Finally we have a Roof!

After almost 4 weeks worth of delay, the roof is finally completed! Yah! Still disappointed nothing else has been done and I doubt anything will be done in the three days this week before the builder closes for Christmas. The colour is Ironstone. It looks much bluer in the pictures then it does in person. It looks fairly grey in person.

Delayed AGAIN!

So you might think I have been slack with not updating this blog, but nope, it's because the builders have delayed us again.

I have already mentioned I thought only getting the framing done in a week was pathetic and that in the following week only getting the eaves done was pathetic, but in the last two weeks NOTHING has happened. We contacted our "client liaison officer" as we are not allowed to contact our construction manager directly. Two days later the building manager contacted us to tell us they were having issues getting the roof people in and it wouldn't happen till next week! SO ANGRY! He said he was hoping they would be able to catch up on the delay and not change our timeline. Well that's great but how many delays are we trying to catch up on now?

Oh and what's happening with the air con issue? Well Thursday last week the client liaison office sent an email saying the process order was being done today and would be forwarded to us tomorrow. Nothing arrived on Friday or Monday and just when I was thinking I should contact them I arrive home on Tuesday to a message on the phone asking if we had changed our email because they had tried to send it and it had been sent back with an error message. Obviously it must be something wrong on our end.
I wrote an email saying there was nothing wrong on our end and " Considering you said you would send us the variation on Friday of last week and Ventura has always sent variations to us through the mail it sounds like a poor attempt at an excuse to the delay in receiving it.
 To which she sent a reply saying our email was rude and offensive. Seriously? I am a really nice person and that is probably the meanest email I have ever sent but given all the screw ups Ventura makes she must have received worst emails from people who don't care about ever holding their tongue or speaking their mind.
Definitely not going to reach lock up by Christmas!

Eaves and Bloody Builders!

Went to the block hoping to find a completed roof but was very worried there would have been no progress. Found eaves! Not a bad compromise but doesn't look like a weeks worth of activity to me.

I love how the back of the house is shaping up.

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I can also now fill you in with recent issues we have had to take up with the builder. 

We noticed our laundry shoot on the bottom floor was solid brick with no opening so we decided to wait and see how they did the top laundry shoot to see if the cut out was something added later. The top part was built including an opening so we asked our builders about it. It was not on the plan but they have agreed to fix it as they knew it was meant to be a laundry shoot and therefore would need an opening on the bottom floor.

We also noticed not all the slab penetrations for the aircon on the top floor had been done. There are meant to be two in my closet- I explicitly remember these as I tried to fight not to have them. Not only does it decrease my closet space but I never understood (and no one was ever able to explain) why we needed two so close together. The builder at first told us the aircon was nothing to do with them. We tried to tell them they were organising the aircon but all they did was give us the number for the aircon company they usually go through. We tried a third time and their response was "sorry, I didn't realise that company didn't do two story houses (so they had refereed us to the wrong company) and they would look into it. Took four emails from us before they finally admitted it was their screw up. It was on the aircon plans but not on their plans. So it seems to be another fall out from their incompetence of not being able to get  the correct aircon quote for over 4 months. I am worried because we still only have the original copy of the suggested aircon layout but we changed it and were told we couldn't get an updated copy and have to trust that what we want is what will happen.....I wish I hadn't let that one drop but with all the battles we had fort at the time some things had to.

Lastly, on our staircase there is an awfully dangerous jut out on both sides.Jake could easily hit his head on it and do damage. We asked if it was going to be removed because it was not on any of the plans we had been given. Their response was to send us the engineering plans for it we had never seen. We replied with how we would have loved to have been shown that back when we constantly asked for more info on the stairs and were constantly told there wasn't anything else. We are requesting they fix it as it is not on anything we signed. They are "looking into it".

These may sound like little things but they are big stresses when the builder won't listen to you. On top of that, our "fortnightly" updates have not been occurring and their response was "there was nothing to update you on...but this has happened..... and this is going to happen.." I replied with " well clearly there was things you could have updated us on!

Announcement!

Roof framing has started. I kind of think we could have had a higher roof pitch. 

This is the roof to the front balcony. It is also where the solar panel for the water heating will go....our original representative at Ventura said we would not be able to see it from the ground. I'm glad I never believed him because he is dead wrong. Also, if the solar panel was placed there I can only imagine where future solar panels will go when we get them installed. Will not be pretty.

Oh and on another front we would like to announce there's a.....

(Yep, around the same time the house will ready. EEK!)

Master Bedroom and Front Balcony

Top story brick work is complete. Yah! Things go so much quicker when the weather is nice. Here's hoping the roof is done this week!

Above is a picture of the front balcony window. This window is in front of the staircase. My favourite part of the upstairs.

This is the master bedroom looking towards the front balcony from before.

