The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Mixed feelings coming out of this week. 

The good:

Our SS has been great following up on things. This week saw:

- door furniture installed

- kitchen splashback installed

- shelving installed

- mirrored robe doors switched over

- ensuite shower door installed

- towel rails and toilet roll holders installed

- diamond grill sliding door to alfresco installed

- garage door [finally] installed yay!

- scaffolding removed

- termite reticulation installed

The bad [and the ugly]:

Crooked Kitchen

So...during the week I was looking down at the tiles behind the kitchen island. I proceeded to notice that the tiles weren't even/uniform...and soon realised that this was because my kitchen island has been installed on an angle! My kitchen is crooked. I took a laser measure and made sure the next day, and it is out by 25mm - an inch!

We told our SS and he had the kitchen installer come out on Friday to take a look. Apparently he was sick to his stomach when he saw it and they will be ripping up tiles and fixing it up next week. 

Although I'm not happy this happened, I'm glad our SS sorted it out straight away and that Timpelle Kitchens are sorting it out ASAP. I don't think our last SS would even have called the kitchen people to have a look!

This is setting us back another week now with the kitchen taking 3 days to fix and the rest of the week to redo the tiling. So no PCI this week. 

Gas Connection Delay

Supposedly we are having the driveway formed and poured next week, however our SS says that AGL have asked for 2 wk lead time for a new connection. So that means we can't have the driveway poured until the gas is connected, and it also means we won't be able to have PCI until the gas is connected. 

Leaks

Apparently there's a leak from the ensuite shower that the waterproofer is looking at this week. 

We also noticed that under the kitchen sink water has pooled in the cupboard which is started to warp the bottom shelf. Hopefully they've seen this and fix it. I'm also hoping they change that cupboard now...

Missing Powerpoint in theatre

We are supposed to have a ceiling mounted powerpoint in the theatre for a projector and I realised they installed an air con vent where I had marked it to be. Our SS asked our electrician about it who said that it wasn't on our electrical plan. We've resent our clipsal plan where it is shown so they'll have to fix that.

Plan for the week:

- waterproofing

- kitchen fix

- re-tiling

- driveway outline

Cx

External finally complete! Scaffolding removed

Garage door installed - timbertone

Splashback installed

Splashback and caesarstone over sill to meet window

Kitchen leakage under sink

Cloak Room shelf and rail installed

Storeroom shelving

Pantry shelving installed

Pantry shelving perfectly level

Alfresco flyscreen doors installed

Linen wire shelving installed

Shower door installed, towel rail to be moved onto wall

Mirror smart robe doors moved to each end of WIR

The WIR behind feature wall - three sets of two doors...

Robe shelving installed in main

Termite reticulation system installed

Bricks and a Break

On Friday morning (yesterday) we met our site supervisor, Scott for the first time and he took us on a walk thru of the house. He was great, very personable and happy to give us a tour of our soon to be home. He seemed pretty relaxed, and is quite positive that handover is not too far from reach now, and we're really going through the slow phase at the moment!

So I took a few more photos of what has happened - they've finally completed the entire ground floor for bricking, and the rest of the fireplace has gone up too. We've also got that final window installed - Scott said that they had delivered one with the wrong window sill width. They've started a bit on the first floor too.

I also noticed some pretty fluro purple spray paint in the kitchen - Timpelle have been out to do an inspection and final measure for the kitchen and left some notes on the floor!

The Milburns are off to take a break for a week and a half HOLIDDDDAYYYYY!!! So when we get back we will have full bricks, fascia, guttering and eaves by the time we get back. He said he'd try to send us a picture of the house when the bricking has completed - which should be this Tuesday some time (first floor is easiest and fastest). Shame we will miss it, but we are in dire need of a getaway right about now!

Enjoy the pics and I will update the blog when we're back...or maybe I'll post some holiday envy photos ;)

Cx

Piers now completed to the balcony

Competed up to first floor window - these weird weep hole placements are killing my life right now!

On the porch

Fireplace

Mr Milburn in the leisure with the fireplace built up (weep holes done well here!)

Blind side (I hate the metal poles for the neighbours fence can be seen from our side)

Northern side

Alfresco

The bottom window sill will be removed to slot the stone bench underneath

Progress!

It has been quite an eventful past couple of days for us! Everyone has got their variation estimates back to us for signing already, even when they estimated it would take a week. Love it, love it, love it!

Wisdom Internal/External Colours
Draft Colour Selection Sheet has been updated to include the variations we signed off last Friday

Carpet/Tiles/Flooring
Quote has come back for us to sign off on - we are going to visit one more time this weekend because I'm having second thoughts about the external tiles we have chosen (much to Pauly's dismay poor thing!)

Kitchen
This has come back already, our appointment was only last Friday!
We have now signed off on kitchen, and decided to leave the cupboards on one side of the oven, and to upgrade to flat stone drainage for the sink.
Now that we've signed off, they will start the kitchen drawings.

Electrical and Air Conditioning
Already signed off last week

Home Theatre
We contacted the Home Theatre rep that does Wisdom's installs, he was really nice and we've sent him a big email with our requirements and what we want estimated.
He said he would do a quote on supply & install, but also a quote on just install, which is great!


Today I had a call from our Wisdom rep who let me know that our plans have come back, and they should receive our BASIX assessment today and tomorrow she will be submitting to our Developer for approval!

EXCITED! What a huge moment!

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