12. Almost there!

Finalising & Touch ups

28-Nov-14: Going in to final inspections.
Paint scratches & marks have been touched up, ducting vents & final cupboard doors in place,, floors cleaned.

Exterior

Contrast render colour has been applied to the front pillars & the letterbox & driveway done. Unfortunately the dirt is much as it will be at hand-over, I'll have a lot to learn about landscaping & gardening to get it in shape.

	I thought the front render would be too much of the light colour but the dark porch floor & driveway works with the grey columns to tone it down nicely. (Neighbour's drive in foreground, mine is black.)
	I need to go shopping for some light fittings for the columns.
	Solar hot water system all done. The system at the side is pretty ugly but it will be well out of site once the fencing is up, I guess a lot of it is for the boosting for cloudy days. It will be quite a squeeze around this from the laundry door to the back yard.

Inside Fittings

Laundry & broom cupboard are complete. This colour is the same as the kitchen island & kickboards.
The bathrooms look terrific, shower screens & mirrors are in. The sam e black tiles are also on the wall behind the camera. (Yes, the powerpoint is a reflection.)
Blinds are in and the black switch plates have been fixed.
2nd bedroom WIR. Odd paint colour this, when lighting is low it appears quite a lot greener.
Home office almost finished off. The blinds work really well, you have to get pretty close to see that they're plastic. Long term aim is to put shutters here.

Not long to go now!

Here's a 360 degree shot to give a sense of all the activity in this little street. It was all grass in May, there are a couple of dozen houses going up now.

11. Lock-Up Stage

Paint & Flooring

14-Sep-14: Huge amount of progress on this visit, it's really taking shape.

1. Driveway done
2. Garage door is in.
3. Front render is on. First colour done but 2nd colour still to come.
4. Front door in place.
5. All painting is done, although recoats are needed in some areas due to scrapes etc done by tradies afterwards,
6. Floors are in.
7. Tiling completed in bathrooms.
8. Benchtops are in.
9. Downpipes in place.
10. Electrical wall points done, albeit requiring rework.

The two pillars will be painted to match the guttering. The driveway is actually almost black, much darker than it appears n this shot.

Paint Colours

This was the first time I got to see my paint & colour selections in the flesh. The main wall colour is 'Cold Steel'. The floors are the same throughout, apart from tiling in the bathrooms & laundrey. I'm allergic to dust mite so no carpet anywhere. (And yes, I will still want you to remove your shoes - spent too much time in India to let go of that habit.)

Front room - Home Office	Living/Dining
Cupboard doors waiting for install	Living area looking toward dining. The switches & powepoints should be black, so they need to be replaced.
Music Room	Bedroom 3
Different colour to other rooms, this one is 'coalmine'. It is a huge room - soundproofing in th walls. Powerpoints have to be fixed, there should be two quad pointsper wall (can never have too many when you have gear to turn on).	Paint colour in the small bedrooms is Solver 'Hunt'. It's got more of a greenish tinge than expected from the samples.

Bathrooms

En Suite	WIR & En Suite
Tiles need a good clean but you get the idea. The other bathroom is the same colour & tile selection.	I'll have some shelving to do in the WIR after moving in. Haven't much of a clue how to do this yet.

Kitchen

Bench with range-hood & splashback in.Powerpoints should be black, upper cupboards will be the same as below.	Walk-In-Pantry, fridge space on right. Benchtops are Ceaserstone 'Osprey'.
Yes, it is pretty purple, isn't it? Stronger than I expected from the tiny sample card but I think it will work with some matching pieces elsewhere inthe room.	Kitchen view to living area. No, the bath isn't staying - it's cracked & waiting for a replacement.

Overall, I'm really happy with the colours. Floors look great and laminate flooring doesn't feel anywhere near as springy as it used to a few years ago. I love the tiles in the bathroom, the blue walls look just as I'd pictured them. Still unsure about so much purple in the kitchen but I expect it will not be so bold once everything else is in place. The big slab of white door on the pantry isn't something I thought about & some paint may be in order to not have it be such a feature.

10. Pre-Paint Prep

Getting Ready for Paint & Tile

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20-Sep-14: Outside brickwork is finished and the plasterboard is up & being prepped for painting.

Rear of house

Front, still showing the unrendered bricks of various colours.

Plasterer

Plasterboard is up in all rooms and being prepped for the painters.

Cabinets

They were in the process of installing the cabinets in all rooms when I visited. I love this licorice colour (overhead cabinets are the same). Splashback will be black glass, so I've gone for the Darth Vader theme throughout, although benchtops will be a white ceaserstone.

This is the first time I've seen some of my colour choices in the flesh.

9. Bricks & Wiring

Bricks

08-Sep-14: The bricks have been going up & should be finished next week. At first I was saurprised at the colour of them but then realised they used any colour at the front where they will be rendered over, the sides & back of the house had the correct colour bricks.

Rear of house

Front, with the unrendered bricks of various colours.

Wiring

Electric wiring, data & TV cabling, heating & cooling ducting was all roughed in. Insulation goes into the walls next week. Makes me pretty nervous about drilling walls later on to put in shelving & so forth.

