on the sewing machine foot, I thought my machine had gone mad I couldn't work out what was wrong with it because I couldn't see him under the table or feel him pressing on my foot!
She had a wood bedside table that we spray painted black, after weeks of searching I found the ideal knobs on ebay. They where a little smaller than I imagined they would be when they arrived, but they look alright on the draws.
We also put her Ikea frame mirror up!.

Check out that pattern match! That took so much concentration, and measuring twice cutting once!
My husband thinks they are to long and I should hem them more, I explained to him that they are supposed to puddle. He doesn't get it.

So my next door neighbours moved in, and she showed me around the house. In the boys room they had a racing car bed, and a square light shade the same as mine, but they had stuck car stickers on it. She said she couldn't find any lampshades with cars on them, so they made one themselves.
I could have smacked myself in the head, such a brilliant idea! So I promptly went out to Spotlight with my little boy and got him to pick out some stickers!
I let him stick on all the ones for the Green room, which is there sleeping room.

Then he got bored, so I did the one for the blue room, the play room.

I scanned the stickers on my computer before I stuck them on, I am going to attempt to make them bigger and print onto some iron on transfers and make a border around the bottom of the curtains or some pillows.
Maybe even print them onto some white vinyl contact paper and put them on the walls.
Hubby also finally put together the IKEA Trofast storage units for the boys play room

So what did you get up to this weekend?

Landscape Concept

2010-07-27T22:32:00.000+09:30

My (ex) brother-in-law has been kind enough to come out and visit us and draw up a landscape concept plan for us.
We are going to work off this, with a few changes, mostly just adding a rainwater tank up the back.
I hope the deck will make our place look stunning !! We should get the shutters for the front windows soon, instead of painting them white we are going to leave them natural so that they will tie in with the deck.

The bed we made

2010-06-16T21:36:00.001+09:30

A friend on Facebook pasted a link to this website Knock-Off-Wood, I fell in love with the Farmhouse bed the moment I saw them. I quite madly decided there and then to build two for the boys bedroom.

I asked my Dad to help me, he ordered the wood and we spent one weekend building the bed in his workshop.

It turned out to be a bit bigger then I thought! My husband wasn’t to impressed when I unloaded it from the back of his van. But none the less I managed to convince him to putty up the nail holes and paint it. So this weekend we put it altogether and set it up in the boys room.

I made two beds, but the baby is a bit to little and young to have his bed yet. The big boy who is 3 loves his new bed that Mum and Dad made.

I can’t wait until the baby is big enough to have both beds in the room.

3 Month Maintenance

2010-06-16T19:56:00.001+09:30

We have moved out of a rental and into our new home. The owner of the last rental has been a bit nutso and tried to claim almost our full bond back from us for the stupidest tiniest things. So I think I went a bit overboard and nit picking with our maintenance list.
I was scared I wasn't going to met the deadline if I posted it in, so I emailed it to there maintenance email address. I got a response in about 5 minutes that they had assigned it to there maintenance person. That person called about an hour later and we set a date for two days time for the guy to come out and address our issues.
I thought he would tell me I was being stupid and wouldn't do half of it, but he did every nit picking little thing on the list!! Including sanding the bits of roller fluff of the walls and repainting! He did however say he had never seen a list quite like it before!!

So here is the list:
Laundry – internal door needs sand and repair as per the Handover Items requiring attention form
Laundry – internal window frame needs sand and repaint as per the Handover items requiring attention form
Laundry – external door lip where tiles are, cement/mortar holding the tiles on has fallen/broken off
Laundry – paint top and bottom of Internal and External laundry door
Laundry – Internal door only has one coat of paint on one side
Veranda – Chipped tile
Veranda – White film on tiles that I can’t clean off
External – Clean mess made from installation of Water Heater
Entrance – Front door, external paint job is splotchy can see undercoat in places
Entrance – Front door needs top and bottom of door painted
Entrance – hole/chipped plasterboard that adjoins front door frame on the inside
Entrance – Front door doesn’t latch easily, needs to be pushed very hard to latch, locking mechanism is very stiff and hard to lock and unlock
Bed 1 – two holes in ceiling, looks like nail has gone through, ceiling plasterboard is sagging
Bed 1 – Robe - Chips in centre edge of laminate on either end of RHS shelf
Bed 1 – Bubbles of paint have dried and burst and flaked off on the window sill
Ensuite – Chipped floor tile in shower recess
Ensuite – Chipped wall tile in shower recess
Ensuite – Hair sticking out from grout in shower recess
Ensuite – Can’t clean cement off grate in floor
Ensuite – Door not painted top and bottom
Ensuite – Door missing second coat of paint on one side
Ensuite – Gouges in door just above latching mechanism, that have been painted over
Hallway – blobs like from a degrading paint roller stuck on wall near Bed 1 door
Kitchen – Pantry – Chips on end of every shelf in centre
Kitchen – hole in bottom of door leading to garage
Kitchen – splashback tiles on corner – the ends are painted on 2 the other 5 are not
Meals – Sliding door frame chipped and dented from where bricklayers ran wheel barrow over it
Rumpus – chips in window frame LHS
Bathroom – hole in grout behind sink in bathroom
Bathroom – Door not painted top and bottom
Bathroom – Door has gouges above locking mechanism that has just been painted over
Bathroom – white film on tile near shower recess that won’t clean off
Bathroom – holes in grout in shower recess
Bathroom – chips in wall tiles in shower recess
Bathroom – Hole in silicon/grout around basin
Bathroom – badly painted over patch job on window sill
Bathroom – sharp tile edges on bath hob – tile layout needed a little more thought , my children have cut themselves on these tiles
Toilet – 4 marks on back of door at even height from top and bottom
Toilet – door not painted top and bottom
Toilet – chips on window frame
Doors – ALL internal doors are missing a 2nd coat of paint on one side
Doors – All doors to wet area are missing required paint on top and bottom to seal them
Paint – bits of roller left in the paint throughout the house, these need to be knocked off and patched
Ensuite – silicon beading around top of tiles in shower recess where it meets the ceiling as per the Handover items requiring attention form
Bathroom – cold tap drips, have to turn it really really hard to turn it off
All the tiling stuff has been referred back to North Adelaide tiling, so I have to wait for them to call and send someone out.
All in all the maintenance guy had to come back 3 times to get it all done. But he did every thing that I listed (minus the tiling stuff).
Including painting all the doors!

Plantation Shutters - Painted and Installed

2010-06-02T12:03:00.002+09:30

Hey everyone, we have been busy!

We have had our 3 month maintenance, but more on that later, because, finally I have a piccie of our fully installed plantation shutters in our bedroom!

I love them, love them, love them. It seemed to take forever to paint them, then the guy doing all the maintence repair work suggested we use a little roller, things speeded up considerably after that.

So just how much wood is in 4 big plantation shutters?

80 louvers

First coat with the paint brush took two nights.

We took some lumber out of the skip next door and drilled holes in it to stand the louvres up in to dry.

The little bits with holes go inside the frame.

The frames

The mid rail supports and frame ends

Once we got the roller it was a much faster progress and we finished the painting in a weekend.

We did one under coat with an oil based undercoat, then two top coats with Dulux Aqua (something)
We got the same 'First snow' colour that is on our walls, but it seems there is a bit of a difference in the white base.

I think it got down to like 4 degrees last night

Now I just need to paint the bedside tables, get bigger lamps and a white duvet

Hubby put them together in about an hour with the boys help. It was very easy to mount them also, only took about an hour.

The middle two are just held on by magentic catches, they just lift off. Being Western Red Cedar they are very light!

We got the shutter from Shutter kits

Red Stovetop Kettle

2010-03-28T20:50:00.001+10:30

Hubby rang all excited from Big W the other day "I think I have found you a kettle" he surely had, and it was only $20.

I love it, love it, love it. It whistles and everything. I've packed the electric one away !

The kids were sick on Friday, so I took the chance to let me fingers do the walking and find somewhere to get the kids towels embroided with there names.
So the new towels are up!

I also got a mirror for the frame for my daughters room. I will post a piccie of it up later when Hubby puts it up for me.
I did however get around to putting her bed spread on her bed.

I am off to Ikea to get a few floating shelves for her room so we can put the mirror up with a shelf under it.

Driveway

2010-03-23T20:47:00.000+10:30

We had the driveway poured last Friday. We can't drive on it till this Friday. I can't wait!! Everymorning the car is cold and covered in dew. I can't wait to just be able to step into the car from what feels like inside the house.

So the mesh first

Then pouring the concrete - at 7.15am !!! The first photo was taken from the kitchen door looking through the garage before I went and got dressed.

And done

I wanted a stenciled drive with light grey brick effect on the outside, but because we where having the coloured through concrete that was charcoal they couldn't do the light stuff on top, so we had to go with a stamped brick edge instead.

Feature Walls and even more tiling pictures

2010-03-05T18:58:00.000+10:30

But first - Water filter tap

Tiling - Front hallway

Other direction

Boys room

Pantry

Kitchen

Leading out to garage

Daughters room - We went with Dulux - Blackberry Sorbet

DS1 - Dulux - Watercourse Raceway

Our room - Dulux - Spring Sprout

Underlay in the study - they are coming back on Tuesday to finish

We are moving this weekend!! So no internet for awhile. See you all in the new house!.

Good Tiling vs Bad Tiling – More tiling pics

2010-02-25T18:59:00.000+10:30

See the difference between the expensive tiler and the builders tiler when it comes to the tiles around the skirting board/door frames

Toilet / Bathroom / hallway

Hallway down to DD’s room

Boys bedrooms doorways – I love the detail and time taken to cut out those fiddly bits right where the doors meet.

Look at how neat his tile offcuts are

If you are in Adelaide and would like to know Lee’s mobile number please send me a email.

Decorating ideas for my tween daughters room

2010-02-24T23:29:00.001+10:30

My daughter wants to paint her room black! Black curtains black walls black everything! She is only 9!!

So we have come to some compromises.

I bought her this bedspread on sale in a single bed size

I am thinking of getting this frame from IKEA and putting a mirror in it, then putting it above her bed.

I have bought this material to make curtains

I also bought a black blockout shade to go underneath the curtains that she can pull down at night.

I was thinking of a light similar to this, but only 3 pendants if I can find it.

She has a bit of an odd shaped room (Bed 4), because her WIR is in the corner. So when you first enter the room you see this wall

She loves cats, so I am going to put some cat decals on that wall.

The floor will be a dark charcoal carpet, she wants a white fluffy rug on the floor! I am going to spray paint her single bed that is currently white black.

Should I paint her chest of draws white or black?

I want to have some colour in her room however, so I want to paint something purple. But I don't know what, and I don't know what colour purple. Should I paint all the walls purple or just the one her bed is against?

I am thinking of having her bed in the middle of the room against the wall that meets the rumpus room.

On the other side of the room I will put some floating shelves with her knick knacks on them.

This photo shows her WIR door closed and the bedroom door open

With the WIR door open, (and her hiding in the back of it)

Not Moving this weekend :(

2010-02-24T23:26:00.001+10:30

So we are not moving in this weekend
I rang the tiler tonight, and he said there was a bit of a bow in our floor that he didn't expect so he has had to spend a bit of time making sure he had the right glue levels etc
So next weekend it is. However here are some tiling pics for you all.
Look at the care taken to cut around this skirting board (in our rental the tiles just go diagonally and they filled it in with grout)

Family area

Kitchen

Garage Floor finished!

2010-02-21T23:24:00.000+10:30

We finished painting the garage floor and unpacked the tiles today. I meet with the tiler this evening up at the house, and he said "Oh I think I will be finished by the end of the week easy" So we are planning on moving in NEXT WEEKEND!

Crackers I have to get my bum in to gear!

Finishing of the steps with the first coat of paint

First coat of paint

First coat

Just started the second and Final coat

I will take another photo tommorow when we remove the paper

EDIT: We used the BERGER Aquatread system
http://www.berger.com.au/jetdry/aquatre ... _range.asp

Most other paving/concrete paints you have to etch the paint first. With this system you paint an undercoat first which the paint then sticks to. The colour is charcoal with one extra shot of black in it, a compromise between hubby and I.

We also unpacked the tiles

After 30 mins

After 1 hour

After 1 and a half hours

After 2 hours - finished

We laid a few about to see how they looked

Painting the Garage Floor

2010-02-20T23:15:00.001+10:30

So I decided during the down time to paint our garage floor. Hubby wasn't to keen on the idea, but I bullied him in to it.

First though, our floor tiles where delivered on Friday. Now we have to unpack them for the tiler.

The garage paint is this new technology paint thing, where you don't etch the concrete with a brush and stuff, instead you put down this undercoat that the paint sticks to. So the undercoat.

We had a bit of undercoat left, so we did the living/dining room that is one day going to be the home theatre room. Since we are not going to be doing anything with this room for about a year, and just using it for storage, I convinced hubby to use some of the leftover undercoat here, just to keep the concrete dust down.

Kitchen tiles where grouted

Stop the Clock – 174 days

2010-02-18T23:11:00.000+10:30

Front Door, down the hallway

Newly designated home theatre room. The SS made the great suggestion of just putting up thick velvet curtains rather then a door in the archway there.

