Three months since site start!

Tomorrow will be was exactly THREE months since we had a real site start - when excavation took place.

How far we've come!

Can't wait to see where we are in another 3 months time..

Sunday & Monday drive-by..

I was keen to see the cladding with my own eyes so yesterday on the way to visit friends on the Central Coast we drove by the house, and was happy to see the little spot where I thought they had run out of cladding was actually finished!

I walked up the hill to have a look at the house from the back and the cladding had also been started around the master bedroom balcony (where there was just green plastic in Fridays photo), so it looks like the carpenters are making good progress.

Really starting to look like a real house!

I cannot wait to see the house 'naked', without scaffolding

Here you can see the infill they have installed above the master bedroom windows to the far left, right at the back of the house. They will be painted

Here you can see two sections of roof that need to be done - I assume this week sometime before gyprocking can start?

That little old fence looks a bit sad next to the house!

Today I drove by after picking our son up from daycare and the carpenters were there working away, good to see - I was worried about the weather. Hopefully it holds out for the majority of the week so the house can stay on track - the Christmas shutdown is FAST approaching..

I asked our SS about that last week - he told me shutdown was four weeks. I've read elsewhere the office shuts for 2 weeks, our former SS told me work depends on who/what is scheduled to happen at the house over the holidays - time will tell I guess!

I understand things slow over Xmas/New Year but FOUR weeks! EEK! The anxiety may kill me..haha

Friday update

Driving past the site today Jason reported that the cladding was very close to being finished and sent me a few photos.

That green wrap will be covered with a different type of cladding to the other clad areas as will the back wall of the balcony you can see there to the right. Not sure when that will be done.

See that tiny bit in between two of the windows on the right not clad? I think thats where they have run out of cladding..

I spoke to our SS at 6pm tonight (apparently they were going on their Xmas cruise tonight - great weather for it!!) as I had to tell him which flooring I have chosen for downstairs and the height of it so he could tell the stair manufacturer. I will do a post about flooring soon.

Jason had spoken to him a little earlier and he told him that next week the cladding will be finished 100% (when they get a little more cladding delivered), the cladding will be painted (I think, Jason wasn't 100% sure) and QA would go through and inspect, then whatever needs to be rectified will be done so before Gyprock starts the week after.

He initially told us gyprock would be next week but obviously things have taken a little longer than anticipated this week.

I assume if it hasn't already been done the insulation will go in next week too.

The carpenters have also been going through checking everything is straight and even and fixing bits and pieces that need fixing.

Stairs are also scheduled to be installed in the next two weeks.

Have a great weekend and happy building to those in the midst of construction chaos with us!

We're being clad!

Just a quick update today, Jason drove by and since he was there yesterday this is what has been acheived :)

So I'm pretty sure they won't be finished today despite what they may have thought yesterday (although apparently there was a big crew onsite) - as there is still the entire upstairs of the front elevation, the front section of the above pictured elevation and the front section of the North elevation to be clad yet.

Will update when I have more news - although after the last few weeks I am pretty jazzed about this progress!!

Oh how I love the sunshine - and progress that comes along with it!!

What gorgeous weather we are having here in Sydney this week so far!! Nothing pleases me more than to see the sun and progress on site.

Jason just did a drive by and its all happening this week - brick cleaning appears to be finished from what I can see, the areas to be clad have been wrapped (and maybe insulation has gone in?? Not sure about that though), and the chippies have been busy putting up the framework for the cladding.

Cladding is on site ready to go and according to someone on site Jason spoke to it should be done by tomorrow.

Great week!!

Is there anything better than seeing a tradies vehicle on site??

Thats the cladding for upstairs behind the ute

Wrapped and ready to go!

This elevation is quite visible as you walk or drive down our street so the cladding will add a bit of interest and break up the brick nicely, I think

The stairwell window

From the front corner of the house (in next door neighbours driveway) - study and front portico

With any luck the scaffolding will be down by the weekend or Monday and we will be able to see the 'almost' finished outside product.

Monday morning site visit

Yesterday morning, bleary eyed after little sleep (thanks to our 2 year old who was punishing us for going away without him!) I dropped our son at daycare and went to site for a 9am meeting with our SS.
Jason was already there, we have organised to have solar panels installed on the roof of the house after handover (got in at the 11th hour right before the government slashed the rate of electricity buy back!!), and the solar guy wanted to have a quick look at the house (from outside, of course).

Turns out after a quick phone call our SS had forgotten about the meeting but said he could be there in 20 minutes, so Jason went to work and I waited.

I wasn't fussed as I was super happy to see the elusive carpenters onsite starting the eaves!!
We had previously been told the cladding was onsite but like I thought late last week - it hasn't been delivered so they couldn't start it. Wednesday it will apparently be delivered and they will get on to it Thursday I hope.