Ducting	The actual heating & cooling units have also been installed in the roof space, this one is the cooling. It's kinda hard to check that they've put the right one in (I paid extra for a higher energy-rated unit than standard).

I was initially pondering the merit of having exhausts ducted to the outside, which is na extra cost. Research found that this is worth doing if you're in a bushfire rated zone & sarking (metal foil sheeting) is required in the roof. I've escaped this (just) and apparently without the sisolation, there is plenty of airflow through the exposed roof tiles so extra venting isn't needed.

8. Furniture Shopping

Dining Table

After looking around for a couple of months, I've ordered a dining table from Bespoke in Richmond. It's recycled Tasmanian birds-eye blackbutt (I think), quite an uncommon timber. Note sure about buying a big dining table just for me, but anything smaller would look wrong in the space.

Sofa

The sofa solution is proving more difficult. I did find a fantastic colour which really popped against the wall colour (card sitting on the sofa). At over $7K for just one it's beyond my budget (I probably need a 3 seater and a 2 seater). Beautiful quality though, quite droolsome to sit in.

This one is under consideration - affordable & I don't mind it, but it will be more conservative, particularly considering the floor timber colour. (Wall paint sample card continues to be especially difficult to render in these pics. Above shot has a more accurate paint colour, despite the sofa below being spot on in my monitor.)

7. Frame Wrap & Roof

By 15-Aug frame was wrapped and the roof had been tiled, although a tiler was still at it on the Saturday that I went for a look.

Tiles

Front view. The garage (on the right) has temporary framing where the door will go. The developer required low profile tiles on all builds (an extra $2K+) but I'm hard pressed to notice the difference from the street.

Back view. Just love that sticky clay - I'll really need to find out how to prepare the soil before I grow much on it. The camera position is about at the back fenceline, so not a lot of landscaping area. At least they seem to be prepping plenty of drains around the outside.

Wall Paints

I got some sample pots and painted a few cards. The Cold Steel is quite dark blue/grey, it looks brighter on my monitor here. All paints are Solver, which is the only brand Boutique offer.

• Cold Steel is the main wall colour throughout the house. Ceiling & skirting boards are white & all floors except wet areas will be timber laminate.
• Coalmine is the wall colour in the music room.
• Hunt will be the wall colour in bedrooms 2 & 3.

This is the same colour (Cold Steel), to give you an idea of the difficulty I'm having getting a proper render into the blog.

Roof Tiles Front view. The garage (on the right) has temporary framing where the door will go. The developer required low profile tiles on all builds (an extra $2K+) but I'm hard pressed to notice the difference from the street.

Back view Love the mud!

6. Frame

Timber Frame

8-Aug-2014: A week after the slab was poured, the frame is up and all of the double-glazed glass doors & windows are in. The frame should be wrapped next week. This is the home office, entry door to the right:

The view at the back of the house (I get to call it 'a house' for the first time). Outdoor area on left leads into the dining room, living area at the right.

Slab QA The independent inspection was also done. It picked up a couple of minor issues such as the outdoor area having excessive slope towards the building, demonstrated by the water pooling in the pic above. This pipe is for the bathroom sink drain but it's supposed to be right in the wall. It's actually in the adjacent bedroom. I'm assured it's easily fixed by the plumber.

This is a view from about where the sofa wil be towards the kitchen. Fridge cavity on the right, the pipes are for the island bench with kitchen bench & oven going on the wall behind it. The other side of the wall is the laundry.

Unfortunately the nice views of green fields will be smothered in a year by houses & fences. This land was released for sale in July. This is looking out at the outdoor living area form the dining room. Back yard is tiny, my fence will be about where the wire fence is here.

5. Slab

Slab Pour

The slab went in 31-July, which was a surprise as the state was slammed by bad storms in the afternoon. Some defined areas such as the outdoor living seem much smaller than expected, but that seems to be a common reaction when people are at this stage of the build.

I've got an independent inspector going in next week to do their checks. It's probably unnecessary (particularly for the slab) but because I'm 90km away from the site, I figure it's a relatively small investment in some QA.

The clay really turned into a bog with the rain. Thakfully they seem tpo be preparing plenty of drains for both sides of the house.

Seemed so small looking at the slab that I went home & checked the plans. It seems huge when paced out in my current flat - go figure.

The other surprise was how tiny the yards will be. Trying to fit in the 'mandatory' trees & shrubs specified by the developer would be laughable.

4. Site Prep

Excavator Moves In

The first site cut was on 10-Jul-2014.

 The only concern was that the neighbour's tradies kept moving their fence onto my block to put up their trestle to finish the brickwork. The guy driving the bobcat didn't bother moving the fence back, he just excavated inside it so the scrape doesn't go to the site boundary where the garage should be.



The stick with the white top marks the site corner & the added red line shows where the fenceline should more or less be.

The loo was in first, a sure sign they're getting serious:

 

Piers were done at the front section of the slab. I don't really know why the front & not the back, soil reports were the same for all cores on the site. There had been a bit but of rain before this visit & clearly the sandy clay here doesn't drain  too well (contrary to what the developer told me).

The cut at the back surprised me with how deep it was. The land here appeared more or less flat when walking over it. Really hoping they put effective drains in or I'll need to get ducks instead of a dog.

From the SW corner