Carpets and concrete

I had this really well thought out, perfectly spaced timeline of how we were going to get all our finishing trades through the house before Christmas so that we could move in and have our first Christmas in our new house. They really were the best laid plans.

My plan somewhat went out of the window when handover didn't occur on Nov 1st but managed to keep on schedule with the wood flooring able to access the house via the builders key. Next step was the aggregate. We are using HCM concrete and the boys were out on Friday the 8th and Saturday the 9th forming up the area around the back and sides of house and around the pool. The plan was to have the pour on Tuesday 12th of November with a colour called "Mont Blanc" from Geostone (Holcim).

Unfortunately on Monday the 11th, HCM got informed that Holcim were having issues with the quarry crusher and couldn't supply anything until after the Christmas break. This was a massive spanner in my plans and basically i cancelled the moving truck service, due in a few weeks time, upon receiving this news. This news basically lost us the house for Christmas, as we wanted to wait for the colour we wanted rather than swap to one we didn't.

But I still had other dominos in the chain waiting to fall, so we pushed ahead with carpet install, which was due to occur Monday 18th, but slipped to Tuesday 19th. Carpet was laid to both kids bedrooms, the guest bedroom, games room and study.

Tuesday afternoon we got a very unexpected call from our aggregate guy. He was able to get a delivery from an alternative vendor, Limecrete, for a colour that is very, very similar to Mont Blanc called Kajaani White and that he could pour it this coming Thursday. We jumped at the opportunity given how similar the colours were and I'm happy to report that as of 9am this morning, we now have aggregate around the back, sides and pool. Can't wait to see it honed.

Keys!!

We finally managed to get our PCI inspection done on Wednesday the 30th of October.  At the time of the inspection, our air conditioning hadn't been finished, nor did we have any glass balustrading on. This unfortunately meant that we weren't going to achieve key handover by November 1st as planned.

However, Stannard appreciated that we were in a tough position with our own finishing trades and kindly allowed us to access the house via our own builder's key so our trades could start. So on Monday 4th of November, the Art of Timber, our engineered wood floor contractor started work on site. We are getting wood up our stairs, across the first floor landing and into our master bed and robe.

After a week of work, the timber floors were nearly finished. It was then the turn of the balustrading people to install our glass balustrading, which went in on Monday 11th as planned. Three days later on November 14th, we went into Stannard's offices and officially completed handover and got the keys to our new house!

PCI delayed

Well, we were meant to have PCI last Friday but about two weeks after booking it for the 18th of November, they pushed it back a week to the 25th as they weren't quite going to get there. Fortunately they are still backing themselves that we won't discover much at inspection and are committed to handover occuring on November 1st. 

Finishing work continues - we've seen the painters a lot doing cornicing, skirtings, door frames, doors and other fiddly bits, leaving the walls til last. Plumbers have been in doing various bits and pieces around the house, guttering downpipes have been installed, electricians have energised the house, things like towel rails, robe hooks, toilet roll holders, etc have been installed. We also now have a garage door. Perhaps the thing we were most excited about though was our void pendant. It looks awesome!

Last weekend the cleaners showed up and spent the entire weekend thoroughly cleaning the house. There was a team of them for literally 10 hours a day on both Saturday and Sunday cleaning. I hope that's not reflective of the cleaning effort we're going to have to do! Of course it won't be as they had to clean off two years plus of construction grime. 

At this stage, we're two work days away from PCI and still need the following done: Air Con vents and outside compressor installed. frameless glass balustrading to be installed, mirror splashback to our bar area to be installed and painting to be finished. It's a pretty small list and with the exception of painting, can all probably be knocked off in a day's work or less for each required trade. They drilled the holes for the balustrading yesterday so with a bit of luck, that'll be installed today/tomorrow.

We've been busy lining up trades for flooring, carpets, cupboards, aggregate, etc and have them all lined up to kick off on Nov 4th, with our intention to move in early December and be settled in time for Christmas. Just hope everything else (bed, mattress, furniture) will be ready for delivery on a similar timeframe.

Getting very exciting!

Heading toward PCI

Wow, it's been over a month since my last update but this time that's not due to a lack of activity at the build, I've just not kept up with keeping the blog updated.

