What we Love and What we would do differently....

Things I would do differently on the Wembley 35 - 

• Bed 3 - I would have changed window location to be facing backyard, this would have assisted with a larger window and saved overlooking issue.
• Guest Bedroom - pay close attention to where the BIR is placed. Due to us choosing the Balmain facade, it is in a strange location just inside the door, but right in front of a feature window. It would fit perfectly on the far outside wall, however you are then looking straight into the cupboard and then a bed would have to be on the wall just inside the door (on the hall wall)
• Laundry Chute - Love having it, it is super, however they have struggled with it the whole time and still need to fix it up.  The actual hole for clothes is 250mm x 250mm!!!!!  I was trusting that they knew what they were doing, however no-one knew what to do.  Big balls up.  Still ongoing.
• Bifold Door to Alfresco - we have a 4 leaf aluminium door and it doesn't have a single opening door. Very strange design. Wish I had realised this in the planning stage as this we should have read on the plans. Also put in retractable flyscreens if you can or at least get a quote. We didn't but I found out later on that others have got them installed.
• Pay close attention to the size of the cupboards in the kitchen, especially if you like them all uniform. One of ours on the plans was 350mm and all the rest 400mm, ridiculous that they do it that way!
• Laundry Bench is 3800mm long.  Found out laminate/formica is only in 3600mm lengths, so therefore ugly join on the bench top.

Things we LOVE:

• Green Splashback - Dulux Mangrove Leaf - very fresh, everyone comments on it.
• The extra "media unit" that extends from the kitchen along the dining wall under the window. Everyone that walks into our house comments on it and how wonderful it is. We put draws instead of cupboards. Great utilisation of space and worth the money.
• Laundry size - with changing the lounge to a guest bedroom, the reorganisation of design makes a wonderful massive laundry - LOVE IT.
• Grand Alfresco - fantastic if you can afford to do it.
• Happy with our selection of lighting. We have 5 wall lights round stairs, probably only needed 3.
• We went for the Amended Pantry Option for kitchen same as the display.
• Size of the Pantry
• Size of Parent's WIR
• Tiling - Tiler did a fantastic job.  Very Shmick.  The Cat 1 Subway tiling is great, I have had lots of comments on them - they are in laundry splashback, round bathtub and quest ensuite shower.
• Casement Windows
• Double glazed windows
• Hebel - very stable temperature so far
• Bolero Flooring - this has been fabulous with 3 young children and a house surrounded by dirt!

Half Way There.......Week 11 !!!

Well I can't believe it and must say, a tad excited!  I met the SS a week ago on site to discuss a couple of things.  I asked how long did he think until we would be finished???
Remembering - Our Contract states a build time of 280 days + 28 days for Christmas period = 44 weeks.
At the time of my discussion with SS we are up to Week 10.  He replies that we are pretty much half way there, so probably around 10 weeks to go.  Me gobsmacked!
I knew that they were well advanced, hubby and I couldn't work out how on earth it could take till Jan/Feb 2014 with where we are up to.
So, that 10 weeks takes us to early September (which would equate to around 22 week build time).  I don't mind if it is even October, this is well before Christmas with time to get settled in.  Not holding my breath just yet though.

Must get onto some other quotes now such as fences, driveways and pool fencing!

Lock-Up Independent Inspection
Nothing to report other than the obvious things missing - windows, bi-folds, alfresco roof and garage roof.  So a good job being done.



So where are we up to.........

Eaves
The Eaves have now been painted.














Missing Window and Rendering
The missing window has been installed and thus the Hebel that goes around it.  This area now needs to be rendered.  I am sure that this will happen early this coming week as the SS wants the scaffolding down asap (actually last week!)

I noticed that there is a chip in the render around one of the top storey facade windows.  I will have to make sure I find the Renderers on site this week and ask them to fix it if they haven't noticed.  Stands out though!  You can see it in this picture here.










Back Bi-Fold
Still missing.  Was told that this would be installed this last week, but not there.  It really needs to be on before they plaster!

Insulation
All the Insulation has been installed.  Glad I was there though.  Happened to ask "What does the sound insulation look like?".  Dumb look from installer stating that there wasn't any sound insulation on this order.  I confirmed that there should be.  Anyway, after them chasing it up, it was missed off the order and is now installed around our Media/Playroom.

Extra Insulation in roof.

Sound Insulation is Grey

Electricals
Electricians did come back and move junction boxes that we had at the back of the house and insert a separate circuit that we added as a PCV.  These junction boxes are for the pool electricals.  One of the junction boxes was going to end up way up high at lighting height, however I asked for it to be put down low as otherwise we would have to cover wiring all the way up the wall.  One of the junction boxes is linked up to an internal light switch to turn on the pool lights.  The other junction box will hook up wiring to the pool equipment after handover.

Plaster
All the plaster and cornices have now been delivered and this is the next step internally.  Am guessing that the staircase can't be far away either...

Frame Stage Independent Inspection

Saturday Morning opened my letterbox and found invoice for "Frame Stage Complete", posted on Weds prior to this.  Ooops, this really eats into the 7 day payment terms and dealing with the bank.  Emailed accounts at PD asking if they could please email invoice in future as they did the first one.