This is looking from the master bedroom into our walk in wardrobe.

This is one side of the walk in wardrobe. Should have lots of storage room and space.

Finally, here is how the front of the house is looking. 

Kiddie's Rooms Done!

Jake and I might not have children yet but their rooms are ready...well, minus a roof, but what a view they would have!

Above is kid's bedroom 1. Its a very long room which makes it look narrow but its as deep as standard a bedroom. The brick wall directly to the right is the beginnings of their wardrobe. 

Above is kid's bedroom 2. The bricks on the left hand side that are sticking out are another annoying plumbing duct and the wardrobe will come off that. Unfortunately this kid also gets stuck with another jut out in the right corner (out of this picture) which will be the future laundry shoot. Both kids rooms have 3 windows.....I think we must have got window happy....I really wish they were all the same size or not as many, although they are bigger then average sized rooms so they may need that many for light.

This is looking into the kids bathroom......again I don't think we checked any of the top story window sizes properly. Biggest bathroom window I have ever seen. 

This is what you see directly at the top of the stairs- the door to the top floor rear balcony. It's actually quite a big space in front of it that I might need to fill with something one day.

This is looking from the master bedroom to the other side of the house at the the two kids bedrooms and kids activity room in the middle. We decided we wanted the stair balcony area to be as open as possible to avoid having hallways (which I hate!) but we may eventually close the kid's activity room in. 

Front view of the house. You can really see my love of symmetry coming through.

My Amazing Staircase!

So we had to wait a few weeks for the top storey slab to cure and while the bricks arrived during that time I didn't think it was blog worthy.

So the staircase (which we had been told wasn't going to be put in until near the end to avoid damage) has had its form work come off. Luckily my husband went out one work day arvo to have a sneak peak and got a picture of it in all its glory because by the time I got out on the weekend they had covered it in scaffolding. So sad, but at least I have pictures. Isn't it a stunner! It may look small in the photo's but it is larger then the average staircase.

Eventually we will get a carpenter to put a few draws at the base of the stairs for shoes and the rest of the underneath of the stairs will be turned into something cool like an indoor garden. We have even got a powerpoint going in under the stairs.

This is a picture of what the the stairs will look like as you walk down. My husband found the picture on the ground. You can see the big window that will be in front of the stairs.

The top story brick work has started with both side walls completed. We have found our first few errors. We were more concerned with the size of the windows on the outside and location in the room that we never checked the size of the windows or heights off of the ground for the upstairs very well. Its all stuff I can live with but I wish the master bedroom front windows were higher, the main bedroom side window was bigger, my bath window was bigger and the windows in the front bedroom were the same size and height off the ground. We were so busy fixing Ventura's constant mistakes that something was bound to be missed.

The photo above shows the low front windows and tiny side window in the master bedroom.

The window second to the right is my bath window- if it were lower I would get a better view.

View from the upstairs rear balcony.

First Floor and Staircase!

This weeks email update from the builder read 'concrete will be poured this week, weather permitting' so we were excited and a bit reserved about going out to the block this weekend.
We were happy to find the concrete for the first floor had been poured-including the staircase!

The staircase design was always a stab in the dark, I knew roughly what I wanted but the builders were limited in what they could show me of my staircase by their design program. From what I can see I am very happy and it looks exactly how I wanted it to and better then the designs were leading me to believe.

This is the view down. We have a balcony going around three sides of the staircase. Quite a view!

The black boards at the top have another 3 steps hidden behind them that go off to the left and right

Here you can see the 3 steps that the black boards currently hide. We are having black, wrought iron look balustrade. 

Floor Form Work Done!

Despite the continual bad weather the form work appears finished. We are due for an update from the client liaison office this week so hopefully that will tell us when the concrete will be poured. Then its a three week wait while it dries before work can continue. It also appears that some of the wiring has been put in.

Surprise Progress

We went out to the block yesterday to show our parents around and were surprised to see that not only had progress been made but there were two guys working out there. At 2:00 on a Saturday! Basically we have had the form workers (to create the floor of the second storey) booked several times, but bad weather has prevented them from doing anything.
We emailed our liaison office on Wednesday, after not hearing anything for two weeks, for her to respond with: we email updates fortnightly we would have got to you today or tomorrow anyway. Well that's great to say because previously we went a month without any contact!  She had said that the people were booked for the day in which she replied but she said bad weather meant that wasn't going to happen.
So that brings us to yesterday when the weather wasn't great and hence our surprise at work having been done.

Through the entry way you can see the mock, wooden staircase that has been put in. It seems to be the same style and size of my future concrete one which doesn't get put in till much later to avoid damage to it. I can't wait to walk in and get a feel for the size but we didn't want to do that while the builders were there.

Back view of the staircase ^