Main Bathroom

Toilet

Little bit of extra tiling in the laundry - looks so good! I would never have been able to do that myself, see how they cut it around bench top

Welcome wagon - welcome basket - I know my hubby is just going to love the rolling esky - I just saw all the nuts and egg products in there!

Cool another hat for childcare!

See how shiny the bench top is - it almost looks like it is glowing.

And Finally the KEYS

Just had a call from the carpet layer - they won't be able to do the carpets till the 9th. Stuff it, I think we will move the weekend of the 6th regardless and have all the beds in the living/dining room and all the clothes and crap in the garage. Argh so frustrating.

Keys Tomorrow!!

2010-02-17T23:08:00.000+10:30

We are meeting the SS onsite tomorrow at 9:15am!! *yay* Since I have pretty much overseen each and every step of the build I don't think it is worth getting an independent inspector in. The SS seems to have been on top of everything I mentioned anyway, and he even picked up on a few things I missed.

I am going to take our contract/floor plans/electrical plan with us and just make sure every power point is there and everything mentioned in the contract is there. Then I am going to check all the suggestions on this thread....

http://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?p=403196#p403196

I will try to remember to take heaps of photos! But I might get to excited! I am hoping to take piccies in every room, as it is never going to be as clean and tidy as it is now!

I will try to post pictures from work tomorrow, so check at about 12pm ish, depending on how much work I have when I finally get in!!

Add an extra $100,000

2010-02-15T23:04:00.000+10:30

I went up to the Statesman display home on Sunday to see how they laid the 600 x 300 tile in the display home. (To the ceiling, so no arguement about how mine differed from the display home)

I heard the salesperson telling a customer to take the base price of the house and the land price then add $100k and they would have a finished house price. It has got me thinking what our finished cost will be, and although $100k sounds ludicrous it probally isn't that far off.

Base House price $186k
Various upgrades makes the final bill from the builder $208k - so $22k there

Air -con (quote only we can't afford to install it just yet) $14k
Driveway - $6k
Carpets - $5k
Tiles - $4k
Laying of tiles $6k
Fencing (roughly worked out on $100 a mtr) $7k
Retaining wall already installed $7k
Retaining wall across front and down side $7k
Stormwater trenching $2k
Rainwater tank - $1k
Paving - $3k
Curtains/Drapes/Plantation Shutters - I'm guessing at least $2k
Landscaping - at least $2k I would guess

Total - $88k

I would have to say that I think that salesperson isn't to far off being correct.

Mind you, if ours Sales Consultant had told us House Price + Land + $100k = Final price I think I would have had a heartattack and said Forget it!!

So a few optional extras are
$600 - for a mirror splashback in the kitchen
$1500 to change the shower screens to 2100mm high.

A Lesson on Shower Screens

2010-02-12T23:17:00.001+10:30

So many things you have to think about when building a house and doing colour selections, so many things that come back and bite you in the bum.

Here is a tip, if you are raising your tiling to 2100mm and your shower heads to 2000mm, make sure you ask to raise your shower screens to 2100mm also. I know they come in this height, because I asked the shower screen manufacturer before I got the tiling height raised.

I am sure, sure sure I asked at color selections about the shower screen height. However after reading through the colour selections very carefully it is not mentioned. I have read through the whole of our contract and the height of shower screens is never mentioned. Just "Standard fittings" so I am sure the 1800 high shower screens fall into that category.

Just another lesson learnt and hopefully passed on to you the reader.

How stupid does that look!

Main Bathroom

Stunningly ridiculous - Hubby said the shower screen would hide some of the tiling issues. Well it certainly does....

I've got so many photos of the toilet, but tonight is the first night that I have noticed it... can you pick what is wrong with this picture?

Yeppers the window is totally off-centre. *sigh* Do I ask for it to be fixed? or do I just give in and get the house?

Towel rails are in

Oven is in

Ensuite Bathroom mirror

Ensuite bathroom mirror

Main bathroom mirror

Paint colour is very white

I see some feature walls in my future.

The BIG red door

2010-02-11T23:15:00.000+10:30

Yesterday I went past the house and they had painted the door frame....

I was thinking What the Hey, I hope that is the undercoat. I asked the painter to do the door frame 'black' the same as the gutters and window frames.

I asked hubby this morning to please go by the house and make sure they where going to paint the laundry door frame black as well. As I didn't remember mentioning that to the builder.

When hubby got to the house he rang me in a state of shock, apparantly everything was that purple colour. Our gutters where listed as being colorbond "Monument" apparantly the frame of the door there is Monument. That is Monument!! That purple.

Holy crud can you imagine all the gutters, downpipes and door frames that colour purple with the red door!!

I said to him over the phone, offer him cash or offer to go buy the paint, anything to change it to as close to black as possible.

Apparantly for $100 the painter had some black in his car for another job that he would use on ours. (I wonder if the other job is going to get an undercoat of momument with black on top now)

So here we go..

Coming over the hill into the estate you can see the laundry door

Smooth finish door - see no wood grain effect - we had to sign a disclaimer for that

Manor Red door against the Sorbetto bricks with lite white mortar and white sand.

Close up of verandah post

Front Door

Power and Gas box

Laundry door

So what do you think? Not to red hey!

Email from my hubby

2010-02-11T23:13:00.000+10:30

I just got the following email from my husband

They reckon they will have the painting finished tomorrow.
When I was there to electrician came to do the final electrical work.
The garage door was half down and it looks awesome.
Lovely smooth finish and really nice.
I had a walk through and I think the white is really nice.
So crisp like snow

I might have to take a long lunch break tommorow and go have a look while they are still there.

A Garage Door for my birthday!!

2010-02-10T23:12:00.000+10:30

I got a Garage Door for my birthday!!! Yay Yay Yay!!!
So killer excited, this is the one thing that they thought they where not going to be able to get by handover! Normally it takes 6 weeks for the door to arrive and be installed etc. Our fantastic SS got it done in 3!
I sent him a txt message
"A garage door for my birthday, you shouldn't have. Thanks"
he replied
"You owe me big time"

Since the door is up however all I can show you is this. If I pull that cord with the ball hanging down will the door come down? or will it damage it? do I have to let it sit in place for a little while before playing with it?

Painting – It’s all so white

2010-02-09T23:10:00.000+10:30

I had to go to a parent introduction evening tonight, so on the way home I quickly ducked up to the house to see what was happening.

To my great surprise I found the front door open! I quickly realised why! - To think all this time the painting has been happening and I could have gotten in if I had just tried the front door!!

So Bjork's song kept going through my head as I was walking around this intensly white house

My cutouts leading to the newly designated Rumpus room

Rumpus room

The toilet - looking like it is wearing a veil and ready to get married - the paint fumes where pretty overwhelming.

Doors

Corner of the family/meals area

Garage half done

They have scraped the site and tidied up a bit

Today was the day I wanted to be in. Ahh well one week of isn't so bad. I am home this morning, I have deliberately left the boys toys unpacked so that they can play with them.

This is how they are helping me

Home Theatre design ideas

2010-02-05T23:09:00.000+10:30

I've promised my husband he could have free reign with the home theatre room.

He came to me last night and said that he doesn't want to make the rumpus room the home theatre room any more, he wants to make the living/dining room the home theatre room, and he wants to do this:

The guy who built this home theatre - in his garage!! Gives pretty much step by step instructions.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=574704&page=1&pp=30

What do you think? should I give up my living/dining room?

An Outside tap – Painting begins in ernest

2010-02-04T23:07:00.000+10:30

The white grout with the dark tiles and the 3 different tile sizes in the main bathroom is bumming me out a little.
The kitchen splashback tile doesn't go either. So I am a little despondent over the build and not really as excited as I should be. All the work that we are going to have to do when we move in is beginning to press down on me.
I went up to the house on Tuesday to see if anything was going on. I happened to bump into our SS! Timing was great. So I have met him now.
My son didn't have any shoes on, and wanted me to carry him up to the house, but I already had the baby in my arms, so the SS picked him up and carried him up to and around the house. My son (god bless him) said "Thankyou man" when was picked up! My SS said "What nice manners you have" At least I got that right.
Nothing had happened in the house, NOTHING. A whole week and nothing. The SS had been away last week and he said another SS had taken the tradies of my build. I got the impression he wasn't happy.
I went up for a look yesterday, seems the painters have covered the inside of the house with plastic like some sort of giant internal condom. So I can't get in for piccies.

I don't think I've taken a photo of the outside tap yet..

When I was looking at the laminex website I entered the competition to win a kitchen makeover (for my Mum) they sent out a free apron as part of the competition - oddly enough they kept sending me letters telling me they where going to send the apron, and that it was coming.
it is a pretty cool apron, as aprons go. I have been wearing it whilst cooking, so of course my son wanted to help me cook and wear it also.
The naked chef

Taps and a Toilet!!

2010-02-01T23:03:00.000+10:30

I was/am feeling a bit dejected about the build, I went by Friday afternoon and nothing had changed.
Saturday hubby went by on his way to a job and called asking me why I hadn't let him know the taps had been put in. Some-one had come in on Saturday and put in all the basins and tap ware
So I promptly went up and took looks of photos.
My taps are soooo sexy. I love them
Ensuite

Toilet in ensuite - I have a feeling this is the wrong one, I gave my colour selection book away, so I am going to have to ask someone with a Hickinbotham colour selection book to scan in or take a photo of the toilet page for me so I can check.

Ensuite taps - They are the silver range Banksia ones

Ensuite basins - taken from the shower

Square chrome grate, simply because I don't think I have taken a photo of it before.

Kitchen sink - just the bronze range tap, we thought it didn't look to bad so left it.

Shiny diamond gloss white valencia laminate against my shiny kitchen sink

Hubby agrees that the white tiles look terrible against the laminate. we will look at colouring options, or glass splashback options later

kids bathroom

C of the cold tap is upside down on the off position - is it to pedantic to ask if it can be the right way up? or will the threading of the tap prevent this from ever being possible?

bath ledge for lack of a better descriptor

bath taps

kids bathroom sink

kids toilet

laundry

close up of laundry taps

Is it just me or is this power point not level?

I found the basin plugs!!!

Tiles with grout

2010-01-26T23:00:00.000+10:30

I took my parents up to the house tonight after picking them up from the air port. We snuck in to the house and the tiler has grouted the bathroom.
It actually looks a bit better with grout, and the middle 600 tile actually stands out like a feature in itself. So I will stop complaining.
My Mum said "Oh wow" when she walked into the ensuite, that is a HUGE compliment for her!
Unfortunately my camera battery went flat so I didn't get any photos of the kitchen splashback grouted either.
But here are some pics.

Painting has started

Disappointed with Bathroom Tiles

2010-01-25T22:43:00.000+10:30

I don't think the tiler thinks outside the square much. Look at what he has done in the bathroom.
He has started the shower tile at 2100mm (which is what the build notes said to go to). Then he has followed this line around the bathroom. Because the bathroom tiling is only going to 1200mm I end up with this...

Yep my lovely 600x300 wall tile is cut in to 3 different sizes!! I am not happy. You would think 1200 high = 2 tiles, nice simple elegant. NOOOOO I get this 400 and 600 and 200.

I called the client liaison today, she asked me to send her some pictures. I am going to suggest that maybe they can take off the top row and put just one full 600 tile on top, maybe that will make it look a little more balanced?? rather then re-do the whole wall.

But it looks stupid having 3 tiles all different sizes.

It is not as noticeable where it goes up over the bath hob

This is my shower step in the ensuite *sigh* not as super glossy white as the super glossy white tiles

Hubby moved the excess bricks on the weekend while I took the boys to the Doctor, ear infections and antibiotics for the both of them *sigh*

The kitchen splashback

I hate it against my white valencia benchtop. Getting a smoky mirror splashback, or painting the tiles red or something is going to be high on my to-do list.

While he was waiting for me to get back with the boys my husband tidied up the front a bit.
We just stood out the front cuddling and admiring out house, it was nice moment. Then son number 1 found us.

My husband wants to put a brush fence from just in front of the down pipe to the retaining wall, where the fence will be. I HATE brush fences. I need to photo shop one in there to show him how ridiculous it will look.

I think some sort of wooden slat fence back where the very edge of the house is will look much better.

I went up to the house this morning to meet with the painters. I asked him to paint the door frame black. His English wasn't so fantastic, but I think he understood what I wanted. My married name is Hungarian, the painter is Hungarian, his wife works at the Hungarian club, and knew my husbands grandfather!!

I didn't get the chance to go up today to see what they had done. Hopefully tomorrow.

6 more weeks because of the Garage door!!

2010-01-21T23:20:00.000+10:30

I got a call from the SS yesterday. Apparently the old SS hadn't ordered our roller door! So it is going to be at least 6 weeks before that arrives. :(
However he said if we are happy we can move in without the garage door.
However the old SS hadn't ordered the shower screens and they are going to be at least 4 weeks :(
He did however say he was going to get someone to come in and do the steps from the garage to the kitchen. No more climbing up this huge ledge to get into the house.

