The Letterbox Saga and PCI

Let's start with the bad news - this story is called The Letterbox Saga by The Milburns

So let's go back in time to when we were creating our landscape plan...we gave Wisdom Landscapes a copy of the Estate Guidelines with exact dimensions, letterbox light and mailbox size and colour that was required.

They get back to us and haven't drawn correct to spec, so we send it back

Finally they change the spec and are charging us in excess of $1,000 for it. Fine.

Fast forward 8 months to our site visit. We are further charged $100+ to have the render painted.
We are then told that "[they] are not electricians" and can't have the letterbox light powered, still charging same price.
We are then told that they will give us a silver box instead of the brass finish.
So we asked they install the light and we'll do the electricals later, and we sourced the brass mailbox for them and told them to get it.

Fast forward to now - we have a letterbox, and it's at almost a 45deg angle to the boundary/our house.

We've asked them to knock it down and do it again. It's so frustrating how much pain this letterbox has caused us. I mean, we gave them specifically what we wanted and what the guidelines required, yet still manage to stuff it up?

Let's get to the nicer stuff now...

Carpets
These were installed last week, and we haven't had access inside the house until today. We love the carpet, so very happy

PCI
Bricks
I should call this The Brick Saga!
We met our SS Phil on site today for PCI. It took over 2.5hrs because we spent a very long time meticulously marking out all the bad bricking and mortar joins that we've been trying to get looked at for so long. He absolutely understands our pain now, which was comforting, and was disappointed in the workmanship himself! So our house is covered in blue tape right now, and this will take over a week to rectify unfortunately.

Painting - External
Probably one of the worse things - they've done a pretty bad job on the downpipes. Looking behind them, they haven't even bothered painting it. Some of the joins are white and haven't been painted correctly. Most of the downpipes look like only one layer has applied and we can still see manufacturer information printed on the pipes!

Painting - Internal
The painting is quite nice inside, however there are definitely a lot of things we had to mark up to be fixed, and holes to be plastered, etc.

Windows
Lots of scratched and chipped windows - we are having 7 panels replaced, all downstairs. Of particular note - our kitchen feature window had a big crack in it and that will have to be replaced.

Kitchen
One of our cupboards is missing a shelf. One of our light switches needs replacing. They've reversed our kitchen tap so that the mixer is on the right hand side which is great. One of our waterfall panels on the island has a bit of a scratch on it.

Letterbox
Needs to be rebuilt.

Bathrooms
Spout missing for main bath. All toilet seats need realignment (because all the tradies have already used our toilets which was not a nice looking surprise)

Driveway
Needs to be re-cleaned and sealed.

Roof Tiles
Two cracked roof tiles need to be replaced - can be seen when looking out bedroom 2 window.

Connections
Gas pipe not connected yet. One down pipe has not been connected to anything!

What's next?

Who knows. We've sent through the progress payment claim to the bank today, and have requested a settlement date for next Friday. Nobody seems to be able to answer our Occupancy Certificate inspection queries. Phil says he will try to get everything done within 1.5 weeks, but he says there's a lot of work especially because he needs to get brickies and plasterers out. We also told him we weren't happy with the clean at all, and he's going to try to organise a third clean to happen next week. All inside the window sills and sliding door tracks is full of dirt, it's horrible. Even the floors were still powdery.

I'm looking forward to the next couple of weeks. I want to settle and move in, we've been in the build phase for 7 months now and have had so many ups and downs that we're just tired of it all.

Once I get a settlement date, I think I'll be a happy camper. Kudos to our new SS Phil, though. He really took the time to go through all our chips and cracks and mortar, when our old SS wouldn't give us the time of day. So for that, I am so thankful and I know he'll do a great job to finish off our beautiful home.

Cx

No more construction fencing! Unfortunately the letterbox is not looking at the camera...

Welcome home!