So when our SS arrived I had a quick look through, asked him a few questions and took some photos - most not so exciting to anyone but me!

Turns out that letter is legit - its from an independent inspection company that is hired by Metricon but effectively work for us. So they arrange the inspections, not me. Lucky that!

I asked about getting copies of the reports and was told we do get them all at handover but if we want copies beforehand to ask. Think I will do that.

Now onto the good part - some pics!

Wiring ready for the huge AC unit. Note the contrast between the cleaned bricks and the yet to be cleaned bricks

So excited to see the real colour of the bricks!! Very happy with them

More nice clean bricks. They are called Orpheus and are from the Austral Whitsunday range

Pieces of the colour puzzle coming together. Surfmist fascia and Dune guttering

I'm thrilled with my colour selections coming together so nicely

Adding the roof to the colour puzzle

What a dump!

From the driveway

Study

Looking into stair void from study. We have opted to put a door in so we can access all that space for storage

I think this door is the only one on the house I didn't upgrade to be higher - access to yard from garage- it looks tiny as the garage ceiling height is almost 3 metres

Looking from garage down the side of the house toward the Outdoor Room

I went back this afternoon and there were eaves! Oh happy day!!

The eaves will be painted Surfmist to match the fascia

So - where to from here?

Hopefully onward and upward in leaps and bounds ;)

As I mentioned, cladding should be delivered Wednesday, and will be fitted by the end of the week. I *think* bricks will continue to be cleaned sometime this week. Our SS said the guys that do it aren't the fastest but they do a really good careful job and don't just blast the mortar out etc, so slow and steady wins the race!

Scaffolding should be down by the weekend or early next week, insulation will go in and gyprock will start next week.

Cant wait.

Back to reality.

So we spent the weekend at the amazing Bannisters at Mollymook and for me especially it involved a whole lot of looking at this:

The pool at dusk.

The pool at 9am

The pool and lunch :)

Dessert at Rick Stein @ Bannisters Restaurant

The view from our table at breakfast.

.....With quite a few beverages and delicious food thrown in for good measure.

But alas the weekend is over and today was a busy day on the house front.

Back with that news later!

Drive by post

I did a quick drive by of the site today (around 10am) as I was in the area, thinking I might see some exciting things happen but it was all quiet.

The roof looks like it is pretty much done (from what I could see quickly from the car), and the downpipes appear to have been installed.

The large door frames have been taken away as our SS said they would be, and it looks as though scaffolding has been erected inside the garage - possibly so the chippies can access the top storey exterior to install the cladding any day now. No sign of cladding on site though at this stage.

I noticed water running down the street and traced it back to our site so I hope the tap hasn't been left running! Speaking of water - we need to chase up Sydney Water to find out why our last water bill was the same as the previous one when there was no house on the site (nor a tap!!) for half the billing period. Estimate bill perhaps? Thats a bit rude!!

I won't be back at the house until Monday AM when I have a meeting onsite with our SS to take lots of photos of noggins etc before the walls go up and to have a good look around and to ask him a million questions..

Something else I have to chase up is a letter we received way back in August right before work commenced on site, from a firm claiming we have appointed them our Principal Certifying Authority (PCA) for the build. I forgot all about it thinking it was a letter from a company Metricon uses to do inspections but upon finding it and reading it appears we need to organise these "critical stage inspections" at regular intervals throughout the build.. I'm confused!
We need to chase that up as its a bit late now for a slab and pier inspection to be organised by us!! I was under the understanding that you could arrange for independant inspectors to carry out inspections on your behalf but it wasnt mandatory - whereas the wording in this letter suggests it is mandatory.. I don't remember ever "apponting" anyone as our PCA so..oops!

Anyone else get a letter like this in Sydney before starting their build?

Ok, this post was waaay longer than intended so I will leave you with the hope that we will see eaves, cladding & clean bricks on Monday after a weekend away, and a few quick pics from today - not much new to see sadly!

Lots of broken roof tiles. The front of site is pretty messy actually and needs a good clean up!

Not sure if I mentioned the colour of the cladding will be Dulux Dreyfus,

and the small area of cladding upstairs in the Master bedroom balcony will be Dulux Grey Pebble.

*exhale*

Ok so the big boys birthday and subsequent party is over - and after a solid week (well, longer really) of sitting every night and cutting crafty things out (yes, I have a blister to prove it) and a few solid days of getting everything ready I can now think about the million other things in my head at this time of year!

So, a house update - the electricians were indeed there doing their pre-wire on Wednesday and Thursday. I recevied a phone call from the girl in the Metricon office who works for the electricians on Wednesday to let me know that on my plans there was a sub board marked to go in the garage as we had too many circuits to fit on the switchboard, however at planning stage she didn't realise our switchboard was going on the opposite side of the house (however the sparkies obviously didn't realise this at first when they installed the power pole on the garage side of the property originally).
This meant that to wire the switchboard to the sub board was going to require a lot of extra wiring that would potentially cost around $1000, which wasn't in the quote as she didn't notice the position of the switchboard.
Her boss said he was going to try to fit all the circuits in the switchboard which meant we may be able to eliminate the need for that sub board and get a $580 refund. Yeah!

