Inside !

This post is going to be picture-heavy, so I'll try to make it text-light! In summary - concerns about size of rooms completely unfounded, and a few little hiccups but all-in-all, looking great.

Looking inside from the front door

Standing in hallway looking into master bedroom. The sliding door is on the walk-in robe. The original plan had the robe open as per the en suite, however it is fair to say one half of this couple does not manage their wardrobe in a way that should ever be seen by guests. Ever. 

Uh oh! This window should be 100mm higher. And apparently, it can't be fixed as there's a bulkhead beam above it. The reason I'd raised it was so we could put plantation shutters here (and still open them to clean or open the window), at this height they will only open out 1-2cm before hitting the lip of the bath. Solution: Dan will physically remove shutters every time I need to clean window. Great excuse to not clean window very often.

Kids play room from kitchen

 Bedroom 2 (our son's room), Dan and site supervisor having a nice chat in Master Bed ensuite

Bedroom 3 (aka "the nursery")

Main bathroom. Uh oh, another window that is at the wrong height - this one 400mm too low (this will be the child-de-filthing zone - no way was I having a window at bath height with 2 children in the house - see above note about not cleaning windows often!). There will be tiling between bath and window as a splash buffer zone. As of this afternoon this has already been fixed.

The study

View from the study of the backyard, which extends beyond the fence, to about 1m in from the slope against the noise bund.

Site supervisor and Dan in the rumpus room. Note the stacker doors which will lead out onto the deck.

 Dining room.

Standing in the family room, looking across kitchen/dining rooms. A double set of stacker doors are going in behind where Dan is standing and beside where I am standing taking the photo, this leads onto alfresco/deck.

Standing in dining room looking to kitchen (right hand side) and family room (left).

And today, installation of fascia and guttering began.  

Roof tiles or brick work should begin next. We got our next progress payment today - apparently the house is 40% done (at least, 40% done cost-wise). If only the whole build was going to move at speed like this! 

Week 3 Progress

We spent a lot of time last week trying to resolve some issues with the plans, all of which relate to the deck. It seemed pretty obvious to us from the tender document that the railing around the deck would extend under the alfresco, however on later versions of the plans, this was not the case. So back and forward we've gone for a few weeks, until we acknowledged the wording was vague and have agreed to pay extra to "make it so". And then the next edition of the plans came back and the railing was finally there, but now the deck had mysteriously shrunk in width, so that it was now 40cms shorter than the alfresco which it sits off. Ummm....nooooo!!!

Our new (and improved) CSO tells us that this is what was originally drawn at colours, but like a lot of what was discussed at colours, it is NOT what we asked for ! We are hopeful this is being resolved now but even as I write this I'm conscious that we are still yet to see updated pricing or plans...meeting with the site supervisor at the house tomorrow for the first time, he has really impressed us so far, hopefully these little hiccups will be resolved soon. At least before the house is finished and they start on the highly contentious deck !

 In the meantime, the house is still evolving...we have trusses!

Its funny, from the front (beyond the fence where all of these photos were taken) the master bedroom looks very small to me. Dan thinks this is hilarious as I've stood many in an exact copy of this layout in the display home and know very well how large it is, but with the frame up, perspective is very hard to find and it looks tiny ! I'll have a better idea after standing "in" the frame tomorrow. 

The windows were delivered today and most of the external wall sarking was hung - unfortunately Mother Nature rained on the parade but finer weather is predicted for later this week so more progress isn't far away. 

I will update with more pics after our site visit tomorrow !

Bye for now

We've been framed !

You'll have to excuse the terrible pictures, my poor, deprived husband only owns a HTC phone and by the time my superior Apple technology and I had arrived, it was both rainy and dark.

Front

 Back

 North Eastern Side

Western side

What amazes me most is when I drove past this morning, we had only a slab with a big pile of wood next to it, so the builders managed to put up the entire frame in one day. 

The roof frame is due to arrive and be installed next week. So far, we are right on schedule - we were told the wall frames would be up before Easter, and they've done it with a day to spare - in spite of the frame delivery happening a day late. 

We have a slab !

This morning's drive-by "block stalking", we found...

Yes, that is a very big crane thingy and concrete truck pouring our slab ! Sorry about the extreme long distance view, but there was quite a lot happening in our little cul-de-sac (3 houses under construction side by side now). While we find repeated daily visits perfectly acceptable, we do draw the line at getting run-over by heavy machinery just for a sneak peek.

This afternoon after the busy-bee labourers had gone...

This is our alfresco. I really hope they put some more work into tidying it up, find it hard to picture successfully boozy BBQs on it as-is !!! ;) 

I still can't believe how much manual effort went into preparing for the slab to be poured. Yes, I am a very ignorant white-collar worker, but this has now been a full week of setting up the boxing and laying the waffle pods etc - and there have been 4-6 guys on site all day. I wish I'd had time to take them some mornos!!

Next update, Frame is being delivered Monday. 

Taking shape

Since last Thursday, the concreters have been busy at work preparing to lay the slab. 

This will be the south western corner of the master bedroom, the cut out in the slope you can see here will be a grey stone retaining wall. 

The back of the house. We aren't sure what will happen with the slope you can see in this photo at the base of the soon-to-be slab!  Our toddler could have a great time rolling down it...as it seems to be the end of the fill they brought in, we are hoping the builders will smooth it out sometime between now and handover.

So much foam...

And finally this afternoon, it looks like the foam and metalwork is all in place, now all we need is some cement. Below you can see Dan surveying his soon-to-be kingdom... 

Between the top few photos and this last one we had a few rainy (and freezing!) days, so we're not sure if the soggy soil will mean a delay before we see any more progress. 

Bye for now !

Week 1 Progress

I'm sure there are weeks coming where time will freeze on our block, but this was not one of them !

The excavators arrived Monday morning, and by Tuesday afternoon the block looked like this:

I'm amazed how quickly we could see the shape of the house, given the slope before they started. A few people had told us that when we first saw the foundation it would feel small - but if anything, we were a bit taken aback by how large it seemed. We don't seem to have a lot of yard left ! There was the pleasant surprise too that although we have a 1.4m retaining wall at the western side of the house, our driveway will actually be flat - we hadn't realised the slope would even out so much.

By Wednesday we had drainage in place and the boxing for the slab was nearly finished:

As of this afternoon, the waffle pod blocks and metal gear to reinforce the slab have all been delivered, and the crazy-deep holes for the peering are in place. As the neighbours are also building with Rawsons, their temporary safety fencing is being extended around our place.

The slab will be poured next week, with the frame planned to start before Easter (2 weeks away). So we have a few more weeks of exciting activity ahead if Mother Nature plays nice. 

...till next week !

Start day :)

Living around the corner from our block, its far too tempting to drive past it every time I leave the house. Well, my stalking paid off this afternoon when I drove past and discovered this:

So it appears we have started !