Last few weeks to 1st Nov'14 - gyprocking, cornices, fireplace problems

It's great to see the rooms take shape now.  You get a real sense of the dimensions and natural light throughout the house.  You also get to start imagining the fun to come decorating and furnishing the different rooms.

In the last few weeks, the main things to occur were

• finishing installation of all of the insulation (we upgraded this throughout for sound and heat and they installed all the right stuff)
• gyprocking throughout - almost all finished... just one issue mentioned below
• cornicing throughout

We're also advised that the kitchen is scheduled to commence on 12th November.  Our latest discussion with the site supervisor was promising - he's estimated March / April for completion and we're really hoping he's being conservative! 

They've just sent us the latest progress payment which means we're now officially on to the interior linings stage.  The time taken for that stage was by far the longest we've had so far... almost 11 weeks, vs 6-8 weeks guidance.  We're now at 29 weeks since contracts were signed.

Fireplace / TV niche issues
We're having a fireplace installed in an interior wall which separates our rumpus area from our theatre room.  It'll be a glass two-sided one so that both rooms benefit from the heating and aesthetics.  Above the fireplace on both sides, we requested a niche for a television.  The set up is identical to that in their Elyse 15 show home in Kellyville.  It was quoted clearly in the tender, including dimensions.

It was clear from looking at the framing for the wall in question that they'd not structured things correctly.  It transpired that the site supervisor didn't even know the show home had such a set up and had to call out the manufacturers of the fireplace to discuss placement, and safety related separation between the fireplace and TVs.  It seems like we'll now need to either have the TVs quite high on the wall, or instead have the niches built out, such that we lose around 100mm from each room. 

Bit strange that their display home can't actually be functionally replicated (the display home has fake TVs), and disappointing to learn of the issues so late on.  Hopefully fixing it won't delay the build.

Last few weeks to 19th October '14 - scaffolding down, waterproofing, frame approval

Few more things ticked off... certainly not a hive of activity but things continue to progress.  It's been two weeks since the last post.  In that time, we've resolved (we think at least) the fallen tree insurance claim issue and we'll cover that in another post.  We had the exterior almost completely finished and had the interior fit out commence.  We've also been told that insulation starts next week (exciting!), and gyprock gets delivered on 22nd.

The alfresco roof eaves were completed, along with a few other finishes touches on the exterior, and it was great to see the scaffolding come down so that we can properly see what the outside looks like.  It looks like there's just some painting to finish up now on the eaves.

Inside, things are moving on.  It seems the electrical roughing, plumbing, gas and aircon is now all in the walls and roof cavities.  The wet areas have been waterproofed also (we thought when they said waterproofing was scheduled that they meant the exterior / roof area was having something done to it).  The waterproofing seems to consist of a thick rubbery paint and a small lip around the edge of all of the bathrooms, which is obviously designed to prevent water leaking on to the frame if the bathroom floods.  It goes up around 6 inches.

We've largely given up trying to get a basic level of service and information out of the construction office now.  We were told from the start to route all queries through their office, but at the last time of asking for an update, we got next to nothing back from them. We therefore got in touch with our project manager.  He gave a simple short and clear response listing everything that was scheduled for the next few weeks which was great.  He's advised that lock up is pencilled for 4th November.  That will put this stage of the build at a few weeks over plan, but overall we're still within their estimates given the earlier stages completed ahead of guidance.  We still think Feb/Mar '15 is realistic for receipt of the keys.


 

External selections information

Now that the exterior has been completed, I've had a few people comment on and ask about our selections.  Thanks for showing interest!   Below is a summary of what we went for...

Bricks:  Austral Urban One Silver
Roof Tiles:  Monier traditional flat profile caper
Windows:  Anodic silver grey frame
Fascia & downpipe: Colorbond dune
Gutter: colorbond woodland grey
Front entry door:  Hume Savoy XS26 in Cabot's jarrah
Garage door:  Decowood western red cedar (woodgrain textured finish), slimline style

Anything else you want details on, let us know.

The week that was - to 5th October '14

Few new pics below.  No communication on the fallen tree / insurance claim all week.

You can see in the image of the rear of the house how low the stacker doors to the alfresco area are.  They're low because there are two sliding doors which meet in the corner, and we paid for a variation such that no column was required.  The removal of the column meant we needed a reinforced beam. The beam has caused the height of the doors to be lowered.  A real shame because we paid a fair bit to remove the column in order to open up the room and the low height of the doors closes it in.  They're only around 1.9m high.  This reminded us early concerns around not having 3D plans (and of course not having an architect or a savvy salesperson to consider these issues).  We've updated our general tips blog to cover this.

Pretty good week of progress.  Electrical wiring installed throughout.  The electrician was a good guy.... pretty simple really - he dropped us a text message before arriving, asking if we wanted to meet him and chat through what we had selected so that he had an idea of what we were trying to achieve. He then made a few suggestions on improvements.  He got the job done quickly and we were happy.  We'll use him for some work once the house is released to us.

The tiling on the last few sections of the roof were also completed.  Feels like we're now very close to lock up. 

We had a call from the interior tiling company, advising that our selection for the patio area had been discontinued so we'd have to go back to their store and re-select.  Not the end of the world, but pretty inconvenient given Alkira only use one tiling company and it's a 2 hour drive for us.  Another example of average customer service.  Can't be that hard to pick a couple of tiling companies to source from.  Anyway, on speaking to the tiling people, they advised that Alkira don't order the tiles until they have good visibility on having to install them... that was pleasing to hear whilst being a bit surprising as the gyprock isn't even up inside yet.