The right sized pot drawers are in

Overhang on the kitchen bench - I hope it is enough to put a few stools under.

He asked why the kitchen window was missing a ledge. I explained the whole 1mtr high kitchen bench top debacle, he said he would have gotten them to lower the window before doing the bricking if he had known that. I said I would rather just leave it, I never really liked the idea of the kitchen window being level with the bench top anyway as we are going to have the sink there. So he said he would get someone to come in and put in the window ledge.
I was there briefly today, and a tradesman turned up to put in the kitchen ledge.
The tiler was there also, cutting out spots to put in our foot rests.
He was happy cause now he can do the kitchen tiling.
Apparently the painters are starting on Monday, so I have to go up there early and talk to them, and see if we can work something out in regards to painting the external door frames black.
The eaves are almost done.

I asked about the excess bricks, he said that normally they keep the extras and take them on to the next house that is using that brick "Everyone is using the Bianca at the moment" he said that no-one else is building with our brick, so if we move them down the back of the block we can keep the excess I am thinking of using them as a border to the driveway, and maybe a brick letterbox. I think I have settled on just a plain charcoal driveway, no fancy stencilling or anything, I think our house bricks stand out enough without needing anything extra for the driveway.
Oh and we have to sign a waiver for the smooth finish garage door apparently it shows all the bumps and knocks and dings. We just didn't want a door that had that wood look. I wonder how smooth the smooth finish is???
Also I was talking to the tiler about him doing our floor tiles after handover. I can see now why the quote he gave us was so cheap, he stated that he was going to start the floor tiling in the corner of the meals area, and where the tiles fell in regards to the front corridor that is what they where going to be. So I said "well how about if you put the first time smack bang in the middle of the front door so that we have a row of tiles running up the middle of the hallway. "oh yeah you could do that and be fancy". So I am thinking I might need to keep on eye on him when he is doing the tiling. As long as the first one goes in the right spot the rest should be easy.
We have had a huge delivery of new computers at work. Do you think I have enough packing boxes?

(there is another row behind that one)

My kitchen bench finally arrives!!

2010-01-19T23:19:00.000+10:30

I wasn't able to get up to the house yesterday, and I thought nothing would be happening any way as everything seems to have slowed down a bit.
So imagine my surprise and delight this afternoon to find out that things have been happening!!
The first thing I noticed was that they had finished the cornices and plasterboard in the garage

They have also started with the eaves. Hubby noticed they have done the cornices around the windows, a look that I hate. If it was square cornices I could handle it, but that angled stuff makes me feel like the windows have droopy eyelids.

They finally finished the brickwork *yay* - however he forgot to put insulation between the wall and the brickwork. They replaced a lot of the brown bricks out the front, but he missed one that has a big cross on it.

I peeked through the kitchen window and saw my bench top

So I rang my husband and asked him to come help me break in to the house so I could get a better look.
Warning Excessive Kitchen benchtop photos follow
The benchtop is Laminex Diamond Gloss - White Valencia
Cupboards are Laminex - Charcoal

The right sized pot drawers

The missing piece of benchtop

Hubby checking the range hood works "yes dear now stop playing with it"

Look at the shine! Look how wide it is!

The underside - you'd think that it would be better finished, but it is only going to be seen when your passed out on the floor and then I think the last thing people will be looking at is the gap.

Tiling – Ensuite grouted – I don’t like it

2010-01-18T22:26:00.001+10:30

We asked the SS to unlock the house on Saturday so that hubby could put on the face plates and patch in all the network cables. (There is likely a correct way to say that, but you get what I mean)
He has grouted the main bathroom. I almost cried when I saw it.

Bright white grout! Bright white!! The whole point of the feature wall is ruined.
He hasn't done the main bathroom yet, I am wondering if I should buy him some charcoal grout and give it to the tiler to do the main bathroom feature tiles with, and maybe see if he can do a layer over top of the ensuite.
Or maybe a grout pen? Or maybe dig it all out with a grout chisel thing and re-grout it ourselves later on.
Hubby thinks it looks great!!! He thinks it really shows of the dark tiles???!!!??? I am going to have to take him back up to Blackwood park and show him the display homes I was trying to mimic.
There was a plasterboard guy working on Saturday, he was sanding all the walls down ready for the painters. Apparently when the painters finish on the house over they are going to start on ours.
The tiler said he is going to be back on Wednesday to finish up.

Tiling – Ensuite almost done

2010-01-13T22:24:00.000+10:30

Since I have the tilers business card I rang to tell him we would go ahead and use him for the floor tiles. He told me that he had finished the ensuite!! So I got up super early this morning and on my way to work went up to the house.
Ensuite - Shower alcove

Ensuite - RHS wall

Ensuite - window wall - opposite shower

Ensuite - LHS wall - where the mirror will be. It should start at the tiles and go almost to the roof

So there you have it, a full 360 degree view
He was still working on the kids bathroom
Toilet

Laundry

Not much going on – Carpet sorted

2010-01-12T22:21:00.000+10:30

Ensuite

Kitchen sink in the laundry cupboard

Little step bit outside the sliding door! That's a bonus I didn't think they where going to do that.

And what was in the basket????!!!!

My son took the little shoes and has them at home. I might put them on my kitchen window sill as a memento.
I rang the builder yesterday to talk about the pot drawers and the client liaison person told me that we where getting a new site supervisor, but that the new site supervisor doesn't come back from holidays for two weeks!!
I am hoping that the tradesmen our initial site supervisor put in place keep on keeping on.
I had a somewhat huge day Friday and Saturday.

Carpet: When I got the Cedar Park sample from Chris at Carpet Choice she told me that it was $10 a metre more then the Valley view one. Since we need 157sqm, I worked it out to be about $1500 more then the original quote. I told the kids in the car that Mummy was going to talk to the lady very nicely and see if we could get the carpet at the same price as the first carpet and that I wanted them to be SOOOO well behaved in the store, as compared to the running around madly they had been doing the last two visits to the store.

They where the best behaved children on the planet! They sat in the corner so nicely. I told her that I am writing a blog about the build and will put in big mention about her and the carpet. She did the figures and said "Well the best I can do is if we increase the price by $100" I almost fell of the chair. She changed the quote and I picked up the kids and ran before she changed her mind. It still includes the upgrade to the gold underlay for free also!
So if you are looking for the Cavalier Bremworth / Kimberly range of carpets and you are in SA, go to Carpet Choice at 1070 South Rd, Edwardstown and tell Chris you read my blog!
So now I have the carpet I love

Next was the tiles. I thought that since the Jan sales where on I might as well go to Italia Ceramics and see if they had any specials going to match the Beaumonts specials.
I went in and saw the ladies there, they told me that if I bring in a Beaumont tile sample and quote that they would match it, on the way home I went to Beaumonts and got a quote, the tiles where on special for $38sqm. I told him I wanted 127sqm, he said "Well I will do you a better price then" and made up a quote for $35sqm.
I went back to Italia on the Saturday morning, it was already 42 in the shade, I was thinking "I must be crazy driving across Adelaide with 3 kids in the car on a stinking hot day"
But it was all worth it. I showed the sales lady the tile and the quote, she said "the best we can do is $37sqm" Given that the tiles where $44sqm I was happy with that.
My hubby paid the 50% deposit for the carpet and 25% deposit for the tiles yesterday.
Now I have the carpet I love and the floor tiles I love.
Ohhh did I tell you the best bit? We asked the tiler who is doing the bathrooms how much he would charge to tile the house, and he quoted about $3500 all the other quotes we have gotten have been around $8000

Chat with the Tiler.

2010-01-08T23:46:00.000+10:30

Since the tiler has started, but not called me, I was paranoid he was going to do the shower area without me asking him to go to the ceiling so I got up at an ungodly hour and drove up to the house.
As I approached the house I saw no cars and my heart sank, then I noticed that the side door was open. I went into the house, and the reason for no car because clear, he rides a bike!! Apparently he lost his license!
So I got some more pics
Toilet - beautifully centred

Main bathroom shower area

Main bathroom looking toward the bath

Plumbers finger as he explains how the bath hob works

I asked him about the front door and he said that he is going to build a bit of a step there But he said "don't worry it will look good" so here's hoping it looks good.
We agreed on $50 for him to tile to the ceiling in the shower area and to tile one wall with a different tile, however I have to go to Beaumonts today and get the extra tiles he needs. So hopefully they play nice.

Porch Tiled

2010-01-07T23:45:00.000+10:30

So went up to the house on the way home and saw the porch had been tiled.

There looks to be lots of glue under the tiles

What I don't get is this gap near the front door?? As he has cut the tiles all short.. What on earth is going to go there if not tiles?

Going around the side of the house I noticed these tiles outside the laundry door, so I think he is going to do the laundry floor next.

But he must have done something, either our bathroom or the kids, because look at all these cut tiles in the skip!! They are definately NOT the front porch tiles, they are thick porcelain tiles from somewhere in the house.

So I am getting up early tommorow to go up the house and try and catch the tiler.

Tell me how bloody hard is it to deliver a pallet of bricks?? I mean seriously!!

It looks like the guy has just dropped them of the fricken truck, ffs. Hopefully there are enough unchipped ones to finish the last of the wall.

There was also this in front of the garage next to the skip

If you're going to dump rubbish, dump it in the darn skip, don't go "hmm this is a nice basket someone might want it, I'll leave it on the ground" put it in the bloody skip. I'm to scared to open it, my first thought was that it looks like a snake charmers basket. I might use a long stick tommorow and see what is in it.

This is a sneaky photo taken inside a Medallion display home in Blackwood. This is the display home that I have based alot of my colour selections on.

See why I have to have the dark carpet. I have this vision, and dark carpet is part of it.

So I went back to the carpet shop today, and met up with secondhomebuilder (from the Homeone Forum) to give her my Hickies Colour Selection book.

I got the dark carpet from the Cedar Park range. It is about $10 a mtr more expensive then the one I originally picked

I bought it home to hubby and he likes it. So now to see if I can sweet talk the sales lady down a bit in price for me.

Our neighbours son-in-law has given us a good quote on doing some tiling for us. He said that he could get tiles at good rates from Beaumonts, so we picked out this white alabaster tile, that again didn't really sit well with us. The tiler said he could get this tile for x amount. There is a tile we love from Italia tiles, so I think I might go for a bit of a drive tommorow and see if I can get it reduced a little. (It is $20sqmtr more) We might just have to paint the concrete and tile later. But here is the tile, the carpet my kitchen benchtop (White Valencia) and kitchen cupboards (Charcoal) together.

Got more lights – don’t like carpet choice.

2010-01-06T23:41:00.000+10:30

I've decided to stop shopping for the house. I think I need to 'live' in it now for a bit to get a feel for it and the rooms, and then buy knick knacks to fill out the decor.. etc
Today however I went in to the city to get dear hubby a Bath Sheet in the same colour and brand as the towels Mum bought me. He just LOVEs his bath sheet towel that he has now. Me I can't get the hang of a HUGE towel.
I put a message up on Facebook about wanting to monogram the kids towels. Turns out my Aunt has a sewing machine that can do it!! So hopefully I can get her to do them for me.
Whilst in the city I visited the bigger Target and got the rest of the lights I need for the house, 18 in total! 9 small 14cm high ones for the WIR, pantry, bathroom, toilet laundry etc, and 9 bigger 23cm long ones for the hallways, study, living/dining area.
I looked at the Target lampshades, ($12) they are made so that you can turn them one way or another for Pendant or Lamp shade. This is when I decided to stop buying things for the house. I am thinking I can use one of these lampshades and cover it in whatever fabric matches my curtains, then get a Pendant light fitting from say IKEA ($7) say $5 for material and I have a great pendant light for $23!
I saw these lamps at Target. I love them.

There is this show on 7 two called "How Not to Decorate" last week they did this room in black and white and mirrors.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzjTaLE7d8A&feature=youtube_gdata The floor was BLACK stained wood. Then they put a big white shaggy rug on it. The furniture was white couches, the coffee table was a mirror and they had mirror lamps like these on the side tables. I love it! I will have to see if I can put some of the video of it up. But I don't think I will be able to do anything like it in ANY of the rooms!
I ordered the LIGHT grey carpet. I figure it will be easier to match furniture to the light grey carpet. However I am still not 100% sold on it. Hubby said he didn't mind a darker carpet, just not the speckles through it. I notice on the Kimberly website they have a Cedar Park range

Which doesn't seem to have the speckles that the Valley View range does

I will go tomorrow and see if they have the Cedar Park and what it looks like. I know I dismissed a few of the 'grey' carpets because they looked to brown.
On the positive side the quote for carpeting came in at $700 less then the first quote I got, and she is upgrading to the gold range underlay for free!
I saw this bedroom in an ad on teli, I think I might like to do my bedroom something like this. With a drum light overhead that is white with the same colour green leaf design on it.

