Main Floors Completed, Rainwater Tank Installed

This week saw the completion of the tiling for our main floors, balcony, and little bits in the bathroom e.g. above bath. above shower heads.

The rainwater tank was also installed earlier in the week which was a surprise.

A couple of times that we went past the house this week, we noticed the tradies had left most of our lights on! In the main areas, the pantry, and last night we went past and all our outdoor lighting was on! Really bizarre.

Anyway, we are really loving the tiles that we have chosen. Unfortunately none of the photos I took give them any justice, but they look great and I'm very happy with the colour and sizing that we have chosen.

We also noticed more painting happened inside the house this week, particularly architraves and stair rails getting more coats of paint. They also went around and patched up holes, etc in the gyprock and have sanded that back ready for it's next coat.

Looking forward to finding out what happens next week...

On another note, we've made the last bits of furniture purchases. And thanks to the awesome Ramon from Bing Lee Fairfield, we have ordered all our appliances, which I will add to the Miscellaneous Page if you want to take a look. So excited about everything we've purchased, just can't wait to start receiving and using them! 

Cx

Slimline rainwater tank in surfmist

Lights left on in the house when we went past

Lounge

Under stairs storage

Balcony tiles

Main Floor Tiling Begins

On Saturday afternoon we visited the house and there were tilers prepping and cutting up tiles for our main floors. We went back this morning to take a look at what they had been able to do. 

They've laid the majority of tiles and they look really nice. Although they have all the hard bits to go now, which will take a while because they'll have to cut all the tiles. Can't wait for them to complete it though and get the grout down so we can see the finished product. 

Not sure what is happening this week (I'm going to guess just main floor tiling will be completed), as our SS again did not contact us with our weekly update on Friday and has not arranged that elusive on site meeting we've been asking for. What to do..?

Cx

Wet Area Tiling, Sinks and Stone Benchtops

We saw a bit more progress this week, however we did not get the first coat of paint around the house as our SS advised would happen last week. We were also told that we won't actually be changing supervisors until probably handover after all...

I still feel like things are going a lot slower, with some of the cornices around the house not being completed e.g. our ensuite, bits of gyprock still need installing e.g. underneath the stairs, etc.

So this weekend when we visited on Saturday, they were still tiling the bathrooms so on Sunday we revisited and found these completed:

• Alfresco tiling completed
• Laundry floor tiling completed, stone benchtops installed with tub installed
• Powder room floor tiling completed, stone benchtops installed with sink installed
• Main bathroom floor and wall tiling completed, stone benchtops installed with sink installed
• Ensuite bathroom floor and wall tiling completed, stone benchtops installed with sink installed
• Kitchen stone bench tops and sink installed

I have to say, I was pretty upset with the way they have tiled our shower niches. I really don't understand why they had to cut the tiles within the niche - the tiles height-wise are larger than the niche, and should have fit so that there were no horizontal grout lines or joins, only vertical. I really don't understand! And there's really no way to fix it unless I ask them to tile it all over again...or we remove the tiles within the niche and put a different type of feature tile within it. I'm confused and devo about the situation right about now. Not sure what to do.

We also had our smart robe doors installed to the main bedroom. First of all, our main bedroom is pretty tiny with the way it's been designed. It would be nice for a Majestic 40, but for a house our size it barely fits a King bed (lengthwise, so even a queen as well). So that's a little disappointing too. Even going to the display home at the Ponds (Majestic 34) it looked fine to fit a king bed, so I don't really understand why our room is so small - But there's literally 60cm between the end of our bed and the wall. 

Anyway back to the smart robe - I had no idea that the doors were separated. Looking back at our plans, I can kind of see where it is now (a little black square??) but I guess it never clicked that is meant something and was never explained. So basically our wardrobe is split into three sections (open along the inside though) with two sliding doors for each section - isn't that so weird?? Also, they put our mirrored doors in the middle, when we wanted one on each end of the robe which has been marked on our plans specifically. Have a look here if you like, and tell me what you think.

All in all, I'm feeling pretty frustrated right at this point. Wisdom has clearly been busy with getting their new display homes done (has anybody else seen that they fully completed 4 or 5 new display homes in gregory hills within 4 months? that's where they've been sending their worker bees), our SS has not contacted us for our Friday updates two weeks in a row, his timelines are behind and we are never told why...and the whole weird shower niche tiling situation is making me feel like I have no choice, control or say in anything. I wasn't expecting these type of feelings for the last, what I thought would be, month of our build. 

I feel like handover is stretching further from our reach as the days pass...

Sorry for my rant, just needed to get that out. Hope everyone else is having much better progress than us :)

Cx

Alfresco tile - we are happy with the colour

Laundry tiles - will match our main tile

Powder room floor tile, stone top and basin

Caesarstone with waterfall

Shower in main bathroom

Main bathroom tiling completed, stone top and basin installed

Ensuite tiling completed

Ensuite stone top and vanity installed

Flooring Quote Completed

It was a couple of weeks ago now, but we revisited Di Lorenzo at Bella Vista and had a last look at our tile selection before we signed the quote.

On top of the normal stuff, we also signed off on the following upgrades (as I think I mentioned in a previous post):

• Tiling to alfresco (tiles + labour)
• Tiling to staircase storage (tiles + labour)
• Increased feature tiles to one whole wall for powder room, bathroom, ensuite (standard is one feature strip in showers)
• Floor to ceiling tiling to complete shower in bathroom, ensuite

I have a few photos from when we were taking a look at them, hope you can see them. I really enjoyed selecting tiles, it has probably been the most fun part so far and I can't wait to see how they look in our house!

