Erosion

Quick update to show how much sand has washed away in the last few weeks of heavy rainfall. The concrete on the edge of the pavers would have been sitting on sand when it was layed, there's now about an 100mm gap. If this continues it will start washing away the sand beneath the pavers and our driveway will collapse.

You can see where the river of water has flowed down the driveway instead of into the soakwell as it's intended.

Practical Completion Inspection

We had our PCI today and we decided to use an independent inspector. We spent about 2 hours on site going over all the little details. We will get a report and the builders will have to sort it all out.

Some of the bigger problems: drain to soak wells is nowhere near downpipe. It was raining when we started the inspection, you could see the water eroding the sand next to the driveway paving.

This downpipe isn't plumb, but even if it was, it wouldn't line up with the drain so same problem as above. Also the render still hasn't been cleaned from the mess the grano guys made.

Although it will eventually be covered by our bamboo flooring, the slab next to full height windows needs to be filled in. Not all the way, there needs to be a cavity for drainage if water ever makes it under the window frame.

This door has been hung the wrong way! I only realised when I opened it from the hallway and reached my hand in for the light switch. I couldn't feel a switch and realised it was on the other side of the door. How stupid, I thought and went to check the wiring plan. Seems the wiring is fine, but the door is supposed to swing inward toward the hall and be hinged on the other side.

If we left it this way, we could potentially be banging it into car bumpers depending on how far in we parked. Apparently the entire frame is the wrong type as it can only fit one way due to the step down into the garage. What a mess.

Here's one I've known about for awhile. When the plumber was fitting the drains that run to the soak wells he managed to knock out a big chunk of the footing for the feature wall. The wall isn't load bearing and it's tied to the main wall, but it's effectively hanging in mid-air.

I won't bore you with all the other little chips, cracks and scratches. We've been told they usually allow 2 weeks to sort out problems after PCI, but considering their recent pace I find that very hard to believe.

So close

Another month gone, and no end in sight. After we had lockup at the end of January we were told 8-10 weeks until PCI (Practical Completion Inspection) and then handover. That would have put us at the end of April, right around the time we were due to move out of our rental. Obviously that's been and gone, we're living with Jenni's parents and all our stuff is stored between the pergola here and Travis' garage.

There really hasn't been that much to do, but weeks pass without anyone setting foot on site. It's been really disappointing and we're just about over it. Anyway here's the update: the water meter was finally fixed on the 18th of May but the paving didn't get done until the 11th of June.

Dodgy plumbing by the entry has been hidden by careful paving as I had hoped. We're also happy with the color match of the cheap concrete pavers to the grey render. We'd really like to have the driveway done with washed aggregate concrete but the quotes were too high and we barely got any credit for deleting these pavers so we'll stick with them for now.

The painters did some work on the outside on the 30th of May, though I'm not terribly happy about the color match or lack thereof. The paint was specified as Deep Ocean, but since the render came out darker the downpipes & meter box don't match.

The painter tried to tell me something about too many tints and too dark already (once again, broken English) but I'm pretty sure he's just trying to bullshit me. I can't see a reason why they couldn't take a sample of the render and get a proper computerised color match. It's not so bad in low light or shadow, but in the sun it's quite obvious.

This is just stupid, why bother painting a pipe that's obviously broken (has been for a few weeks) and waiting to be repaired?

They cut the tiles, fixed up the cabinet and finally got the rangehood in. Managed to shoot this one through the glass, hence the funny reflections. Granite bench tops look great in real life, they have glass/mirror shards that sparkle in the sunlight, photo's don't do it justice.

Hopefully we'll be having an inspection next week, but I can already see a bunch of little stuff that needs to be fixed up, so who knows how long before we're in.

Slow progress

Water Corp. still haven't fixed the meter, apparently there is some discussion about who's fault it was to be in the wrong spot in the first place. Certainly not ours, SORT IT! There was also an issue with the plumbing, resulting in this mess.

Supposedly there was a blockage in the pipes, I guess because they were layed a long time before the garage slab went down, so some truck or something might have rolled up and crushed it. Not sure really, but they had to snake a camera down to find the blockage, then chop up the garage floor, fix it and now we've got this inspection plate. Whatever, it's just a garage floor.

I'm pretty sure someone forgot to book in the skylight installation as it only got done after I mentioned it. But moreso for the fact that the manhole had to be re-cut to almost the width of the hallway in order to get various bits up into the roof cavity.

The place looks like a mess, but the skylight certainly does the job in brightening up the windowless room. The mirror should make a big difference to our narrow space.