About a week after the stone went in, the tilers returned to commence tiling downstairs. This meant the guest ensuite, the powder, kitchen and scullery splashbacks as well as the vast majority of the ground floor and alfresco. They also had to do the upstairs kitchenette splashback. The team doing the tiling was Ross, Chris and Jordan from Causerano Tiling. I honestly couldn't be happier with them, they take great pride in their work, ensuring everything is clean, straight as a die and level. They actually screeded the entire ground floor (and alfresco) before setting the main flooring tiles to ensure a perfectly level finish.

The tiling crew worked away for around three solid weeks, finishing mid September. The finished product looks so good, especially the main floor. At one point, they were at the build on a Saturday and we happened to drop past and they let Josh and Imogen help with the grouting to the kitchen splashback. The kids were very excited to be able to say they helped.

We have also had other bits and pieces of finishing work happen around the site. First we had the temporary front door replaced with our final front door selection, which is an oversized wooden door with horizon glass windows. The bar area cabinetry was installed, balcony balustrading installed, various electrical bits and pieces finished off, all the toilets, sinks, showers, etc fitted off and connected, now all fully operational and the rendering team return to render the entire downstairs area. It's really starting to look like the finish line is getting close now.

As the finish line is approaching, that also means we've needed to get ourselves into gear and think about everything we need to do after handover. So we've been busy working with Lifestyle Wardrobes on all our bedroom robe designs, TV units, study fit out cabinetry, mud room cabinetry and games rooms cabinetry. We've also purchased a new King size bed and mattress as our housewarming gift to ourselves, re-engaged the landscaping team that did up our initial design to get a quote for build works, appointed a building inspector, signed up for carpets and bought a rug for the master bedroom.

Finally, in the most exciting news yet, we have a date for PCI! It's booked for 8am, Friday October 18th, just over three weeks time from typing this. Two weeks after that and we should have keys (somewhere around Nov 1st).

Stone!

I wouldn't normally put in a same day back to back update but it's not everyday your STONE arrives! Love it!! Pics pics pics!

Exciting progress

Let me start by apologising for the delay in update. After a month of unexciting progress, it's nice to be writing again with a more exciting update 😀

About a week after my last update, a large truck showed up with a team of people to install our kitchen, scullery and laundry cabinetry. This is a significant step toward finishing and the first time we're really seeing all our colour selections come to life. It was also really cool to find little things we didn't know we were getting, like a little drawer over our bin to keep bin bags, etc. We also discovered the rangehood was already installed, along with the underbench strip lighting.

The following week, the electrical team showed up and starting fitting off our light switches and power points and installing our downlights throughout the house. We also saw deliveries of all our internal doors, skirting boards, shelving and other finishing items for the carpenter. The tiles for the downstairs bathrooms, laundry and main floor tile were also delivered.

This week, the finishing carpenter started, hanging all the doors and building the shelving in our linen cupboards. The cabinet makers are also back today putting in cabinetry to our bar area. Really pleased to see some fairly consistent progress.

Outside of the Stannard part of the build, we've also been busy getting quotes for finishing trades and have decided on Curtainworld for our shutters and curtains and HCM Concrete for our driveway, porch, house surrounds and pool apron aggregate. We're hoping to nail down our preferred vendor for robes and finishing cabinets soon. Starting to really come together now!

Unexciting progress

Again, I find myself a month after my last blog update with not a whole lot to really write about. Don't get me wrong, we've had pockets of progress but not exactly the stuff that makes good reading (not that I'm convinced any of my previous content does).

The tilers worked away for about 10 days on the upstairs bathrooms and balcony tiling and finished working up their around the 28th of June. From their, they tidied up, moved their stuff downstairs and then set about cleaning up the ground floor slab ready for pouring of a screed to all areas where the ground floor main tiling is occuring, as well as the laundry, guest ensuite and powder. 

On 1st of July they returned to pour the screed, taking two to three days to screen all the areas to be tiled. A necessary step toward completion but not exactly a shout from the rafters update. Perahps something a little more tangible in terms of progress came about 10 days later when they poured our garage floor grano and then another two days later again when they returned to pour the grano for the alfresco and my pool equipment room.

On Tuesday this week we saw the first load of our kitchen and laundry cabintry dropped off on site. Nothing was installed, they literally dropped it off and then left again. According to our fortnightly update, they should be back toward the end of the week to start installation. What the update didn't say is that the painters would be returning to apply the first two coats to the inside downstairs. On my usual cruise past the block on my way to work this morning, I found the painters on site cracking in. A pleasant surprise to be sure.

So that's it, this update is literally about watching concrete and paint dry. Unexciting, but progress.