Office - carpeted

Theatre - carpeted

Staircase - carpeted - we love it

Hallway upstairs carpeted

Main bedroom

Ensuite with towel rail repositioned - we wanted it away from the powerpoint though, even marked it up...oh well

Shower rail and niche

Visitors to collect the remaining site debris - we saw them raking around the house too, very thorough

Upper lounge carpeted

Inside the garage opened up

Kitchen Fixed and Driveway Poured

Feeling a lot better after this week. Again, really happy with our new site supervisor Phil!

We are loving the driveway it looks really nice, and are really happy that everything is finally coming together. This has probably been the first time we actually feel like this whole process is coming to an end.

The following has been done this week:

• Kitchen fixed
• Theatre outlet for projector installed
• Fireplace completed
• Driveway poured
• Waterproof redone for main shower leak
• Gas connected
• Spa motor installed and connected

Phil has let us know that currently the plan for the following week is this:

• Monday/Tuesday - tiles being fixed in main area and main bathroom; final brick clean
• Tuesday/Wednesday - carpets being installed; sealant to all wet areas
• Thursday - final painting touchups
• Friday - final house clean

We currently have a tentative PCI date booked in for Tuesday 29th which he said he will confirm with us on Monday morning - fingers crossed.

Cx

Fireplace fascia installed

Tiles in the kitchen to be relaid

Driveway/footpath before the pour

Spa motor installed (access through our wardrobe)

Cabinets, Internal Doors, Architraves, Skirting Completed and Landscaping Meeting

This week saw a little bit of progress with the rest of the cabinets in bathrooms and laundry being installed including all the handles.

Our internal doors were installed this week, no door furniture though. Our smart robe doors have not been touched yet though. Architraves and skirting boards were also installed this week.

We had our onsite meeting with Wisdom Landscapes on Friday, and I think we left there spending more money than we originally thought. We decided we wanted to put a pattern on our driveway now, so we've changed to a Brick Header and the Large Tile at a 45deg angle. We're sticking with the colour bluestone as it goes well with our chosen external tiles.

Also, with our letterbox we had a specifically designed one to comply with the Estate Guidelines, it needs to be rendered yet the price of painting it wasn't included in the original quote - isn't that crazy. We also decided to add our side gates as well, plus temporary wooden stairs for outside the laundry door as we want to level out the ground later when we do the retaining walls.

The meeting went really well, our contact really knew what he was talking about and I got to change a few curves for the driveway - he also said he'll let us know when the formwork is being done and we can bring some rope and outline the driveway ourselves later to make sure we're happy :)

So bombshell - our SS called on Friday as is being moved to a different area - we're almost finished and we've been given a new site supervisor. Fun times.

Well this is the schedule he's given us for the coming weeks:

• Wet areas to be tiled from Monday
• First coat of paint everywhere this week
• Week after - fit offs e.g. taps, electrical
• Week after - main floor tiling
• Week after - second and third coats of paint

Cx

Bathroom tile delivery

Architraves and skirting boards installed

Looking through the kitchen window

Door handles installed

Skirting around nib wall

Skirting around fireplace looks nice

Flush internal door for understair storage

Powder room vanity

'Cloak room' interal doors - narrower than the normal doors

Skirting along step-up

In the office

Theatre room podium

Linen closet

In bedroom 2/3 with WIR door hung (R)

Main bathroom vanity

Bedroom 2 wardrobe doors

Balcony waterproofing

Ensuite cavity door installed

Ensuite double vanity

Ensuite W/C (above) and Powderoom (below) with external exhaust

Council Update [Week 3]

Variations to our plan have come back today, however they now need the Landscaping Plan to be re done to match. Our CSO said they should have this done and submitted back to council by the end of the week.

I had our CSO forward me the new plan to have a look at what had been changed, one minor and one major change I saw. And it looks like the porch is staying the same which is a relief!

Upper lounge window had to be made smaller and higher for privacy of our neighbours. It has changed from 1020 x 2629mm to a skinnier window, like the bedrooms, that is 590 x 2629 mm. I highlighted in the pictures.