Carpet and Lights – Choices made

2010-01-05T23:37:00.000+10:30

Went past the house on my way out today, there where no tradesmen and nothing going on however I did notice that the back bedroom window was open. I shut the window so that it looked closed but was not latched. Sneaky deeky that I am.
Today's task was to get a carpet quote. I read through all the suggestions on the HomeOne Forum carefully and made notes! I went to the nearest Cavalier Bremworth reseller! Carpet Choice on South Road. There where only two carpet colours that I even remotely liked, and they where on special! I asked and they lay the carpet using a power stretcher.
The quote she gave me was $600 cheaper then the nylon carpet quote I got from Solomons! I did however make a mistake, I bought two different colour samples home. Hubby likes the 'grey' colour, I like the darker colour. What do you think?
He doesn't like it because of the specks of colour through it. They don't come out to well in the photos.

I have to go back tomorrow and get a formal written quote from Chris, she is going to see if they can do the underlay upgrade for free like the Solomons carpet was going to.
I finally went to the Pond Pump place, the guy said my idea should work *whohoo* with the teeny weeny Solar Pump that I was looking at.
I went home via Target to look at the lights Jodge found (http://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=27892)
I cooked hubby his favourite dinner, and when he had finished eating suggested that we go up the house and see how the lights look, and if I should buy more!
Being completely insane and build obsessed here we are putting up light fittings in a half finished not painted hallway

My husband loves them, so tomorrow I will go back and get more!

Sam likes them to

We went for a walk around the reserve that is across the road from us, the kids ran ahead and were kids, we walked and talked, I tried to sell him on the darker carpet..... then we came back to the car and went home. I can't wait till we live there and we can go for a walk after dinner every night!

Shopping for towels, Electrical Fit out and bath hob.

2010-01-04T23:24:00.000+10:30

My mum called early this morning and said "I'm standing in an undercover parking spot here at Marion, come shopping"

So I threw the kids in the car and went down to meet her. I wanted to buy some new towels for the new house, I had seen some in the Harris Scarf catalogue on special from $34 down to $7.95 and they where the perfect green to.

We got to HS and there was only 1 green towel left. We called all the other stores, but none of them had any more. So after an hour of debating the pros and cons of the other towels on sale and calling the other stores and chasing the children around the store we gave up and went and had a coffee. My Mum loves DJs so we went there afterward to have a look and see if they had any nice Christmas decorations on sale. Mum noticed the towels where on sale in DJs also. So another hour was spent debating the merits of the towels, there weights size if they felt nice or not. Mum got out this dark charcoal towel and a white towel and put them side by side so that we could 'test' the green towels next to them all. OMG I was going to 'duck' into HS buy the towels and go home, 20mins tops. We where at the shops for 4 hours!! debating about towels.

Here they are, what do you think?

The best bit about shopping with Mum is that she bought them for my birthday :)

Since I spent the whole day looking at towels and not the other things I really wanted to get done I consoled myself by going past the house on the way home.

There were some guys in there doing the electrical work
My place is like the only one on the street being worked on at the moment, everyone else must hate me!

Front door outside light.

Ensuite - this photo was taken on the run as the guys where in there putting in the exhaust fans.

Above Meals area

Did you notice what I missed? Yep all the cornices have been done.

Home Theatre room with the powerpoint and data point up on the wall

Tiles for the kitchen splashback. They are matt so as not to conflict with the diamond gloss benchtop, but I don't know about them now, really think we should have gone with the great big 300x600 super glossy white tiles we used in the bathroom.

I can't work out why the bath goes in to the wall like this?? There was/is heaps of room up the other end?
Look at what he has done to prop the bath up. There where a few bricks left over that the brickie had in a nice pile ready to do under the kitchen window. Well the tiling guy took them here for the bath, and look roof tiles to!! They look like they come from the house just down the road from us!

See the soap holder looking thing on the cabinet? That is supposed to be a foot rest that goes in to the shower alcove. It looks more like a soap thing to me then a foot rest. I think my foot would hurt resting on that.

Tiler has been back

2010-01-02T20:36:00.001+10:30

On my way grocery shopping today I snuck past the house again. As I came up the rise I could see that the laundry door was open. I got really excited because I thought someone was working and I would be able to sneak into the house to have a look!

However it seems that the tiler has been back and finished levelling all the floor areas ready for tiling.

The tiler had jammed the laundry door there shut with something. Hopefully this means he will start tiling in earnest come Monday. I’ve left him a note about tiling to the ceiling in the shower alcoves in both the bathrooms, and also doing the small wall near the toilet in the ensuite grey rather then white. I haven’t heard from him yet, so will try to get up there early Monday and catch him.

I hope he cleans up that mess on the bottom of the cupboards.

Bit of a close up of the laundry sink and bench – the colour is Paprio Storm. We where going to have Polar White doors, which is a really startling white, however they where having a ‘special’ upgrade when we where doing colour selections, so we got these doors that have this fancy edge on them, there was something else special about them. I don’t know, it was late in the colour selection process and I was tired and over it.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-02T12:50:00.001+10:30

Happy new year everyone. This year is going to be great! I am going to get my very first, very own home! So excited!!!

I was going to buy my husband a Japanese maple for Christmas, but the only ones I could find where $200 or more. So I bought him some Japanese maple seeds from eBay for $2. By the time we are set to leave the house in 20 odd years it might have reached full maturity.

Troy has an idea to do two retaining walls across the front of the house and put hedges in front of the retaining walls. Again from eBay I think we might get these http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180431725186&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

Downpipes in the Downtime

2009-12-30T12:41:00.000+10:30

This time over Christmas/ New Years is traditionally a time when tradies go on holidays and nothing gets done. But I got a great Christmas present Down pipes!

Thanks to some questions by someone on the homeone forum I have found this cool idea for my corner cupboards.

I really like the deeper pot draw type ones. I am hoping they either use the current doors or...hmmm I might go dumpster diving and pull out the extra pieces of charcoal laminate. Hubby says "looks expensive" so I might go visit the showroom tommorow and see if it is just a pipe dream.

For my reference the draws come from here...http://www.wilbrad.com.au/

Also for my reference I really like the thoughts behind how to set out your kitchen discussed on this web site. Who would have thought there was a 'science' behind where you put the pots in your kitchen. http://www.dynamicspace.com/dynamicspace/en/04/01/02/index.html

Tiler has been

2009-12-29T12:33:00.000+10:30

Christmas Eve I found a set of builders keys on the front porch. The whole house was left open also. So I took the keys and locked up the house. I left a message for the SS that I had the keys and would put them in the top kitchen draw. I figured no-one would be working Christmas/boxing day and I would put the keys back on the evening of the 28th.

As timing would have it I got to the house at the same time as the SS, so we had a bit of a chat. The tiler had been! He has unpacked all the tiles and opened all the cement bags so that no-one can steal them.

I didn’t have my camera with me, as I didn’t think anything would have been done, so I went up today and took some photos through the window.

Kitchen handles – bathroom and laundry.

2009-12-23T12:28:00.000+10:30

They put all the kitchen handles on today and brushed the doors down, so it looks a little better. They have also put all the WIR draws in. The shelves in the master bedroom are to big and need to be cut back.

I can’t wait to see what it looks like with the bench.

I think I might change the door handles after all. I think square brushed stainless steel ones would look much better.

I have a normal 600 oven but a 900 stove top. I am wondering how ‘deep’ the stovetop is, if it is going to fit entirely in the benchtop, as this space will not fit my 900 stovetop. See the corner cupboard to the left and the HUGE gap in the doors there? I would have thought the doors would fit together better then that. Fridge provision.

Linen cupboard in the hallway

Main bathroom Laundry

Washing machine waste in the laundry, I will have to get my Dad to make a hole in the cupboard so I can put the washing machine hose through.

Walk in robes all have 4 draws and 3 shelves.

The bricks have still not finished. I talked to the SS he told me that the pallets of bricks in SA have 500 bricks, but the pallets from interstate only have 350 bricks. So he asked the office to order 2 pallets, thinking he would get 1000 bricks which would be enough to finish it, however they only got 700 bricks, which was not enough. So waiting on more bricks still! You can see the brickie didn’t put the rest of the insulation in. I am going to have to talk to the SS about that.

Kitchen install has started

2009-12-22T12:10:00.000+10:30

They started putting the kitchen cupboards in today.

Microwave provision with pot drawers.

The pot drawers are wrong, they are supposed to be 144,288,288. I think I will have to take a tape measure up there and measure the depth of them. I think I would rather a shallow big pot drawer.

Range hood in line with the cupboards next to it.

Fridge space.

Pantry – it looks a bit useless really, the shelves are so thin, it’s like you have this great big space then put these peeny weeny shelves in there.

Saturday Tradesmen and a bath - wonders will never cease

2009-12-19T20:38:00.002+10:30

So we went up to the house today, thinking we would try find another way to break in and there was some-one at the house working!! on a Saturday!!

I was able to get some pictures of the much promised bath tub

Complete with its own wildlife

Do you see how beautiful our bricks look even when they are supporting a bath! Though I wonder if this is enough support for the bath? After seeing other peoples blogs of having half a house of bricks shoved under the bath.

The little hoodlum got back in again, and started photo bombing me

The tradie was busy putting all the doors in

Finally - last but not least, the bricks have arrived. Hopefully the brickies will start on Monday and we will be fully bricked.

No bath today

2009-12-17T16:16:00.006+10:30

Notice something missing in the above picture? Yep no bath. According to the SS the bath was supposed to be delivered on Tuesday and the last pallet of bricks on Wednesday. No bath and no bricks.

I had a rare chance to go up to the house today without the youngest two. I helped my daughter through and open window and spent a good bit of time wandering around the house. I noticed a few things that I hadn't before.

Our doors are all in a nice pile. They are all flat profile, hubby and I like to keep things simple, we like nice straight clean lines. I think the 4 smaller ones are for the WIR and the pantry.

This is the challenge I have set for myself. I am trying to work out how high the garage door will be by counting how many bricks there are. Does anyone know how high a brick is?

I read through our Colour Selections, the door frame is to be painted the same colour as the door - Manor red, I have spoken to the SS and asked if I can get it done black instead. So waiting to see what he says.

We are LOCKED out!!

2009-12-14T23:55:00.001+10:30

Went up to the house today, there are doors where doors should be!!

My three year old ran around and tried all the doors, he turned around threw his hands up and said “all locked”.

There is a sticker on the front window from Gliderol, so I can only assume they have measured up the garage door! Can’t wait to see it.

I had a thought that maybe we should get the front door frame painted black and leave the door red. What do you think?

My massively expensive front door handle

All the other internal doors, taken through a very dirty window. You wouldn’t know winter was just finished with all that dead grass in the background!

Much to my relief the door from the garage to the kitchen has a lock also! I was thinking I would have to put one on it after handover.

Observation is not my strong point

2009-12-09T22:57:00.001+10:30

So today I noticed they have remove the scaffolding from the roof! That means the roof is totally finished! I’ve no idea when they did it!

However they only delivered one pallet of bricks when the needed two, so the external walls are not yet finished. I went today to make sure the brickies where putting the insulation in before bricking. They where *yay*

The plasterboard is all finished, I noticed they have drilled little holes where the power points and data points are *another yay* that will make them much easier to find :)

Pantry in the kitchen, you can see the door leading to the garage.

Looking from the Home Theatre room towards the kitchen.

Lounge area

Apparently the back of the linen closet doesn’t get plasterboard.

The toilet is nicely centred.

The scaffolding on the roof is gone, and a little bit more of the bricking done.

This is our ensuite, our feature tile is going to cover the wall on the back. Though seeing it in real life with the plasterboard I think that little section on the left should be done in the feature tile also. I am going to stick a note to the wall hopefully the tiler will see it and we can come to some sort of cash agreement!

This is my daughters walk in robe, hubby asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I told him I wanted to paint the inside of her robe pink! and the inside of the boys robes blue ! Like Annie has done here http://get-me-outa-here.blogspot.com/2009/11/getting-things-ready-for-big-move-on.html

Feeling the Love from our SS

2009-12-08T23:07:00.001+10:30

It seems a lot of people on the Homeone forum have trouble getting in touch with their Site Supervisor and/or getting information out of them. We received a letter on Friday that the building company was shutting down its offices from the 22nd of December until the 11th of January and that while many trades will be on a break, some may choose to work during this time. I remembered in one conversation that I had with our SS that he had a few trades that where wanting to work over the Christmas break. So I rang him today to see if there was anything I could do to help that happen.

He gave me the most exciting information:

Bricks should be finished today or tomorrow
House will be locked up on Monday
Tuesday the bath arrives
Dec 21st the kitchen is going in
the tilers and the painters are both going to work over the break

So killer excited! I guess it is the other side of the hump that will be boring, if nothing happens those first 11 days of Jan.

After school I went up to the house and no bricks had been done. Seems the plasters are finished, it looks like they made a vague attempt to sweep up :( I think I might go sweep up nicely on the weekend again, then take some pictures. I don’t think they have done all the insulation in the roof, I can see through some of the gaps in the plasterboard that there is no insulation. I will have to put it on the list of things to check before PCI, that or borrow Dad’s ladder and go up there to have a look.

