A Long Awaited Update

The painfully slow progress has continued with the builder causing major delays during each stage of the build and in between. He tends to blame everyone except for himself and its not uncommon for him to avoid all contact with us for up to 1 week or more.

To speed things up we have been dealing directly with the tradies to get things moving and finally a bit of progress has been made.

Here are some pics of the more exciting bits. (pics in low res for speed of upload... sorry)

The Corinthian Sunburst as beautiful as we imagined it would look. Pictured here without the lock which is Gainsborough Trilock Omni Allure.

It looks even better at night with the light coming through the translucent glass.

The ensuite with tiles almost finished. The feature tiles are Sideral Silver with the textured metallic raindrop pattern.

The main bathroom (not cleaned) with tiles almost done. All tiles from Lexatonia Tiles

The view from the main bedroom looking to the front of the house.

The amazingly beautiful kitchen (colours as per kitchen post)

The kitchen is by Apollo Kitchens

I cant wait till the house is finished so I can actually get the benchtop clean and dust free.

We will just keep doing as many things as we can ourselves on weekends and after work to keep pushing us closer to completion.

And dont even dare ask us " How long till its finished?" The answer is 1 year ago, thats when it should have been done. :)

Main Foor Tiles, Waterproofing & Ceiling Painting

A few more things have happened since the last update.

The floor tiles

A Close Up of the Tiles 600 X 600 Caesarstone Polished Porcelain from Lexatonia Tiles. The colour I would describe as a white/ grey, the speckle helps hide dirt. The speckle is in the tile not printed on so every tile is different.

Plain old white on the ceilings. All of the cans for the downlights hanging down in the family room.

First coat of waterproofing in the ensuite double shower.

Some of the rooms upstairs have had the skirting and architraves finished.

We started cleaning the render off the windows with acid. Made a huge difference once they were clean. See the the before (left) and after (right) on the sliding door.

Coming up next:

• Waterproofing finished
• Waterproofing inspection
• Wet area tiling
• Finishing of skirting & architraves
• Front door

Other stuff still to be completed:

• External render to be completed
• Garage door to be fitted
• External cross beams to be fitted
• Painting
• rubbish & fill removal + clean up
• Carpet
• Kitchen
• Laundry, Pantry & Wardrobe fitout
• Plumbing final
• Electrical final
• Air con vents & system
• Hot water system
• Driveway

Still a long painful way to go and still no end date in site.



Screeding, Side Fence & Internal Timber

Just a quick update of the snails paced progress over the past few weeks.

Cornice goes up & Scaffold comes down

We had a bit more slow progress this week. It still feels so frustratingly slow and we are totally over believing anything our builder tells us.

We are still feeling like this will never be over and we wil never actually get to live in this house.

This week the cornices were put up and the timber for the architraves has arrived. Finally the dispute with the scaffolder was resolved and they took away the scaffold so we get to see our house 'naked' for the first time.
We have been pretty lucky with big gaps (4m to 5m)  down either side of our house so as you come down the street it looks like ours has a lot more space around it. There is a  certain presence about the house probably because it looks very different from everything else in the street, its big and its set higher than a lot of the others.

Here are some progress pics from this week.

The piles of cornice and architraves waiting to go up

A finished bit of cornice near the bottom of the stairs

The new view without scaffold

Next few things that should happen

• completion of render to garage, facade columns and HT wall
• installation of door jambs
• installation of door and window trim
• prep of ground floor floors for tiling
• building of front porch roof
• bathroom waterproofing

Today we got plastered... More

Another milestone started this week with the downstairs plaster going up in 1 day. Its very interesting that the rooms upstairs seem smaller and the downstairs rooms seem bigger.

Here are some pics

The view from the front door looking down the hall way.

The family room viewed from the kitchen.

The view from upstairs looking towards the back.

Another view of the family room



Update 12/2/11

Well its been a very slow journey since the last blog update. Its actually quiet depressing and on some days I dont even want to vist the house as the lack of progress just makes me sad.

Here are some of the things that have happened since the last update.

 Our Xmas pressent... the stairs went in on Xmas Eve. Much easier than climbing the wonky ladder.

The front facade gets closer to the finished look. Need all of the scaffold gone so the render can be completed.

The lower lounge room roof frame goes on.

The roof frame for the alfresco goes on.

The view from the door of the master bedroom looking toward the Rumpus at the front of the house.

The insulation goes in behind the bricks.

Upstairs plaster finished in 1 day.

No wonder my neighbour has complained about the rubbish. I hate seeing it like this :(

So as of now the house is half plasters, the roof upstairs leaks, the front porch roof still hasnt been built, my render isnt finished and half of the scaffold is still up.

At the best possible time frame the house could be ready in 6 weeks but with the pace (or lack of) that things usually move I am thinking it will be more like 12 weeks.

Lets hope we get to move in one day :(

Its now over 12 months since we recieved council approval.