Picture 1: Original 1020x2629mm

Picture 2: New Window sized 590x2629mm 

The major change for us though, is the landscaping. Previously I showed you a copy of our original landscaping plan, where retaining walls were required only on the sides of the house, and none at the back of the house. However, they've now added retaining walls to go all the way around the sides and back! It's crazy, and I would like to get more information about why council has said that we need this, and why Wisdom Landscapes did not tell us this when we did our plan with them. 

Picture 3: New siting with retaining walls

I've also noticed that they have now put "Retaining wall 450mm from boundary" - I'm guessing this was a council requirement but I'm not sure why that's required. Looks like our sides and back just shrank though.

Fun times.

Cx

Landscaping Plan

Our landscaping plan came back yesterday from Wisdom Landscapes.

I'm a little confused - during our appointment, we were told that we only needed a retaining wall on one side of the house. The plan has come back stating two retaining walls are required - one on either side of the house.

We asked about this, and we were told that it's in the architectural plans, and to take them off would take more than two weeks. They said we can just decide not to install it when we get on site, but to be honest I don't understand, and nobody seems to be able to answer my question - can we just change our minds later? Or do we have to adhere to the plan we submit to council? If we change our minds, does that mean we have to apply for re-approval later to both Developer and then council?

Couple of other things that need fixing:
- CT2 grass required not Sir Walter Buffalo
- Letter box specified to Macquarie Links guidelines
- Plants list needs to be amended to plants that we actually want

I'm also not sure how I feel about the shape of the driveway - I didn't think that's how we left it last week. They really don't want us to change the shape though. It's very confusing, surely there's a better way to give that a nicer curve! They're quite adamant that we need the space to be able to reverse our car out of the garage, but I still think it could be a nicer curve - I wish they could quantify the difference so we could actually make an informed decision.

Anyway, what do you think?

Cx


Edit (9/8/13): I called council and they said that we could change stuff afterwards, it's not a huge deal. We only need approvals for big works like if we needed a retaining wall >0.8m high. Wisdom aren't sure if we need approval for changes from the Developer afterwards, but that's less of a big deal than if we had to go to Council. So once the changes are made to the plan, we'll be signing them off so they can get our Developer Approval ready!

Landscaping Appointment

Straight after our colour selection appointment, we met with Wisdom Landscapes to put together a landscaping plan to submit to the Developer.

To be completely honest - we had no idea what to expect, and no idea what we wanted. We were the exact opposite of the colour appointment where we already knew everything we wanted, and going into landscaping just had no idea!

Regardless, we weren't expecting things to be so bad - it turns out we need a retaining wall that is almost the entire length of house. 

You can see in the picture above that because they had to cut so much to comply with the driveway gradient regulations for council, we need a retaining wall to fill it. The Wisdom rep said that it would be around 0.8m high. I'm still a little confused about it at the moment, actually.

He also suggested (and we went with it) that we could fill where the laundry steps are, so that we could eliminate the steps and just walk out onto flat ground, which seems like a good idea, although it still seems expensive to do.

I also reshaped the driveway - there were a lot of corners and edges in the original design, so we kept tweaking it until we got smoother edges around. 

For our driveway we went with

Colour: Bluestone

Fill: Plain (no pattern)

Border: Large Tile

In the plan we also asked for gardens beds across the front, pebbles and pavers on the laundry side (blindside) of the house, letter box (per Macquarie Links specs) and a fold away clothesline.

We are worried about how much this is all going to come to - I found another fellow blogger who went with Wisdom Landscapes, and their plan looks a LOT less complex than ours, and they had come back with a $36,000 price which is not at all within the budget we had allocated to landscaping :(

Anyway, we should receive a copy of the plan next week, and apparently we'll get the estimates and costing in around 3 weeks time. It would have been nice to get it all done in the one hit, but it looks like it may not be possible and we'll just have to do the basics: driveway, retaining wall, letterbox and clothesline.

Cx