All the taps have been plumbed in and the shower screen has been fitted as you can see from this wonky shot.

These are all the tiles that need to come out so that the cabinet can be fit back into the space. Not too happy about this, if they did it correctly and started from the corner we would have had two fullsize tiles, now we'll end up with small sections on each side. Hopefully it will all be obscured by the cabinet and filled with junk and we'll never notice it.

Flyscreen doors have been added to the alfresco stackers. Just need Luke to come sort out our timber decking now. Now wishing we mounted the outdoor power point somewhere more out of the way, maybe I'll paint it and see if it blends in a bit more.

Got a bit of gas...

Looks like the gas plumber has been in to do his part, meter is plumbed in.

We opted to upgrade to an on-demand hot water system, so we'll never run out of hot water in the shower. Lots of stars on the sticker so I guess it's energy efficient as well.

Best shot I could get of the stove through the window. The blue is just protective plastic but it actually looks kinda cool, maybe they should manufacture blue anodised appliances, no? We consider this quite a bargain, it didn't cost much more than the cheapo brand 900mm wide cooktop and oven but looks seriously impressive.

Paving Fail

The paving was supposed to be done this morning so I drove past the block on my way to the train station hoping to catch the tradies and sort out the cross over. When I got there the 3 guys were frantically trying to find the water mains as they'd burst a pipe near the front door.

I told them it was on the left hand side of the block, half way up the driveway. They had rung the site supervisor and got told it was on the RHS. They dug madly while I tried to remember exactly were it was located, after 20 minutes I gave up and headed back to the house to find a photo. I raced back down the street and eventually we managed to locate the meter buried about 500mm under the driveway.

Going back into my photo archives now I think it got buried sometime last year when they started piling up the rubbish on that side of the block and never re-surfaced when they cleared it away.

In the end nothing got done, Water Corp. needs to come by and relocate the meter and a plumber needs to fix the break near the door. Here's the offending pipe. Way too close to the surface, hopefully the pavers will hide the hole in the render.

Concrete Hardstand

The grano guys have been back to lay the concrete hardstand, that's a garage floor to you and me.

Can't complain about the concrete job but they made a bloody mess of the render. Not frakkin' happy Jan! The downpipes have also been added, hopefully they blend in a bit more once they're painted.

Delays...

A bit more work done this week after 3 weeks of nothing. Apparently the tilers were waiting on an order to fix the showers up. In the process of putting the granite in, the cabinet makers have had to remove a section for the microwave recess and appliance cupboard. Even though it's sitting in the middle of the living room, the tilers haven't realised this and they've tiled all the way across the wall. No doubt more delays while they get that sorted out.

Our lease is up in 3 weeks (Good Friday) and it's not looking good, still a lot of work to do. Nothing that couldn't be sorted in a week or two if they actually managed to get some trades in.

Tiles

I was advised to get Telstra in to pull the phone line before the render was done as they might need to chase the utilities wall. I had this done on Feb 25th but the guy was only able to do half the job since we had no access inside and they needed to get into the roof.

I had him back today to finish things off inside and went for a snoop around while I had the chance. I didn't take the proper camera so here are a few snaps from the iPhone. Looks like the tilers have been busy, the brick build up around the bath is done and half the tiles are in. We had a meeting with them a few weeks ago, they didn't speak much English so there was a lot of gesturing and hand waving but I think we got it sorted.

Chrome floor wastes! These were actually $62 each(!!!) to upgrade from the builder so we chose not to tick that box. I figured I'd go down to Bunnings and grab them for $7ea with some grout and sort it out myself. I guess the tilers don't bother with the cheap plastic ones so we scored a free upgrade.

Unfortunately they also decided to add porcelain soap dishes to both showers. We had specifically deleted these from the spec as they didn't match the tiles we had chosen, so I'll have to get onto the site super about that.

We make render!

The colored texture render was done today, a bit darker than the swatches we chose from, but I think we like it. You can really judge from these photos as the late afternoon sun skews things a bit. The main color is called Deep Ocean from the ColorBond range, but I think it came out a bit more Navy. The grey feature wall looks quite warm but it's actually a very neutral shade called Shale Grey.

We realised that we didn't specify the color of the wall to the right of the entry door and I think I had imagined it to be blue, with only the feature wall rendered grey. But upon reflection I think they've got it spot-on, the entry would be a too dark if it were blue and there is no way for them to change the render color 200mm in from the edge.

The white window frames really contrast the dark render, it's very crisp and clean, we love it! The splodge on the brick pier is just a flare from the sun, the render is fine.

 

Looks like the tiles also got delivered this week, good to see more movement.