I had a stunning idea for the cut-outs near the home theatre room entrance, I think we might use Shoji doors and inserts. They look a bit like this

The other thing I achieved today was to get a closer look at some pavers I have been eyeing off the last few weeks. I drive past this paving place at least once a week, about a month ago they put up some new pavers that caught my eye. I’ve just shown hubby the pictures and he agrees that they will work brilliantly as the pavers around the house. The ones on the right, the Oyster honed.

Birthday Weekend

2009-12-08T22:34:00.004+10:30

So Friday was spent on the phone to the client liaison person trying to point out that the contract did not define the terms of the insulation intuitively so they should put insulation in the garage wall. We argued around this for about half an hour I asked her where the external walls where then, and she said the living/dining wall adjoining the garage. I stated that we had already put insulation in that wall as I had thought it wouldn’t be done, and because I had done that, could they just use the insulation they where going to put in there and put it in the garage wall instead. The answer “Ok we can do that” I had a big lung full of air ready for my argument, so I was a bit knocked over when she said Ok. So Monday morning hubby drove by and Yes we have insulation in the garage wall!

It was my husbands birthday on Sunday, I totally forgot, my Mum rang me on Saturday and said “What does he want for his birthday tomorrow” *eek* So Mum came over and looked after the kids while I dashed of to the shops to buy a last minute birthday present.

I made him scones for breakfast then convinced him to go visit the Japanese gardens in town to get inspiration for our garden. Himeji Gardens brochure link.

I like the tiered tree look, but think it is probably to hard to do.

I think I can do this though, the wrap the tree up and only let it grow out the top look.

We didn’t really get to enjoy the peace and tranquillity of the gardens to much, you see the hooded terror leaving the corner of this picture. That ones mine.

So hubby suggested that we grow little mini hedges in front of the retaining walls that we use out the front, that way it won’t matter what we use for the retaining wall as it won’t be seen. He wanted to use the fancy besa block type retaining walls. I have had to point out to him that because the retaining wall closest to the house has to hold the house back it has to be a heavy duty retaining wall which the besa block ones aren't. Seems he was actually listening to me, and has been thinking about it and come up with the hedge solution. Which I think will look quite good actually.

We went to Hogs Breath for dinner as a special birthday treat. They had a Happy Birthday sign up for him and a cool birthday headband. For my birthday in Feb I would love to be in the new house.

Upon arriving home I officially declared his birthday over and we set up the Christmas tree *yay* we let the kids decorate, so most of the decorations ended up at the one level, and on the one branch.

Plastered

2009-12-03T20:44:00.001+10:30

The plasterers put up the external wall insulation yesterday, and didn’t do the garage! So now I have to contact the builder to discuss the finer detail of the contract and what they define ‘external’ walls as.

I went up to the house early this morning on my way to work, to make sure they didn’t plaster the garage wall. The guy I spoke to said they would be doing it on Monday. The client liaison wasn’t in the office today, so tomorrow I will have to discuss it with her.

When I went to the house to see there progress this afternoon I noticed they had done the pantry, but then I was walking around thinking “They haven't done anything, a whole day and they haven't done anything.”

Then I looked up. We have a ceiling!

So here are some pictures of our wall insulation and some ceilings.

Before

After

Yes cutting out all those pieces was like some sort of demented jigsaw puzzle!

Some massive fat ceiling batts

The pantry, where my bits of insulation have started falling out. I hope the gyprockers put it back in :(

The beginnings of a ceiling

Electrical Wiring and Data Cables

2009-12-02T11:05:00.001+10:30

I went up to the house on Thursday and noticed that all the electrical wiring had been done. I rang the SS and asked when the gyprocking was happening his reply was "They should be there now" *eek* I was at work, and freaking out because we hadn't done the data cabling or put in the extra sound insulation that we wanted.

There was no action at the built site as I headed home. So Sunday we got the Jim's Antenna guy out and we cabled the whole house up with data cables. Two points in each room of the house. We have them terminating in the WIR in our room. Hubby says he can buy a switch and we can choose if the points are data points or phone points.

So rang the SS again, "yep definitely that are starting Wednesday"
So that gives me Tuesday, my day off to organise the extra insulation that we want.

Monday at work I rang a few places and worked out the cheapest place to buy it. Tuesday I asked my Dad to meet me at the store I had chosen, with his van. There where 21 bags of insulation total. We had to do it in two trips.

Halfway back to the house on the 2nd trip my Dad’s van engine blew up! Smoke pouring out everywhere, here we were on Main South Rd, with a van full of insulation! Dad was following me, he pulls out like this chicken wire and says “You can tow me!” WHAT!!! with this little piece of wire!!!

Luckily this guy in a courier van saw what was going on and lent us his tow rope. Thank God. Well sort of not really, I only have a little Hyundai – it’s sole purpose in life is to drive me to around the city nothing as insane as towing this massive van. I have to turn the air-con off to go up a hill!

Scariest 15 mins of my life towing the van. I totally blew a red light, because I just wasn’t stopping, it took so much effort to get the car moving, the smell! I can only imagine the damage I’ve done to the gear box. My tow bar is now an extra 15cm out from the car.

But at least we got the insulation to the new house.

I took Dad home, then went home and had dinner. Mum and Dad met us back at the house at 7pm and we worked until it was to dark to see. It was as surprisingly easy as everyone says it is. I bought a cheap knife from Big W, and the batts just ‘sat’ inside the frame we didn’t need to secure it with anything.

It was to dark to take photos, I will take some later today.

We didn’t quite finish it, I figured I would go up there today and try asking the gyprockers into doing it for me. I get a phone call from my Mum at 7am this morning. “Get dressed and meet us at the house”. So we finished it all off this morning.

I’ve just rang the SS and he tells me they have been delayed and won’t be doing it until next week now :(

I just hope all the stuff doesn’t blow out before then :( As the bricking isn’t finished and one whole wall is exposed.

Bricks, Bricks and more Bricks

2009-11-25T23:07:00.001+10:30

Just lots of photos of the latest brick work, because I just love how it looks, and it is all that is going on at the moment. Oh the skip has a flowerpot, some old roof tiles and a suitcase in it!

The front of the house – You have to squint your eyes and imagine the guttering is black – no idea why they put it up and _then_ paint it.

Left hand side of the house, looking toward the front of the house, then looking toward the back of the house

Across the back of the house – It has been so long since we have seen it, and it hasn’t been covered in brick pallets that I almost forgot what it looks like.

They make a bit of a mess on the inside

Right near the front door we have this anomaly in the bricks, it is raised. I think it looks like a head, my husband thinks it looks like something a little more phallic, hopefully it will come off when the brickies do there clean!.

I hope they have enough bricks to finish!

November – Roof and Bricks start

2009-11-24T19:18:00.001+10:30

The weather has not been kind to our tradesmen, they have been working from 5am to 10am, and on the weekends. The week after these temperatures it got to 42 degrees two days in a row.

November 5th – Roof tiles arrive

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November 9th – They are working fast despite the heat

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November 13th – The bricks have been magically re-arranged

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November 14th – It is so hot, nothing is happening. We are sleeping in the lounge, as this photo by my 3 year old shows. No idea what ungodly hour of the morning he took this photo as we are all asleep, except the baby that is.

November 17th – Brick work starts!

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I am not happy with the brown ends that are showing. Have spoken to the SS about getting them replaced. My Mum thinks they give the house ‘character’ I didn’t pay $6500 extra for brown bricks. We want, grey, grey and more grey!

November 20th – More bricks, and a power box.

November 23rd – Am suffering a severe bout of gastro. Hubby took some progress pictures for me. I would have sent him back for more today, but he has gastro to :( Hopefully tomorrow I will be alright to drive.

We are having black guttering and down pipes, so hopefully that will break the grey up enough.

We deliberately choose grey roof tiles to reflect heat and to lower heat absorption.

October 20th – 31st / Frame and Windows

2009-10-31T17:57:00.000+10:30

I have been slack in updating the blog.

So here we go October 20, wood arrives and frame starts.

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October 21 – They are working fast.

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October 24 – Frame is finished – Check out all the excess nails we cleaned up

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October 25th We had an independent inspection done.

All the red marks are where they missed extra bits of wood, or extra bracing.

They have all been fixed now. Some other things we noticed was that the cut-outs didn’t match the door height, and the porch post was put right in front of the window.

October 26th – Windows arrive – Termite protection done.

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October 27th – Plumbing is done. Apparently the guys doing the frame squished the pipe that had been nicely done through the slab, so the plumber had to do some dodgy coming out the side of the house ugly thing.

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October 28th - Windows go in.

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October 31st – Brickies Sand and Shed arrives. – White Sand and Bright White mortar

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OMG BRICKS!! We have bricks

2009-10-17T22:45:00.000+10:30

Bricks are the one thing you spend so long agonizing over, so many conversations with my husband, so many trips to display villages and looking at houses built with different bricks. To have them actually arrive is so thrilling and exciting.

On the homeone forum I have read so many people go “My bricks have arrived and I hate them, they totally where not what I was expecting”

I spent so much time and effort choosing my bricks, and paid $6000 extra to have my bricks that I was confident that I would love them on site.

My bricks have arrived and I hate them!! They are totally not what I was expecting!

Worse then that, the guy who delivered the bricks was totally useless (according to my neighbour) and dropped a whole pallet of bricks down the slope.

I’ve grabbed a few bricks to take the display home and compare against.

I’ve put the brick out on the back footpath so that I have to pass it on my way to the washing line. I need to fall in love with it again.

We have a port-a-loo

2009-10-15T22:28:00.000+10:30

We flew back in from Darwin at 6.20 am this morning, it was a long flight with the kids. I had the day off, but had booked the kids into childcare so that I could get some sleep. On my way back home after dropping the boys off I went by the block.

I was delightfully surprised to find them doing the trench work for the sewer,and we have a PORT-A-LOO !! we are a real building site now :)

I spoke to the guys doing the trench work about where they where laying the pipe, I pointed out to them that on there designs they had it going very close along the front of the house. “Oh he said, I hadn’t noticed that” so good thing I picked up on that one, otherwise we would be trying to put in a retaining wall to find a ruddy great sewer pipe in the way.

Gee it’s a good thing I paid all that money for a retaining wall with scree and piping and stuff running behind it. Can you see the scree dug out to the side there *sigh*

They also managed to bury all the orange plastic you can see, that is supposed to be up against the slab. I am going to have to dig it up again before doing any paving or concreting :(

Footings Report

2009-10-08T22:10:00.000+10:30

We had an independent inspector come in and do a report on the slab. His notes are as below. On the front page he had a photo of the slab, it is an angle that I don’t have a photo off yet. So here it is :)

1.2.0 finishing 1.2.1 completion -The finishing off to the slab surface looks generally comparatively reasonable. There are signs of over pour around the perimeter of the footings. In many instances this looks like minor to moderate, seemingly extending from the face by no much more depth of the boards/formwork used in most areas. However in my opinion the excessive over pour should be removed to minimise risks of moisture ingress/slab edge dampness in the future.

1.2.2 footing beams - The surface finish of the exposed edge beams looks rough in some areas with scaly texture that looks to be flaking in some areas along with some minor blowholes. However, in my opinion, due to the blowholes being minor and the majority situated below the 75mm recommended exposure for the top of the footings, no additional works are required. 1.2.3 flatness - Tolerances are within the recommended +/- 10mm as per Engineers footing construction report. 1.2.4 vapour barrier /damp proof membrane Vapour barrier/damp proof membrane appears to match that of recommended information. In some instances the vapour barrier falls short and will not extend to paving level - therefore a suitable waterproof compound should be applied to footing beam (Zypex or the like) prior to paving. As stated in 1.2.1 - Completion, there is some excessive concrete overpour in some areas that may effect the function of the vapour barrier/damp proof membrane to the footing beam edge. I suggest the excessive over pour should be removed to allow the vapour barrier/damp proof membrane to protect the footing beam.

1.4.0 set downs

showers Ensuite shower setdown has been constructed differently from plan (oversized). Rectification work (screeding) will need to be carried out ensuring it does not effect the integrity of waterproofing.

We where in Darwin on holiday when we got this report, so I sent it on to the client liaison team, who said they would forward it to the engineers. I don’t think they are going to act on it at all. Though I will be keeping an eye on the shower alcove thing to make sure we don’t get a leak!

Slab Picnic

2009-10-03T20:39:00.000+09:30

They finished pouring the slab on the Friday 2nd October. So on Saturday we went up and had a bit of a picnic on the slab with my parents. We flew kites and drank champagne. I think people driving by thought we where terribly odd.

My Dad opening the champagne while my Mum and 2 year old play with the kite.

My daughter standing in ‘her’ room. It rained a little, which I am hoping is good for the slab. Do you see the mess the concreters made on the retaining wall at the back? I am hoping that I can talk to the brickies and see if they can clean it off a bit for me.

My boys :)

Garage Slab Poured

2009-09-30T20:02:00.001+09:30

Hubby took the kids up to the block today while I was at work. He rang me quite excited to state that they had poured the garage slab!!!

My work colleague Roy suggested that I get the kids to put there handprints in the cement. My hubby didn’t want them to get dirty hands, so I reminded him of the wipes in the car. He rang me later to say the cement was to hard, so they wrote there initials instead :)

Roy drove me home (as hubby had the car) and to my delight agreed to go past the block on the way home!! *yay* I managed to take a few dodgy photos with my camera phone will take more tomorrow with the camera.