Main Floor Tile: Glazed Porcelain "Stone White" next to Kitchen Cupboards "Avignon Walnut" and our Bristol wall colour "Satellite"

Bathroom Feature Tile: This is my favourite!

Bathroom Tiles: Normal wall tile against the feature. The bottom RHS is our floor tile.

Feature Tile against the Bathroom Cabinet (Smokey Sapelle) and our paint colour 

External Floor Tile: Initially we chose Pewter, but have now changed to "Charcoal Grip" it shimmers in the sunlight

Laundry Wall Tile in Off White

Hope you like our choices too!

Cx

Appointments Completed

It has been quite an exhausting but productive week for us both! We completed our main appointments already, which is great and means no more thinking about colours and upgrades after this. We took 2 days off work to get these done ASAP:

• Electrical (Clipspec, North Ryde)
• Flooring (Di Lorenzo, Bella Vista)
• Kitchen (Timpelle Kitchens, Prestons)
• Air Conditioning (Ultra Air, Minchinbury)

I think we may still need to do a staircase appointment, but the only thing I need to confirm is the colour of the woodwork, as we won't be changing the design from the standard.

We have already received quotes to sign off from Di Lorenzo, Electrical and Air Conditioning we signed off on the day and we will get the Kitchen upgrades quoted up within 5 days. We also got our colours and quotes back from Wisdom this week, and we need to sign off on the extra upgrades from there.

This is the run down of the week!

Wisdom Colours

• Final price for our Brick Upgrade to Boral Escura Velour Pearl Grey (main) and Boral Escura Velour Brown to front portico piers - came back a lot less than the original estimate which was great!!
• Final price for second paint colour (for woodwork i.e. doors, architraves, etc)
• Final price for clear timber stain to balcony door
• Final price for privacy adapters to 5 internal doors
• Final price for powder coat to balcony rail - we decided to not take this, and stick with "Surfmist" as our balcony railing colour to go with the windows

Electrical

The electrical appointment was interesting, I thought I was decently prepared for it, as we had drawn our ideal plan about a dozen times, but there were still things that we started thinking about on the day. Also choosing between builder's range items and Clipsal items was a bit more challenging than we thought! We signed the plan off on the day, but I wish I had more time to ponder and make changes now.

We were a little frustrated because we had been waiting to get the cost to pre-wire the theatre, and we were told we had to go back to Wisdom! Also, the same deal with pre-wire for the intercom!

These are some of things I can remember that we added in addition

• Provisioned for downlights in main living areas
• Up/Down exterior lights to front facade x4
• 3 data points - office/theatre/leisure (easier to run data points to upstairs later if we wanted to)
• Extra set double powerpoints to each room
• Square LED staircase lights (we went with Clipsal over the builders range as they were halogen) - theatre room x2 (for podium step) and main staircase x4
• We upgraded our light switches to the 'Impress' push button range with blue LED
• Extra outdoor light on blindside/laundry side of house
• Double motion sensor external light for the backyard

Flooring

This was a really difficult appointment! We had made about half a dozen trips here and had our list of tiles and were ready to go, but there's so much more involved in flooring than just selecting the tiles you want! It's particularly hard to visualise what they are explaining as well, we were a little exhausted toward the end! 

A lot more here to upgrade than we realised we would need to be doing. The people at Di Lorenzo really go through with detail exactly what you are getting in each and every room, and were very helpful!

• Upgraded Laundry tile
• Upgraded the shower wall with niche to all feature tiles (I am in love love love with this tile!)
• Tiled to ceiling all of shower and bath recess only
• Upgraded ensuite shower wall with niche to all feature tiles
• Tiled ensuite shower to ceiling all of shower recess only
• Upgraded powder room feature wall to all feature tiles
• Upgraded floor wastes (except laundry) to the feature tile chrome wastes

We got quotes for the following and are still deciding whether we proceed with them or not (they ended up costing a little more than what we had expected/hoped for)

• Extended tiling to underneath the staircase
• Tiling to alfresco

Kitchen

Kitchen appointment at Timpelle was great, our customer service rep explained in detail and with drawings exactly what we were getting and recommended changes. A couple of things again we had been waiting for our kitchen appointment, only to be told we had to go back to Wisdom to get quotes on: Veg Spray tapware and space provisioning for a wine fridge in the pantry.

We are awaiting quotes on the following upgrades:

• Second set of pot drawers to match opposite side of oven
• Microwave provision with cupboards in kitchen niche
• Set of pigeon door cupboards for VOID space underneath waterfall
• Laminate pantry doors to match
• Add set of drawers to main bathroom (instead of just pigeon doors)

Air Conditioning

This appointment the guy at Ultra Air ran us through his product, what we were getting, and how it works. We are staying with a two zone (Upper and Lower floors) and one command point. The upgrades are basically adding extra zones, and upgrading to the horizontal grills, which we didn't do either. Also he said we had the option to add zones later anyway, it's just a little more difficult but it can be done.

Pretty exciting I think, to finally have these all completed now.

The only things I'm worried about are the Theatre pre-wire, and the Intercom pre-wire which we have to get quoted back from Wisdom.

We also have not yet submitted our plans to the Developer for approval, as changes to our drawings had to be made because of our landscaping decisions e.g. remove laundry steps, change driveway shape (5 days). 

Plan for the week:
We are hoping to hear back from Wisdom some time this week and have them submit to the Developer.

Cx