The writing's on the wall...

... literally!

Scribbles

The walls are covered with pencil scribbles.  The site supervisor mentioned that the plasterers would be out this week preparing the plaster for painting, so perhaps it's to do with this - we have no idea!

Generally, Saturday's visit was a bit disappointing.  Last week was definitely the slowest progress we've seen.  Fixing stage was scheduled to be finished last Wednesday, but it was held up by a trailer losing a wheel (at least that is what we've been told).  As of today it's still not done, so I guess we're at least a week behind schedule now.

Kitchen

Bulkhead

Progress in the kitchen was limited to the addition of the bulkhead.  It seems strange to us that they would do this after the cornice had been fixed, but as long as it gets done.

In the kitchen are a few extra cabinet doors.  We can't figure out what they might be for, I suppose time will tell (or they'll disappear).

Architraves

Architraves

The architraves are almost complete.  Unfortunately the wrong architraves were delivered so they will all have to be re-done.  Somehow we missed this last week.  The site supervisor has said that this will be fixed this week and shouldn't hold things up.

Bricks

What's going on here?

Bathroom window

Fence

Fence

The west boundary fence has been completed.  We also have confirmation that the rear fence will be provided by the developer, which is a nice bonus for us.  Technically we can be organise it once we have the certificate of occupancy, but hopefully we can at least get on the waiting list before then (a toddler and an electric fence don't seem the greatest combination).  We also discovered that the block on the east side has been sold pending settlement, which explains why the developer says it's sold but the council tells us the developer is the owner.  We will have to reapply for the owners' details at the end of the month.

All in all it looks like the dream run is over.  However we're hardly at panic stations, and hopefully our meeting with the site supervisor on Friday will set our minds at ease.

Kitchen

We heard from our building coordinator that our kitchen was scheduled to arrive during the week, and that fixing stage should be finished by next Wednesday, so we were pretty excited to head out to the site yesterday.

Kitchen

The kitchen cabinets have been installed, and they look great.  We had such a small kitchen in our last house that we won't know what to do with all this storage space!  There should be a bulkhead above the overhead cabinets which isn't in yet.  We thought perhaps that this would happen later, but the cornice has been fitted all the way around, which seems a little odd.  We will check with the site supervisor next week what is going on with that.

Kitchen

Kitchen

Pot drawers

Island bench

 

We were pleased to see that the overhead cupboards had a spring-loaded opening mechanism.  We had opted for no handles on these cabinets, and were told that it meant that the door would extend a little lower than the cabinet to provide something to grip on to to, but the push in gadget is great (something we probably would have done if wee weren't told it would cost extra!).

Overhead cabinets

We are very happy with how the kitchen is looking.  We noticed that one of the pot drawers is slightly out of alignment, but otherwise it is great.

Pot drawers out of alignment

 

Bathrooms

The bathroom vanities have also been installed.

Ensuite (double) vanity

Bathroom vanity

 

 Laundry 

The laundry cabinets have been installed.

Laundry cabinets

The laundry cupboard now has doors.

Laundry cupboard

 

Doors 

 

Internal

Some of the internal doors have been hung; the theatre and ensuite, as well as the master bedroom double doors.

Theatre door

Master bedroom doors

The sliding doors for the bedroom wardrobes have been delivered.

Wardrobe doors

 

Front door

The (beautiful!) front door has been delivered.

Front door

 

Cornice and architraves

The cornice has been fixed throughout the house.

Rumpus room (cornice)

Door and window architraves have been started.

Theatre architraves

Laundry window archtraves

 

Alfresco

The alfresco ceiling has been plastered.

Alfresco ceiling

 

Fence

The fence posts for the west side fence are up.  If the weather had been kind the whole fence may have been complete by now, but the weather has been most unkind.

Fence posts

 

Heating and cooling

The air conditioning unit has been installed.

Air conditioner

Slab

It's official, our piece of dirt is now our piece of dirt and concrete!

We drove over to the block on Saturday to check it out and it was both as exciting and as boring as you might expect ;)  We were both surprised at how small it looked, but I suspect that is an illusion as we are building the same size as both the display homes we looked at so we know it is plenty big enough.

It was raining and the block (and the entire estate) was very muddy, and we had the little man with us, so we didn't stick around.  I took a couple of photos which I will upload over the weekend. 

Edit:

Slab

Slab

We also met our next door neighbour, who moved in last week.  He mentionned that the fence is on hold until we find out about the back fence.  We weren't aware, but he tells us that the developer will be providing a rear fence (good news, as we back onto farmland making us wholly responsible for the cost of the fence otherwise).  So he doesn't want to proceed with side fences until there is a rear fence to build it to.  We don't mind waiting.

And so it begins!

I haven't updated in a little while, but in my defence nothing has been happening.  Until now!

The day we signed with Porter Davis we booked in a May start, and the closer we got to the end of May the less likely that seemed.  We were told that our file was "going to construction" on May 17th, and hopefully work would start within a week or so of that.  Last Tuesday, the 29th, we spoke to our building coordinator who said she didn't know what was going on and she would call us back.  She called us on Thursday to tell us that our site scrape happened on the 29th!  So we did start in May after all.  While it's not necessarily something she (or we) needed to know before the fact, we weren't thrilled with the communication - after all, we had spoken to her on the day of the scrape and she couldn't tell us anything.

We went down to check it out on the weekend, and this is what we found :)

OK, so it's still pretty much just a patch of dirt, but we're very excited!

Our neighbours have contacted us about a fence, they're pretty keen to get it done (I believe they are moving in today with their 4 young children), so we're waiting on quotes for that.  The block on the other side remains vacant, although I believe it has sold.  At the moment we are happy just to do the side with a house on it and do the rest after we've moved in.