They made a huge mess of all the excess concrete on the neighbours block! I would be spewing if I was them.

Rain, Rain go away I wanted my slab today

2009-09-21T17:10:00.001+09:30

After dropping my daughter at school I had to go to the hospital to see a Dr, by the time I got up to the block it was 11am and raining. It looks like they got as far as laying out all the string to mark the edges of the slab when the heavens opened. So instead of some lovely trenches being dug all I have is some string :( Not happy Jan, we had such amazingly good weather over the weekend to.

The weather forecast for the next three days is wet and shitty, followed by more wet and shitty. Looks like Friday might be fine, I am guessing they won’t do anything until next week Monday now :(

Ok so it was a day of extreme weather with hail storms, lighting, thunder, trees coming down and all that….. pussies, they could still sit in a metal machine on the side of a barren hill digging trenches.

On a positive note my hubby has been busy taking calls from people’s computers that have gone belly up in the storm.

Retaining wall completed

2009-09-16T20:49:00.001+09:30

I am just going to post photos and do the writing later, I am really tired after my first day back at work.

Sleepers with the Colorbond Woodland Grey sample. The fences have to be Woodland Grey.

I don’t get the tradesman needs to leave rubbish everywhere. Next time I go to the block I am taking a bag to pick up all the rubbish they left. There’s also half a sleeper left over. I have to convince hubby to come pick it up with me.

The piece of wood says “Return for deposit”

The are going to dig the trenches on Monday, so going to go over the weekend and duct tape all the plastic up nicely.

Site Cut

2009-09-15T16:41:00.001+09:30

Our site cut started Wednesday last week, one day early!

I noticed they had done the site scrape on the Tuesday, so took my husband up early Wednesday morning to have a look. There was a guy working on the cut, a supervisor arrived as we got out of the car and I went over and talked to him.

The plans had the retaining wall coming across the back of the block and then dog legging in toward the house. I asked if they could take the cut all the way out to the stormwater easement and there fore give me a little room at the back of the house for my washing line.

You can see the triangle here. The sleeper you can see poking up on the left if the survey peg for the neighbour behind and where the stormwater easement goes off.

And here it is cut out (looking from the other direction).

See how they piled all the soil over there near where the retaining wall has to go. Yeah that’s what the retaining wall guy said to.

In the picture below see where the grass is scraped too on the right side? You can just see the survey peg up the back, that is our boundary! Our block looks to be all house and no yard at the moment! Hopefully when the slab goes down it won’t look so huge. I took our daughter out to look after school all she could say was “We have no yard”

The Olive Tree

2009-09-09T22:05:00.001+09:30

At some stage there must have stood a massive olive tree on our block. When we first saw the signs of it, we thought it was a weed.

	<—The first signs
	As it got bigger and bigger we eventually realised that it was offshoots from an olive tree stump.
	I rang the contractors and asked them to please make sure they dug it out for me. When we went this morning there was a pile of stumps.
	That was just the beginning. By the end of the day there where stumps everywhere; it seems this olive tree must have been huge. You can see there are still roots in the sides of the battening they have done. This is a good 5mtrs away from the trunk. !

Today I received a letter in the mail from the Onkaparinga council, informing me of my responsibility to keep down the ‘weeds’ on our vacant block and to do so within 14 days or we would receive a fine! Well they are all gone now :)

I think we started

2009-09-08T18:13:00.001+09:30

This is a photo of the block on Saturday.

I took some soup to my Mum who was sick, and on the way home I went past the block, to see if they had dropped the machinery off for the site start on Thursday, and this is what I saw.

I hope this means they have started!! There is a lot less soil moved then I thought… and the cut up the back is supposed to be 1.4mtrs. So hubby and I are going to have a closer look tomorrow.

I would be beyond excited if I wasn’t so tired. Hopefully I can get a good sleep tonight so I can be excited tomorrow. I rang the retaining wall person that we have contracted, he is going to have a look at it tomorrow, he said he can dig the trenches Thursday, put in the steel Friday, have the sleepers delivered Monday and be done by Tuesday :)

Survey pegs missing and site cut on the 10th.

2009-09-04T11:57:00.003+09:30

So after playing phone tag with a woman at Statesman for two days she finally leaves me a voicemail message with her email address and a message that the site works can't commence as there is a survey peg missing.

I knew that when we had the site re-surveyed before purchasing that they put some site pegs in the ground, I also remembered seeing a survey peg laying in the mud in the reserve area across the road from our place.

I figured I could just roughly measure out the distance from the survey peg that was there and I would find the one on the ground easy. So I bundled the 2 year old and the baby into the car with the tape measure.

I got the the block and put Sam in the pram and walked up to about where the peg would be. I kicked around a bit with my sneaker and found nothing. I got the tape measure and measured 8mtrs (as long as the tape was) and then got Tomasz to stand in the spot and hold onto the tape measure, and measured out another 8 mtrs, then got him to come stand again, and measured a final 4 mtrs. I kicked about a bit and still found nothing. I was going to need a shovel!!

I walked up the hill and knocked on the door of one off the few houses that have been completed in the estate. Luckily someone was home and I borrowed a shovel. I measured out again with the help of my two year old, he was actually pretty good at holding the tape measure for me!

I scraped the gound with the shovel and found the buried peg easily!! I pushed the pram back down the hill, across the road and into the scrub, found the survey peg, pushed the pram back up the hill, and hammered the survey peg in with the back of the shovel. I got my 2 year old to hold the survey peg whilst I hammered it in. I stood back to observe my work and when I looked up there was a heap of guys pouring a slab two blocks away watching me!!

I came home and finally got the lady from Statesman on the phone, she gave me the name of the company that was going to do our site cut, then she mentioned "They are actually currently working on a slab two blocks down from you" I hope the bloody supervisor who said there was a peg missing noticed how 'easy' it was for me to find said peg!!

So I rang the company today to give them the details of my retaining wall guy, and to see if they can dig up the olive stump in the middle of our block. No problem with the stump, and they have us booked in for the 10th to do the site cut. The 10th !!! whohooo I think Tomasz, Sam and I are going to spend the day sitting in the car watching the digger work :)

I will have to go take some photos of the block on the weekend. The last time it shall be barren!! So excited!!!

Released to Construction

2009-08-18T15:10:00.000+09:30

Well I got a phone call this morning from Richard at Statesman, they where missing a signed variation form, and he needed it as soon as possible because they want to release us to construction this Friday !!!

I knew exactly which form it was; the $38,000 footings one!

So as I had to go in to the city today anyways I thought I would drop them off myself. This gave me the chance to talk to Richard and express my concerns about the placement of the sewer line. It goes diagonally across the front of the block, if they do this we won't be able to put in a retaining wall where I want to. So he drew line and said "sewer here" and I signed it. Will wait and see if I get charged a $250 variance for that!

He said they are currently at about 3 weeks til they start once it is released. So if I am really lucky we will get something started by the 7th of September. I go back to work on 14th, so I will be very excited if they start before I go back to work. Thats all I want. He did say they are building them alot faster at the moment also. I wonder what that means :) dare I dream that we might be in by Christmas????

Bathroom tiles

2009-08-04T12:19:00.004+09:30

While we where at Hickinbotham freaking out about the footings I took some photos of the selections we made.

Door handles in the bathroom and kitchen.

Floor tiles in the bathroom, laundry and ensuite.

'Feature' wall tile in the ensuite and bathroom. One wall will be this tile the other three walls the white tile. The weird sploches on the tile are the reflections from the overhead lights.

Bathroom wall tile in a display home.

I said to my hubby on the weekend that I wanted to go to the display home again, just to remind myself what all this heartache was about. We went out to Seaford to see a display home that was built using the bricks we have chosen. Sorbetto

We then drove a bit around the Seaford estate area looking for a house that was being built that was the "Adelaide". As luck would have it there was a house for sale that was open, that was the Adelaide !!

We went in for a look. Hubby and I got in to the ensuite shower together. Yep plenty of room in there for the two of use!! That was a big concern to him.....

The kitchen had the pantry that we are having which was good to see. So I felt a little better.

Just have to hope they get building soon!

The MASSIVE footings cost.

2009-08-04T11:39:00.002+09:30

So several things I suppose since the last update.

Where to start.....

The first footings report came in at $16,000 with an added $11,500 for soil removal. We where like WTF! So we went in to Hickinbotham/Statesman and talked to the Engineer guy who does all the pricing for them and what not.

He said if we lower the garage by 600mm this will raise the level of the house and the soil removal should drop down to about $2000. So we said "Ok lets do it"

We got a variation cost of $5000 to drop the garage down 600mm, but we figured since we would get $9000 back from the soil removal we would be $4000 in front.

We got the second Engineers report $28000 for footings, and $2800 for soil removal !!!!! !!!!

I can't put in enough !!!! I was depressed, angry, upset, despondant, frustrated you name it I felt it. I almost felt like laughing manically. It couldn't be true could it!!

So we went in to see Tom the engineer at Statesman. He outlined that they had to put mesh in here, had to pour extra cement for the steps in the garage, had to do two concrete pours, one for the top layer and then one for the garage. They had to put in extra mesh around the garage and that because the front of the house is now slightly higher then before there is more fill so they have to put in these 900 deep piers that cost about $1000 each and we need 9 of them!!!

And we still need massive retaining walls around the side and back!

So what retaining walls do the neighbours need? are they up against our block? says she who knows the neighbours are also building with Hickinbotham. Oh they don't need any retaining and there footings are $16,000 total. They have a perfect cut and fill, there house sits pefecting on the block, couldn't have picked a better house design if they tried!!! ARRGGHHH they have a two storey house, seems that we would have been better of building a 'squat' two storey house. So we toyed with this idea for a moment........

Since two storey houses start at around $200k and we would have to sign a new contract and start all over again with council approval etc that wasn't really an option.

So we *sighed* and signed.

I bet you anything they hit rock :(

At least another 7 weeks

2009-07-23T10:37:00.002+09:30

I just spoke to a lady at council.
When the report finally comes back from the CFS it will be two weeks before the coucil guy signs off on it. Then it will be sent back to the builder, who has to get a private company to certify it and apply for licenses etc then they send that back to council then council approves it.
She said the quickest all that paper work has ever been done has been 4 weeks. Thats the quickest!!

So at least another week before the CFS has to get there report in, and from talking to the CFS ladies they are going to take there sweet time and not post it till the the day before it is due, then 2 week with council, then another 4 weeks. So 7 more weeks before the builders even get approval.

Then the builders have a 6 week 'good to go', so 13 more weeks before we get our slab. So if we are _lucky_ and I use that word loosely - we will have a slab by the 9th of October. Then if we are really lucky it will only take 6 months to build, but you have to add a month for all the dingdonging around Christmas so maybe May next year we might have the house. MAY, MAY!!
I don't even want to think about it or I might just go postal on someone.

I feel like going postal on the CFS ladies. This one woman is so fricking rude on the phone. So nasty, I ask her how the report is progressing, what it is up to and she is like "We have until the 30th to complete it" that is all she says. She reminds me of our extrememly frustrating and totally incompetent Sales Consultant. I seriously feel like going up to the CFS in Mt Barker and just sitting there with three screaming kids for days on end and asking her how she likes it. I'm sure there offices are bigger then this bloody small rental we are in.

I am restraining myself from going postal over the phone, as I am sure if I do our fire rating will go from Low to HIGH. But how fricking ridiculous is it that we have to have a fire rating at all. There isn't a tree for miles, we are in the middle of a fucking building development. arrghhhh arrggghhhh I just feel like screaming all day long. I think I need to go buy some Rescue Remedy and try to calm down.

Waiting on CFS fire rating

2009-06-30T14:30:00.002+09:30

Well we are at a standstill while we wait for the CFS fire rating to be done. I rang the CFS last week and apparantly the one guy who does it is on leave. So two weeks at least before he starts doing them again . Then another 6 weeks or so to go through council. *arrghhhh* if it isn't one hold up it's another.

The council bloke states that we have to have the fire rating done because the small area that we are building in is rated a high fire risk due to the fact that it used to be a reserve/farmland. This rich family in Adelaide about 100 years ago bought up vast tracks of land, and then let them somewhat return to there natural state, they are now slowly selling this land piece by piece and making a killing. So the CFS rated these areas as fire risks, now that we are building they still have that rating and need to be assessed even though every tree within the area has been raised.

We still havn't gotten the second engineers report back, I rang Statesman yesterday, apparantly the external engineer had some big project come in, so they dropped everything to work on that.
Thats what they get for paying them pittance, so now it will be at least two weeks before that comes back.

Now that we are paying interest on the $180k for the land getting things to hurry along is all the more urgent.

The Gold range bricks

2009-06-30T11:57:00.005+09:30

We changed our brick selection from Oyster, that we thought was just a bit to dark to Sorbetto, this upgrade cost us $2500. So I hope they look good. If they don't I think I will never hear the end of it from hubby, who wanted to go for the bronze or standard range bricks from Austral called Almond. I just found them too yellow.