Suddenly occurred to me that I should be arranging for the Frame to be inspected prior to being wrapped up for the Hebel.  So got onto this on Monday.  However as I knew there was an error on our plans at the back of the garage where it joins the house - it is supposed to have a double stud wall to support the garage roof trusses, I needed to get the altered plans from PD and also the Building Variation for this.  Took till Tuesday for me to get the BV, then apparently my BC had to get the Drafting Team to change the plans.  Strange as I know the Carpenter informed them back on 10 May of this error!!!!!!  After a little harassing, BC managed to get me the plans (not the actual framing plans though) on the Weds morning.  This was in time for the Frame Independent Inspection on the Weds afternoon.  I had delayed this inspection a day, however I shouldn't have, as the double stud wall hadn't even been built yet!

The inspection went well.  

They re-looked at the issues from the Slab Inspection:

• Concrete rebate needed to back bi-fold door - been corrected
• Slab is level and should be sloping on southern side of Alfresco - needs to be corrected still.  SS asked what we are doing to this area post handover, but we don't know yet.  I do want this slab fixed.

Frame Inspection - Very good overall, mainly things still to do:

• Garage Roof Trusses not yet completed
• Alfresco Roof Trusses not yet completed
• Back Bi-fold to be installed
• 2nd Storey windows to be installed
• Side flashing to the front entry both sides of door frame to be installed

Inspector's Photos:

Concrete rebated ready for Bi-Fold Doors

Alfresco - it is the area above the drain pipe in the middle
 that isn't sloping towards the drain.

2nd Storey Windows

Build it up, Build it up, Build it higher.....Week 4

I can't believe how quickly the frame goes up and it all of a sudden looks like a house.  It is so exciting going in through the front door and checking out the layout of the house.

At the end of Week 4 (1 week of Carpentry), we have the first floor frames and windows inserted and today they have put up the external walls of the second floor.  There has been a little rain on and off this week, but this hasn't stopped anything.

Apparently, as we are building with Hebel, there was a wall at the back of the garage that wasn't accounted for that the trusses need to sit on for the garage roof.   Carpenter was straight onto this on Day 1, he had to arrange for the plans to be re-engineered to fix the issue and work with the slab as it is.

Every fortnight on a Friday my SS is calling me with an update, which is fabulous.

View from the backyard looking over Alfresco

Looking out through Dining Room from Kitchen

Guest suite bedroom with our Casement Windows

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A glorious Saturday - found the builders there working away
From the backyard

Contract Signing ........ a full day of it!

8th February 2013 was the big Contract Signing day.  After delivering one child to a friends at 8am for Kinder drop off, then 2 more children to another friends for School and Occasional Care Drop Off, we raised over to the Narre Warren office for our 9am Contract Appointment.

This time I came with a stash of chocolates, fruit and beverages to keep our blood sugars well in tact for ALL the information....

To be honest, the day was very full on and frustrating, which is why it is taken me sooo long to get to writing this post.  I nearly forget where we started on the day.

I think we started going through a list of issues we had noted on the plans from when we were at the colours appointment.  We quite quickly hit an issue in that they did not have the prices for us for Casement windows we are wanting to put in the facade instead of awning windows.  DH is dead against awning windows and has been clear about that from the start. It was frustrating as there was 3 weeks between our Tender and Contract and and excuse given that the estimator was away with food poisoning and they were trying to get into his laptop to get the information.  I have to say it is now 10 days later as I write this and I still don't have the pricing!!!!!

We also very much want sliding windows with double-glazing in the remainder of the house (as discussed and written in Tender), however the plans show awning windows.  We were told that the window company can't do double-glazed sliding windows.  This whole window fiasco probably took 1-2 hours of the contract time.  Issues that they could have discussed with us prior to arriving on the day, especially when I emailed them 4 days prior to appointment alerting them to the awning window issue on the plans.  Part of this fiasco was that at Tender, we were told that if we raised the ceiling height of the 2nd storey and put in 500mm high windows, this would alleviate any overlooking issues for us, so therefore we could have the sliding windows.  The window sill needs to be set at minimum 1700mm from floor to avoid this issue.  So at Tender, we agreed that we would go with this solution to get the sliding windows and unobscured glass.  At contract, then told that the window sills were at 1650mm with 600mm high windows and we couldn't make these smaller to the 500mm due to ventilation/light issues.  So by the time we headed off for our lunch break, we were pretty upset with the process.  So much for a 4 hour meeting!

We called Stegbar whilst on the break, they confirmed that the can indeed to double-glazed windows in sliding windows.  Hubby also got their pricing for Casement Windows.  How hard is it PD to give us a price!  

I was given their feedback form to complete whilst on our break - well I had a field day completing that form.  Then one of the Managers had a chat with us and I let him know it all as well!!!

After 2.5 hour break, we were called back upstairs.  Then told that they solved the sliding window issue and we can have 510mm high windows.  Relief from DH at that point.  Still didn't have pricing for Casement windows.

The main time for this appointment was going through questions and issues we had previously identified and could have sorted out before the day.  The actual part of going through the HIA contract was fairly quick.

My husband can't take any more time off work, we needed to get through this all in the day and don't want to hold up application to council.  So we agreed that we would sign the contract and we would do a Post Contract Variation on the types of windows.

We left at 5.00pm very annoyed with how the process went for the day, but happy that things are moving forward...

Stay tuned on how long it takes to get window pricing - I emailed BC today (20 Feb) to chase up............