Things are all happening now

This week the pace started to pick up and we almost had someone on site every day this week. We had the electricity and air con roughed in, the ducted vacuuming installed, the waterproofing for wet areas completed as well as the lower floor of the house brick cleaned (except for the front of the house where the scaffolding is still up waiting for the verandah to go up). Next week will see the insulation and gyprock completed and the week after my kitchen installed. So excited!!!

 Our nice clean house

 The insulation ready to go in. It doesn't look like a lot so I hope they ordered enough.

 These cables are just for the TVs and internet. I think hubby may have gone a bit overboard....

The house with electrical cables, air con, ducted vacuuming, drop down ceiling and sliding door cavities all complete. Notice the gap at the top of the kitchen window- hopefully that gets fixed soon.

Garage roof on

The roofers finally came on Saturday to put on the garage roof. Although the house seems to be moving slowly at the moment, our SS said that after the garage roof is on, the house should be finished in 8 to 10 weeks. Pretty excited about that.
Last week the carpenters also came back and finished the cladding and replaced the darkest pieces of wood.

This week there was no one on site Mon to Wed but yesterday the electricians came to rough in and the carpenters installed the sliding door cavities and fixed up the timber frames so they are ready for council inspection next Tuesday and gyprock :)
Today the carpenters will hopefully be back to start the verandah and feature battens.

SS also said that the kitchen and the staircase will start going in 9th September!!!!!! 😊

Cladding Dramas

More cedar cladding finally came on Friday, and on Monday the carpenters came back to put it up. Hubby had the day off and scheduled a time to meet the SS on site so he could discuss a few things such as why there was three and a half pallets of roof tiles left over. 

Hubby was happy to see the carpenters finally putting up the cladding, but couldn't believe it when he saw that they had put the cladding on the wrong way. We wanted the cladding installed like the display home (vertically) but instead the cladding was installed horizontally. Although we would have preferred the cladding installed vertically, we decided to leave it as is as it would add another 2 weeks to the build on top of the already wasted two weeks waiting for the cladding and carpenters. Then to add insult to injury, we asked the carpenters if the cladding would be finished that day or if they had to come back tomorrow to finish it. They replied that they have run out of cladding and couldn't finish the job until more gets delivered. Unbelievable!!!! On top of that, they couldn't start the timber slat feature above the front door as there was not enough wood delivered for that either!

On another note, the painters came yesterday and painted the eaves, the moroka finish on the top half of the pole and lacquered the cladding. We are not really happy with the three dark pieces on the right hand side so will ask the carpenters to replace them with lighter pieces once they come back. 

This is what the house looks like now. Although I am disappointed by the set backs of late, I am really happy with the way it is coming together. 

The moroka finish on the pole. It is lighter than I thought it would be, but I like it. It is called 'foxtail' by Taubmans.

You can see the dark pieces of wood that we want replaced in this picture. I think they stand out too much.

 From this picture you can see where the carpenters ran out of cedar cladding. 

Slowly, slowly

Well there has not been much action these last two weeks. We had to wait to get the carpenters at our house (as they are very busy lately) and when they came they put up our eaves and then left. We rang our SS to find out why they didn't put the cladding up and apparently even though 160 metres of wood was ordered for the cladding, only 16 metres were delivered. Now we are waiting another week for more to be delivered (it should be delivered today or Monday).

Also nothing else can happen until the cladding goes on as the scaffolding needs to be lowered for the garage roof and the verandah to go up. I guess things like this happen, but it is extremely annoying when your house is sitting there for 2 weeks with not much going on when we are so close to lock up.

There's a house with a roof

The roof and gutter ended up going up a week later than expected. I thought the roof would take up to three days to go up but it went up in only one day.

I was really nervous about seeing the roof as I chose the colour for it (caper) and on paper the colour looked the same as woodland grey, which is on the gutters, but after reading about it online, many people said it is actually a lot lighter in real life under the sun than on paper. BUT............I love it! I think if I had chosen darker tiles it might have made the house too dark as the bricks are quite dark already.

As you can see in this picture, only the top half of the house has been cleaned so far. I am pretty sure the rest of the house will be cleaned after the scaffolding comes down.

It is really starting to look like a house now. I cannot wait for the carpenters to come next Tuesday as they will put up the cedar cladding and eaves. Then the scaffolding will be moved so the garage roof can go on and then hopefully the ugly scaffolding will come down.

Bricking almost complete

It has been three and a half weeks since the bricklayers started and they have only one day to go until they are finished. We are very happy with their work as it is really neat and tidy. Hubby talked to our SS today and it looks like next week will see the bricklaying complete, the bricks cleaned and hopefully the gutters up. The following week, the roof tiles will be delivered (on Tuesday) and the tiling will start on Wed or Thurs. 

The front of the house. The top left hand side will have the cedar cladding (which will be installed after the roof goes on). The pier with the commons (orange bricks) will have a moroka finish later on. I already can't wait to see the scaffolding come down, but we are a long way off this.

It is strange that the bricks look a lot lighter once layer than on the pallet. The mortar makes a big difference. 

Our kitchen window was replaced this week and we are happy with it. It looks a lot better than the other one with the frame down the middle. 

Scaffolding

This week hasn't been a very productive week. The brickies finished bricking the first layer of bricks last Thursday and the scaffolding was supposed to go up on Tuesday, and then the brickies were to continue working the following day. Instead the scaffolding went up on Wednesday and when I drove past on Friday I was disappointed when I saw that no bricking had been completed at all. I was told that the bricks would take 3 weeks to go up, but seeing as no work was completed this week, it will now be four weeks if we are lucky. To make it worse, rain is forecast for next week.... :(