Spoke to the Neighbours

2009-06-24T11:45:00.002+09:30

Well since we now actually own the land and arn't backing out I thought I would see if I could get in contact with the neighbours and make sure they didn't use the same brick as us. IF I'm paying $2500 extra for a brick them I am not having the two houses next to us using the same brick, thats for sure!!

So the person to the left has bought the block to build a rental property on. He still hasn't decided on a builder but was/is leaning towards the same builder that we are using.

The couple to the right is Scottish, I could barely understand a word they said! They have a girl who is a year younger then my daughter, and a son the same age as mine. She is a nurse and he used to be a police officer. I talked to her about choosing laminates and tiles and where to go. They currently live in the same area that we are building, so hopefully they may keep a bit of an eye on the build for us.

I did however stress to both of them NOT to use the same brick we are ;) But now I am thinking that might backfire and when they go to selections the only name in there brains may be that of my brick :(

Hopefully though since the people to the right are using the same builder as us the builder might be able to come up with something for the retaining wall.

Land Ownership - It's settled

2009-06-20T12:55:00.003+09:30

Well I missed the phone call to tell me that our land had settled! But they finished with all the paperwork and what not at about 12:10pm yesterday. So we now own a big old chunk of Australia, with the biggest weed you have ever seen smack bang in the middle of it.

I told my husband that we should go up there and open a bottle of wine and have a drink on our land. But he didn't get home till 6.30pm and it was dark and late, we where going to go up this afternoon, but it is pouring down with rain. So maybe later in the week, and we can then just fudge the date on the photo.

We all have colds at the moment, so the thrill of it all is seriously tempered by feeling so ratched.

In the mail yesterday we also got notice from Statesman of our total project cost so far. We sat down and tried to work out the sums in our cold addled heads. If we have it worked out right, we should have $10,000 left over at the end of the build. That's if the footings costs come down by the $9000 that Statesman expects them to. So I think we can get carpet put in the bedrooms and home theatre room before we move in. But no tiles in the main areas, it will be an adventure, I was thinking I could get some cheap carpet runners and run them down the hallways, we already have a big red mat that can go in front of the teli in the living area, and then I can get some rubber types mats to go down in the kitchen. We can call it an 'adventure' a bit like having milk crate furniture when you first move out of home.

On an altogether different note, I had a phone call from a girl who asked if I could witness some documents for her. So I have preformed my very fist duties as a Justice of the Peace. Poor girl was here for an hour while I read through the booklet to see what I had to do.

Hubby is due home with lunch soon, we might drive out to the block and at least take a photo through the car window, we should mark the even in some way.

Building Insurance and Council Letter

2009-06-17T21:32:00.002+09:30

We got a letter in the mail today, from the builder. It contained a Policy Certificate number for the builders insurance. Oddly enough it doesn't say how long the insurance is for. The amount that it is insured for is also less then the total cost of our project. But I guess they took out the insurance before we did colour selections.

The second bit of paper states that our new home has now been submitted to council. I wonder what plan they submitted, as the engineers report hasn't come back on our alterations. Or do councils not worry about things like footings and retaining walls? Do they just want to know what the house plan is?

The letter points out the 3 stages of council approval, then states "In total the approximate time frame for approval is 10 -12 weeks.

We might just see about that, apparantly a few calls to the council can not hurt. So I might ring them tommorow and see if they have actually recieved it. Then I might call Statesman again to see if the Engineers report is done. I really want to know what the new footings will be. Once we have that amount then we will have a final figure, and I can have a heart attack or a Pims and a lie down.

Final Colour Selection Variations

2009-06-16T11:24:00.003+09:30

I saw a picture in some-ones blog where they had the washing machine space near the door, then the washing tub and then some open benchspace with open space underneath. So I sent the picture to my colour selections girl and asked her if I could have my laundry like that, or if it would cost me to change it.

She sent me back an email that the laundry door would hit the washing machine and it probally wouldn't be a good idea. As I was busily measuring the washing machine she actually rang!!

We talked about it for a bit and she suggested a brilliant alternative. Move the washing machine space to right over next to the laundry cupboard, then reduce the size of the cupboard that the laundry trough is sitting in and then have the open bench space. So I said "yeppers" so in the laundry it will be (from the outside door) 2 cm bench, laundry trough, 110cm bench, washing machine space (700mm), laundry cupboard.

The laundry trough will be in a 700mm cupboard, which is what our rental laundry trouch is in, and I can fit all my chemicals in there fine.

I am excited about the 110cm of benchspace. Down the track we are hoping to put in some overhead shelving, with a rail, then I can do my ironing and hang the clothes up on the rail. All my dry clothes should fit on this bench space! (as it is the same size as the couch I now currently put dry clothes on) It just means I will have to fold the washing when I take it off the line, as compared to throwing it in the basket and dumping it on the couch as I do now. Hmm but I won't be able to watch telli when ironing, just look at a blank wall....

The best bit about it all, is because I am reducing from a 1200 cupboard to a 700 cupboard they are going to give me back $155 for all these changes :) *stoked*

Hopefully I will recieve in the mail tommorow or Thursday the final pricing for all the colour selections and an interm pricing for the whole project. Not looking forward to seeing that amount I can tell you.

Signed the bank papers

2009-06-10T19:16:00.002+09:30

Well, I think we signed the Construction Loan today. I thought there would have been more fanfare, or the sound of chains clinking, or something. Instead I recognised the woman from my son's childcare, and we talked about childcare, and her kids and then there was a fight outside the bank, so we watched some women fight, then the police came. Then we continued signing 'here' and 'here' and 'here' she gave us our copy of the paper and off we went.

That was it, I think I just signed papers that says I owe a lot of money for the next 30 years. Feels a bit unreal somehow.

I wonder how I will feel on the 19th when we actually own a block of land.
I guess it will sink in when I see the extra line in my online banking that says "awfully huge homeloan over here"

Statesman are being there normal bumbly selves. They rang, our plans are with the colour consultant, she will have them til Friday, then they will go to the Engineers, then maybe two weeks with the Engineers. *sigh*

I've sent the colour consultant about 3 emails now asking about the pricing of the bricks, and the laminate and the paint, all the things she was supposed to get back to me about, and not a word. It's been a week since we had our colour selection. Not happy Jan.

Colour Selections

2009-06-07T15:51:00.004+09:30

Well after spending hours in Beaumonts, and buying sample tiles and sample paints, we went into colour selections and chose completely different tiles and bricks and everything.

I had my heart set on a white brick called 'seacliff' but there was absolutely no way I could hae it. So we made a last minute decision to use Oyster. Though I would rather sorbetto, we are waiting for the colour consultant to get back to us with the price of it.

So selection extras are:
Electrical $110 - one extra power point
Brickwork $1855 - upgrade to PGH Oyster and light mortar
Insulation $580 - upgrade ceiling to R4.0 (this is on top of an already upgrade price we paid to go to R3.0
Window Finishes $420 to go to black window frames
Painting interior $1653 because I want to do the wall colour half strength they will have to do 3 coats, so we will get washable paint also, and cost us more to have the skirtings, doors ceiling white
Kitchen joinery - $1409 for the diamond gloss laminate, and pot drawers
bathroom $545 - silver tiles upgrade

any way, at the end of a very long 3 hours we are $5680 extra, on top, so we are going to have to rethink a few things :(

So choices are

Brickwork - PGH Oyster
Mortar colour - Light - white sand
Roof - Boral Capri Mid Grey tiles
Garage Door - Manor Red, Hampton smooth finish
Gutters/fascias/downpipes/verandah post - monument
Windows frames - satin black
Front door - manor red
Verandah - grey 400x400 tile

Interior:
Walls : Cumulus 1/2 strength 3 coat washable
Doors/skirting/aves : ceiling white - I thought this wouldn't cost me anything, but because they have to 'cut' the paint in, it is a small fortune

Kitchen:
Benchtops: laminex white valencia diamondgloss
Door : laminate Charcoal - flint finish
Door profiles: plain face
Kitchen splashback: 97325 100x300 stacked horizontal - a mat white tile
kickers: Formica brushed aluminium
a microwave provision and 2 sets of 3 pot drawers. (144,288,288)

Linen door - in hallway charcoal

Ensuite and bathroom
Door profile - plain
Doors : classic white - we went with some free offer they had on these nice lookign doors
polished crome taps and fittings and shower screen, crome plug holes, square crome floor drainers
Benchtop - Paprio Storm - velour finish

Bathroom main tiles 97284 300x600 vertical - a rectified polished white tile
frieze tile 97418 300x600 vertical - a grey tile
floor tiles 97417 300x300 same colour as the frieze tile

So in the ensuite the back wall of the shower will be the grey 97418 tile. So the floor tile will in effect run up the wall, hopefully making the ensuite look longer.

The white basins will be sitting in a grey benchtop, so they should stand out. The bathroom walls will be this polished white tile. The grout in the white tiles will be white, the grout in the floor tiles will be grey. I think the freize tile, the grey tile on the back wall will have white grout.

In the main bathroom, the floor tile will be grey, then the tiles around the bath and behind the bath will be the grey tile. The other walls will be white.

So yeah, I hope it looks good. I am going to take all the sample tiles back to beaumonts, and hopefully get some good pictures of the other tiles we have chosen to use instead. The pics of the tiles on the beaumont website are awful.

This is the grey wall tile from the beaumonts website

Footings report

2009-05-26T12:58:00.002+09:30

Well the footings variation came back in at $14k more than the estimated $20k if we build it as is we will have a 2mtr high retaining wall along the back wall of the house. The kids rooms will be looking out onto retaining wall.

They suggested either a split house design, or we sink the garage down. So we have to go back to our semi useless sales consultant and I don't know, start the whole process again?

The extra money will put us into the realm of needing mortage insurance which we where hoping to avoid.

I am so totally bummed by it all. It's to hard, I just want to turn around and walk away.

The baby is really sick, he has had a temp since Saturday and is barely sleeping, he is vommitting and crying, the last thing I need is to have to make a 101 phone calls to try sort out what to do. Hubby seems to have given up on the whole project also, playing his bloody computer games all night long.

*sigh* time to start with the phone calls.

Silk purse out of a sow's ear

2009-05-17T16:06:00.004+09:30

I really want our bathroom to look luxurious but not cost a fortune. So I went to the Blackwood Park display village. All the exclusive (read expensive) builders have display homes there.

I think I have hit on a few points as to what makes a bathroom and ensuite look expensive.

1. Rectified porcelain tiles on the bathroom walls
2. Only have the feature tile on one wall
3. Have the cabinetry in the WIR made out of the same laminate as the bathroom.
4. Shiny, flat wall tiles - I was going to have wavy white wall tiles, but have definitely decided against it now.

From talking to this one guy, whose Dad does the building and he sits in the display homes, he told me that you can get a rectified ceramic tile. So going to go the Beaumonts and look for one.

I have to get to Tile Italia also to look for a new floor tile.

Crap floor tiles

2009-05-09T11:41:00.003+09:30

Well I thought I loved these floor tiles from Beaumonts. The small sample of laminate that I have off our benchtop looked great on it.

So yesterday I went into the city and bought a sample of the floor tile, a massive 300 x 600 porcelain tile. Then I went to the laminate shop with it and put it next to the big piece of laminate that they have of the bench top I have picked. It looked terrible. They don't look anything like each other. So not happy. Now I am having second thoughts on the laminate benchtop I have picked for the kitchen, and I have to go out and find a new floor tile.

I found some black pebbles in a shop that gets there tiles from Beaumonts, so I went and asked at Beaumonts about that pebble. They have discontinued it :( so looks like I am going to have to make my own pebble feature tiles after all. So another loss for the day.

I did have one win, we have picked a grey laminate sample for the bathroom benchtop. Called Paprio Storm

Extended Settlement

2009-05-07T19:22:00.005+09:30

Well after many phone calls and much stress our settlement has been ammended to June.
Now I have to keep on Statesman to get the bank pack from them.

I went in and spoke to the bank manager today, she told me that in order to make the settlement date she would need the bank pack from Statesman by the 28th of May. So I will have to keep on them to get the engineers report and footings report done.

I've not been sleeping well and an really to tierd to put more.

I went and saw a tiler today to get a quote on tiling the house in this porcelain tile that I like. He suggested the I get a 300x600 tile and lay it 'brick' style. I am going to have to do a bit of searching to find a floor like it and see what I think.

I have a picture of a display home where I can just see the edge of the tiles are laid like it. So now I am going to have to work out which display home it was and where and go back and visit it.

Here is the picture.

I went and visited a friend in Aldinga Beach last Friday, she was showing me around her newly built home. She told me that at there colour selection it was recommended that they have the darker colour as the bench top and lighter colour as doors in the bathroom because they where having dark bathroom tiles.

I can see why, her bathroom looks really good with the dark tile floor, light cupboard doors and dark bench top.

So now I am thinking I am going to have to go back to the laminate place and have a look at dark benchtops. I think I will stay with the Silver Grey as the cupboard doors, as it will match the grout we are going to use in the tiles. But I am thinking of one of the two following laminates for the bench top.