Next day she called back to say he wasn't able to fit the circuits on so we weren't going to be getting the refund however they wouldn't charge us for the extra wiring cost as it was a mistake on their behalf. So thats A-ok with us.

We have so many circuits as I have added provisions for outdoor lights, a future pool and its lights,pump etc, and we have lots of lights & powerpoints inside the house - better to be able to handle the load than not, I say!

We are getting standard batten light fittings throughout the house (except in bathrooms where they are installing downlights) and are changing them all after handover.

Jason went past the site on Friday and the AC guy was there installing all the ducting for our ducted system - and it seems lucky he did so as he asked Jason where the control panels for the AC were to be placed.
The position of the downstairs one is marked on the electrical plan so he must not have had a copy.
When we did the electrical plan initially I requested a 2nd control pad (standard is one - how ridiculous for a 2 storey house!!) but it was inadvertantly left off the plan so it was added later, we were charged for it - a hefty $550 when the AC already costs around $14K - but it appears to have been left off the final plan.
No matter though, they should be in the right spot now.

Jason had to go onsite to show the guy where to put the control panels so he snapped a few pics while he was in there.

Oh, and our beautiful big timber sliders & sliding stacking doors have been delivered!! The frames were just sitting outside the house leaning up against the garage when Jason drove by on Friday and Saturday - probably would have been good of they had put them inside out of view (and out of the torrential rain that battered our suburb on Saturday, but if they get pinched its not our problem I guess..

Woo! How exciting!

So I guess the brickies still need to go back and brick up this hole where they thought the meter box was going..

Ducting

Panels for sliding doors. Cant wait to see those installed and stained :)

Frames for doors.

I love these doors! We chose stacking sliders and sliders over bi-fold mainly due to the HUGE cost difference. Our house came with one set of bi-folds due to the promotion package we took, so we swapped that out for sliders which worked out well cost wise. These doors (3 sets in total) will open up the dining and lounge area so much I think it will be fine having a fixed panel as opposed to the open space bi-folds provide.

Apparently we are due for brick cleaning this week among other things so I am awaiting a call from our SS and will update when I have something interesting to report!

EDIT:

Have just spoken with our SS - the doors have been delivered too early and he has asked for them to be picked up again tomorrow, he said he doesnt want them there until after gyprocking is done to lessen the chance of damage ( I like his style!).

In other news: Electricians will be back to finish the rough in this week, the roof is currently missing about 10 square m's of tile as they ran out so that will be finished Tue/Wed (hopefully), eaves and cladding will go on this week also (so excited about that!) and the bricks will be cleaned. BIG week on site - this will be the last week we are driven by the weather so we need it to behave!!

The following week: - we will meet on site so I can check things out before gyprock starts, I want to take pics of all the walls to help locate noggins etc once the gyprock goes up, and that week gyprock will start.

The staircase will go in that week or the following.

Its ALL happening now!!

A break in transmission..

What an absolutely STUNNING day here in Sydney! A very welcome relief to the stormy rainy days we have seen lately.

Whats happening at the house?

I have no idea because today we are focused on our son and celebrating his 2nd Birthday! Happy Birthday CJ :)

We enjoyed a wonderful day filled with fun, presents, cake, a lovely afternoon in the pool enjoying the sun and will finish it with dinner at a restaurant soon.

I think the electricians are at the house doing their rough in because I have received calls today and yesterday about a few minor issues (which funnily kind of tie in with the power pole being installed in the wrong spot originally..) that I will go into later, and hopefully the bricks will be cleaned tomorrow or Friday but I cant be sure of that either.

I'm actually dying to go over and see whats happening but that won't happen until after the birthday party on Sunday.

Until then..

Doing a happy dance!

You guessed it folks - we have a ROOF!

I was scared to look out the window this morning, expecting the weather to be against us after some ferocious storms ripped through the Sydney area last night - and it had been raining but maybe not at the block :)

So after receiving confirmation from our SS that the roofers were indeed working today our son and I swung by on our way home from Gymbaroo class - and even he was super excited to see so much happening!!

Six guys working away!

Back view  - not far off complete

From a few houses up the street - due to the curve of our street and the setback of the two houses next door our place looks massive!

A tiny section left to add tiles - then I guess its onto the capping etc. These were taken at 11am so I assume they will finish today. SO happy to finally see that roof!!

I sent Jason a photo from my iphone and he thinks the tiles look blue! I hope not!!

Now bring on the carpenters and cladding..