Saturday, May 30, 2009

Update...






















It has been too long since I have posted on here and alot has happened. After the mishap at the beginning with the pad things have gone smoothly and we are back on track - due to finish in 4 weeks times. Someone has been working on the site every day for the last month and even this weekend! The gyprockers have done their bit and the cornice guy was hard at it yesterday. Hopefully the kitchen and bathrooms will be in next week...

Matt has been sorting out some of the long we still have to do when we move in... he has worked out the concreting, decided on the extension fencing to go on the side of the garden (so that we block out the neighbours) and priced up the gate/fence at the front. Still got turf to find etc etc... Anyway, here are the photos so far....

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Finally....

At last we have some action!
Finally today the concreters came back and fixed up the slab!Hooray! The chipies should be back earlier next week to finish off the frame and the site manager has booked the brickies for late next week - hopefully everything will run to plan now!

Thursday, April 16, 2009

STILL waiting....

Nothing, nada, zip.....for over a week and a half now................................................................................................................................................................

Friday, April 10, 2009

No action all week...

We spoke to the Site manager on Tuesday and he assured us that the mess up will be fixed....though it might take some time! An engineering report needs to be done and then the work will be fixed up and then rechecked by the engineer....
Apparently they were going to do the trusses on Tuesday but the crane broke down on site! The brickie that was booked has had to be cancelled... Could this be the start of a nightmare build? It has all gone so well up to now!
We are already a week behind now as nothing has happened this week, add that to the week of rain we have had = 2 weeks behind at the least! And it is meant to rain next week....

Monday, April 6, 2009

Tile Quote

We received our tile quote today and it comes in at an extra $450. Mostly that is for boarder tiles to go vertically in the showers. It all adds up very quickly.....

We've been framed!

It was all go at the block today with the chippies (carpenters) busily putting up the frame. It is not all done yet but it looks great apart from...... a big mistake!
The fourth bedroom is missing about 3 foot of concrete! We didn't realise until now and neither must the builders because they have not been able to frame the bedroom as the concreting had been messed up!
Hopefully they will just concrete the piece of slab that is missing rather than try to persude us to have a much smaller room - we'll just have to wait and see!

I hope it get sorted quickly before the rain returns........

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Rain, rain, go away!

It has been nearly a week since the timber for the frame and the windows were dropped off....but it has rained non stop since then! It is ment to clear up after the weekend, so hopefully then the frame can start to go up!

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Tiles!

After a trip down to the Central Coast on Friday we have chosen all the tiles for our house. At first we thought it was a nuisance to have to re pick our tiles with another firm, however it turned out all good as we think the new tile place had a better selection.
We chose charcoal grey floors for our bathrooms and laundry and plain white tiles. A strip of grey pebbles will run vertically down the shower. For the porch area we chose a light chocolate looking tile. The kitchen splashback will still be laminate. We'll find out next week how much extra we have to pay for our choices but hopefully it won't be too much!
Not a lot more for me to add - the plumbing in the ground was checked by the council on Thursday and the earth has been filled in and flattened again. We are now waiting for the frame to arrive.....

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

We have a slab!

The slab was laid on Monday and is looking good!

The communication between Allworth and ourselves has been nil since we signed the contracts and so I phoned head office yesterday to see who was 'in charge' of us now construction had started.... they put me on to a lady in the Newcastle office. So I phoned and had a chat with her.... we signed our contracts at home as we could not make it over to the Allworth office during the week and because of this I think we are a little out of the loop... Anyway, during yesterdays phone call I discovered that we will be sent 4 invoices this week and we just have to take each invoice to our bank when Allworth have finished the stage the invoice is for; also found out who our site manager is and that we only have a meeting with him if there are any issues - we can ring him close to lock up to ask if we can come on site and look inside.

Tile place on Friday....

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Lots of action!







It has been a while since I last logged in and lots of things have started happening on the block...


The block has been levelled and the shape of the house has been formed with wood, so we have the foot print of our house! We were lucky with the levelling of the block as we thought they would only level the house pad but for some reason they did most of the block - yey! This has cut down on heaps of work for us later on! Thank you Allworth!

Matt went up to block on Tuesday and as it happened they were doing the piering - it worked out that we only needed 38.6m of piering instead of the 60m that we were quoted for, so we should get at least $1000 back! Good news!

Yesterday the fence and lots of bits and bobs were delivered, we should hopefully have a slab by next week!

We still haven't meet the site supervisor, perhaps we'll give Allworth a call next week to see when/if that will happen.

The only negative thing this week is that we received a letter from head office to say that the tile company has now changed. So our prelimary visit choices are out of the window and we now have to travel to the central coast to a new tile place. We have an appoitment for next Friday, hopefully they will have a better choice than the last place!

Monday, March 9, 2009

We have a portaloo on site - things must be about to happen...hopefully!

Thursday, March 5, 2009

More paperwork....

Haven't heard from Allworth all week and then this morning we received some MORE paper work to sign....
Luckily Matt read the plans carefully and spotted that they have not changed the bi fold doors to the ones we requested way back at our colours meeting. I got out all the paper work from then and have it down in black and white that we requested them...so tomorrow I'll call them. No doubt we will have to wait another week for another set of plans now......

Friday, February 27, 2009

Twenty working days until lift off!

After many phones calls, our 20 days started from Wednesday...........

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Still waiting....

We have signed the contracts and all the mortgage things and now we are still waiting for the Commonwealth Bank to send the confirmation letter to Allworth... Have been onto the bank a few times now and hopefully they are going to email it tomorrow....As soon as they receive the confirmation Allworth have 20 working days to start work on the block..or so they say.....

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Our Block!






Contracts are signed!

It has been over 3 weeks since our plans came out of council and we have only today signed our contract! I think that the council being so quick surprised Allworth!
Anyway, the contract is now signed and in the express post as I write. The bank should have everything ready to sign tomorrow and so it should be all systems go soon!

Plans out of Council!

Well done Singleton Council!

Our plans went in on the 19th Dec and came out on the 9th January! We are very impressed!

Update since our last entry:

We had our colours appointment - it was a very long, stressful time - nearly 3 full hours - and the strange thing was we had chosen everything before we went in! We really thought we would be in and out.....
The lady tried to be as helpful as she could but everything was so ridged....eg. the paint colour for our house was chosen out of the Wattyl exterior paint chart flyer but we could not chose paint for our downpipes from that chart. It had to be from another chart....

Our colours lady had very little colours experience....anyway, we got through it eventually and were so pleased we had really planned what we wanted before we went in otherwise it would have been a nightmare!

On the day of our colours appointment we went to the Laminex centre in Erina and chose the glass doors for our kitchen cupboards (which we plan to install after the build) and also the laminex splashback we are going to have. I was really impressed with the girls at the centre and they were super helpful!

The colours for the house are as follows:
Outside bricks Gran Sorrento Finish - Cajun Brown
Monier Horizion Tiles - Mochachoc
Gutters - Jasper
Downpipes - paperbark
Garage - Jasper
Front door - Jasper

Walls - Wattyl Winter Sky
Skirting and doors - Wattyl Portico (gloss)
Ceiling - ceiling white
Bathrooms - Wattyl Purest White

Kitchen -
Laminex cupboards - Polar white
Laminex cupboards - fineline - aliminium frosted glass
benchtop - caesar stone ice snow
splashbash - laminex zinc

flooring - spotted gum (timber impressions)