Heavenly

Ironstone

anywho .. going to put the kids to bed early so I can go to bed.

Wall Colours

2009-04-17T21:05:00.001+09:30

In preperation for a very quick turn around at colour selection I also made a decision on the wall colour.

We have to choose from the Solver Builders Paint range, or be charged a fortune. So I have chosen the Cumulus colour, apparantly it is the only paint that is white with just black. Though apparantly there black is a little 'blue'.

I went shopping today and bought a sample pot of Cumulus, and a canvas from a Reject shop. I will paint it up tommorow and see what it looks like.

The guys at the Solver store said they could 'give me a deal' on buying paint for the whole house, that I would need about 300 ltrs ? or that it would cost $300. 300 ltrs seems a lot, but I guess it is a big house. The Solver guys said to let Statesman do there thing, and then get a seperate painter in to paint with the 'washable' paint they have.

So I will email Statesman and ask for a quote on getting 3 coats of paint, the top two coats with this Maxi Wash paint. Then I will ask this painter that does painting for Dad what he would charge to just do the walls. He won't have to do the skirting boards as they will have been done by the builder. So photos tommorow of my wall paint, hopefully :)

Carpet selections

2009-04-17T20:52:00.003+09:30

The bank manager told us that if we get quotes for carpet and tiling we can add it in to the home loan. These are two things that we have missed out of building cost in order to save money and get a better price (as suggested by the land agent who used to work for the company we are building through :)

So I wandered across the road to Solomon's carpets yesterday and picked out a carpet that matches the tiles perfectly.

They upgraded the underlay for 'free'. However the quote still came in at $5744 for the 4 bedrooms, study and theatre room. But I like the carpet. However sensibility is telling me that I should probally get another quote from somewhere else to.

The carpet has a 20 year warranty, and the thread is dyed before it is woven, so it should never fade. It also has a 'memory' that apparantly will make the carpet 'spring' back in to shape when you get it cleaned.

But yeah, might get another quote, as the Statesman quote for the bronze carpet range was only $2700.

Settlement fun

2009-04-17T20:49:00.003+09:30

We got a phone call Tuesday from the bank. They won't settle on the land without the bank pack from Statesman so that they can do a complete assessment on the property. Even when they do get the bank pack, it will take them about two weeks for the assessment and final approval.

So I rang our Sales Consultant in a tizzy, settlement is in 3 weeks!! He suggested I call the land agent and see if I could push settlement back. So I rang the extremely lovely land agent, who said if I can get a 'good' date from Statesman as to when the Engineers report will be done then she can extend the settlement date on that.

Our Sales Consultant was supposed to get back to me today with the date. Not a word, rang and left a message. Nothing. So will call him again tommorow :(

But on the upside if we can push settlement back another month, that is one less month that we have to pay interest on the home loan.

Someone else is using our bricks!

2009-04-08T17:52:00.001+09:30

I went up to the block today to see if I could detect wether or not the Engineer had been out there and done his thing.

There are two other blocks with dirt being levelled and ready for slabs. I was so envious. I can't wait till we get to that stage.

I also noticed another house in the estate being built with the bricks that we want to use. The bricks we have chosen have been discontinued and there where only 20,000 left. I hope there house doesn't use more then 10,000 otherwise we might not get to use them, and I have my heart set on them. On a plus note, cream windows look terrible with the brick we have chosen, so thats made one decision easier. I will have to drag hubby out on the weekend to have a look at there place. On the plus side, if we run in to the owners they might be able to say if they got charged more for the bricks, they are building with Hickies.

13

2009-03-30T16:27:00.001+10:30

Inspired by a thread on the HomeOne forum I rang the local council to find out what our new house number is going to be.

13

Yep 13, not sure wether or not to be freaked out or happy by this. The Chinese think that 13 is very lucky. So we shall see ;)

Which Lol cat are you?

2009-03-30T15:12:00.002+10:30

I love lolcats and I couldn't resist taking the lolcat quiz when I stumbled up on it. The ironic thing about this, is that I am forever baking biscuits for my family, however they rarely last more then a week as I eat them all :)

Your result for The Which Lolcat Are You? Test...

Sad Cookie Cat

51% Affectionate, 42% Excitable, 60% Hungry

You are the classic Shakespearian tragedy of the lolcat universe. The sad story of a baking a cookie, succumbing to gluttony, and in turn consuming the very cookie that was to be offered. Bad grammar ensues.

To see all possible results, checka dis.

Take The Which Lolcat Are You? Test at HelloQuizzy

Some changes..well a few

2009-03-30T14:14:00.002+10:30

Hubby's parents visited the other weekend, and we took them to look at more display homes, particularly the Adelaide at Noarlunga, just to see how they had done the tiles etc. It was all the same, however in the Format homes he saw for the first time a cavity sliding door to a wardrobe, and loved it! *smacks head* I had been asking for this for ages, and he poopooed the idea, however now that he has seen it, he is quite keen for it to be done. So I rang our sales consultant and asked if it was to late to make changes. He said "no" so we sat down and came up with a list of everything we wanted to change. We came up with the following.

Remove Portico (turns out neither of us really liked the portico, and we thought it was the other who wanted it)

Sliding cavity doors to WIRs in all bedrooms – this then enables us to have the 3 shelves and 4 draws in bedroom 3 as drawn on the plan

Add back 4 draws and 3 shelf unit to WIR in bedroom 3.

Shower spout (shower head) raise to 2000 in ensuite and main bathroom

Shower tiling to 2100 in ensuite and main bathroom

(We have chosen a Beaumont tile (03102) it is 200 x 300mm and we have been told it is in Statesman standard range, so we would like this laid vertically, so that it will be 7 tiles high in the shower alcove, and 5 tiles high for the 1500 tiling around the rest of the bathroom).

Remove the extra row of tiling in the laundry – we will be having the 200x300mm tiles laid vertically in the laundry also, so no longer need the extra rows.

Change under bench oven from gold range 900mm oven to silver range POP667. (we saw the westinghouse 900mm oven and for an extra $1500 it wasn't worth it)

Add a standard internal door from kitchen to dining area

Add a standard internal door to study

Add solar hot water system

Add a broom closet to laundry

Add internal sound proofing insulation (could you please give us costing on this) either

a) all internal walls of the house excluding the walls housing the WIR

OR

b) Adjoining wall bedroom 3 & 4

Adjoining wall bedroom 4 and rumpus

Adjoining wall family and bedroom 4/hallway

Also I don’t like the look of the cornices on the front exterior of the house over the windows. It makes them look sleepy. Can they be removed above the window line for the front of the house? I have pictures if you need a definition of what I mean.

We have picked out a brick from the Austral range called ‘Seacliff’. It is a discontinued brick however they have 20,000 left. I think you said our house only required 8000, the Austral liaison with ACS is expecting a phone call to quote on the bricks. We are crossing our fingers that it won’ t be any more than a normal bronze/standard range brick.

Finally got the contract today

2009-03-24T16:40:00.002+10:30

Finally got the offical copy of our contract today from Statesman, and a letter stating that it would be about 3 weeks while they draw up our plans, then 3 weeks while the engineer works out our footing costs from the plans on our block. So 6 weeks before anything is going to happen! Then after that they will call us in to do colour selections, then maybe 6 weeks after that something might start happening. *fingers crossed*

We got the offical colour selection guide however.

We also got an extra 30 days on the settlement of the land. So hopefully we will have the bank pack from Statesman the week before the land settles. It is going to be tight, if we can get the bank pack from them before the land settles it means less hassle with the bank. So might start calling Statesman again and see if I can get them to hurry along a little. I don't like my chances however.

Surprise Visitor

2009-03-16T09:48:00.000+10:30

On Friday I was quite surprised to find Paul our Sales Consultant standing on my front door step.

When we first signed we had signed for the Adelaide Alfresco, but changed our minds to the Adelaide, so he had an exclusion form for the Adelaide. A form that says "This is everything in the display home, and your not getting it"

Hubby wasn't home at the time, so I told him we would drop it back to him on Saturday at the display village. I really hope that this isn't what has been holding up our paperwork.

Paul reiterated that the contract had been approved, that there was some discussion about the footings costs, but that we where aware they may be greater then the amount he put in the contract. Apparantly they have been getting some costs back from the estate that are quite large. But our block is probally the flatest block out there.

So Saturday we went to Blackwood display villages.

Rang Statesman again

2009-03-11T10:44:00.001+10:30

I rang Statesman again yesterday to see where our contract was at. She told me that our salesperson had been mis informed and that our contract was yet to be signed off by a manager. That it hadn't even been looked at yet!! We where told 2-3 weeks before it gets looked at. It has been over 6 weeks now.

She said to ring again next week, and if it hadn't been looked at yet to get our Sales Consultant to make some noise. He better hope it has been looked at, or else he is going to get some noise from me I can tell you.

Another 3 hours in the tile shop

2009-03-06T20:03:00.005+10:30

Well after another marathon session at Beaumonts we have come up with another option for the bathroom. The last feature tile didn't sit right with me. So now we have come up with this.
The benchtop laminex is Silver Grey, the cupboard doors Charcoal, the tiles 20x30cm wavy white, and the feature tile is called Gravel Black, tumbled. Hubby didn't think that white would be a fantastic grout for it, so we looked at the grout pallet and picked out Misty Grey.

I feel pretty happy about these selections.

Silver Grey laminex. I can't find the tile on the Beaumonts website to show it up close.

Chasing down our sales consultant

2009-03-05T21:32:00.002+10:30

After leaving a few voicemail messages I finally got hold of our Sales Consultant today.
He has asked after our contract *yay* it has gone through (as he didn't have it sent back to him) *yay* and the house plans are being drawn up *yay*. I asked about the engineers report, he said that they won't do that until we have seen and agreed to the master plans *boo*.

So now we are waiting for the elusive plans to be drawn up. I wonder if they post them out to us? or if we have to go in and see them?

I mentioned that since we are building the same house just about everyone else builds should not the plans be pretty much done already. He left me with the distinct impression that they had signed up a huge number of people lately to build houses and that I had to understand that these things take time :(

So now I am waiting again.

Project complete - my daughters school one that is

2009-03-04T21:13:00.002+10:30

This is the Louvre Pyramid at night. My daughter had to build a Paris landmark for her Social Studies class. Being in Year 4 of course it falls to the parents to do most of it. So the last 6 hours since she came home from school and told me it was due tommorow, has been spent creating the Louvre Pyramid. I don't think it looks to bad. (I don't know why blogger is rotating my photos but no matter what I can't get it to load them up straight *grrr*)

Neighbours

2009-03-02T15:04:00.002+10:30

I've just checked the website for the estate we are building in, and someone has put a block on hold right next to ours!! We might have neighbours yet! The estate agent thought she was going to have a really hard time selling the blocks either side of us as they are corner blocks and have a 5m set back on both sides, and being smallish blocks it leaves little room for a decent sized house.
We might just be able to off set some of the fencing costs.

Looking for bricks

2009-02-28T22:30:00.003+10:30

We went out to Golden Grove to the PGH display. It reached around 28 degrees today, we got out there at about 4pm. The difference in temperature between the dark bricks and the light bricks was really remarkable. The dark bricks where almost to hot to touch, whereas the light bricks where still quite cool.

Nothing in the PGH range really struck us, as we where driving home we stumbled across the Austral bricks display, so quickly jumped out and had a look at those also.

Hubby immediately fell in love with the Almond. Online it looks really beige but in real life it is much paler then the nougat, almost white. He took about 20 photos of this one small piece of wall.

So the exterior colours are looking to be Almond bricks, mid grey roof tiles, some sort of dark grey guttering and lighter fascia. Hubby really wants black window frames, but I am thinking for those we will need black guttering, which I don't think will go with the grey roof tiles. I guess we will see how much colourbond is going to be.

Our choice of freize tile for the bathroom isn't sitting well with me. Expect a change there yet.

Too many choices, but nothing we really like, so changed bathroom colour scheme

2009-02-27T22:11:00.005+10:30

So today we went into Statesman/Hickenbotham in the city to make some choices. We had a bit of a discussion over the bathroom tiles, hubby wanted brown floor tiles, I didn't. Eventually I conceeded and agreed to the brown floor tile. What a waste of time that half hour discussion turned out to be. After selecting things like door handles and cupboard handles we decided to go to Beaumont Tiles to look at freize tiles for the bathroom, as the tile we had seen in the display home wasn't on the wall and we where told we could pick pretty much any tile from Beaumonts and they would price it for us.

We went to Beaumonts and could not find a brown frieze tile to go with the brown floor tile that hubby liked.

Getting to the end of the mosaics and our patience we found this frieze tile

and so agreed to change our whole bathroom colour scheme. So we picked a new door colour "charcoal"

and a new floor tile. Which is a little shade lighter then the charcoal door. I tried to take a photo of it, but all the lights in our house are to yellow and it doesn't show it's true colour nicely.

So now we are going with 'grey' as our colour scheme we will have to re-think the kitchen.

We are going to have a look at the Statesman Adelaide display home in Northgate tommorow, this place has the rumpus room, not the alfresco, so hopefully it will give us more of an idea about space and light.