No bath today

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!!

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

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

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

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

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

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.