Cabinets

It's great to be at lock up, but so annoying not being able to freely roam around your own home. It especially sucks in a two storey house where you can't even peak through the windows. Armed with a tripod we went out to the house yesterday with the idea to hold the tripod up to the windows and take photos and see what we would get. 

To our surprise, there were tradies there on a Saturday! So we got a lovely look around at all the recently installed cabinets. 

Laundry

Kitchen/Dining

Entertainment room- bulkhead installed

Powder Room

Kids Bathroom

My bath...not happy at this point.

Ensuite Vanity

Yo Yo

So I feel like the build has been a yo-yo lately. One week will be great, everything going to plan and progressing and then the next week its like nothing has changed.
So as of when we went to see the house on the weekend....
Progress is going well, plastering is finished, cornices are in, windows in, external doors on which means...
LOCK UP!
I was all set to go out there and be locked out and be okay with it, but through the window we discovered the tiles, vanities and baths had been delivered...would have loved to have been able to go inside and look at them.
The builders recently found another error that could only be fixed by lowering the guest bedroom ceiling to 28 courses and to have another external duct....grrr.... so I got mean and demanded they give us an extra that we did want and gave them three options.....they said I could have all three!!!!
If your builder is constantly making errors and causing you stress I urge you to stick up for yourself and ask for compensation- the worst that can happen is they say no. The best that can happen is you get some freebies!
I have never understood why websites have a search option that lists products from highest price to lowest, aren't we all out for a bargain? But with the builder paying I finally got to use this option! So we are getting an upgrade on our garage door to wood, a dishwasher and microwave.

Pottering Along

So a lot of promises have been made on our builders part and the last two weeks haven't really lived up to them. You might remember they now have to provide us with a fortnightly schedule of what will be happening on site- which they are yet to fill in correctly. Two weeks ago they did not get all items completed and this last week they had completed what they said they were going to. So its not terrible but if I was the builder and had given such bad services I would be saying I would get the bare minimum done each week and then  'surprising' the owner with extras. But then again, if I was the builder the house would be finished by now!
We have back roof frame and all the scaffolding is now down. The other progress items are not very interesting (laundry chute cut out, minor electric and plumbing works etc)

Things are Looking Up!

Last week we received an email from the builders stating our house would be finished mid June. So we are back on schedule! YAH!
So much for the general manager stating there was no way we would be finished on time....Jake thinks he meant that the build was meant to take 9 months, whereas the contract states 12 months (buffer of 3 months?) and that's what we always go off.
They sent us a schedule for the next three months, not much happens in March but then a lot happens in April and May.
Ceilings were done this week to the top floor. Its looking good. We noticed another error but hopefully it is easily fixed. As for this week...haven't been out yet but we did get an email saying that due to unforeseen circumstances they were not able to get us our fortnightly update on time but it should be to us on Monday.

Where to start.....

So much has happened over the last few weeks... not much of which was progress on our build!
Basically we complained to the managers at our building company about poor communication, lack of progress, amount of errors, how they have been handled, no accountability and the fact we looked like we were going to run over schedule.
To cut a long story short, we dropped the b word in our email, Building Commission, who you go to if you have a complaint against a builder. The builder took it very seriously and we met with the manager of the South West division on site on Saturday. He gave us a $250 gift voucher for our time and could only apologise for all the problems we have had. Apparently they are changing up their procedures and we should see an improvement.
He said he did not expect us to finish on time (June) and dropped October into the conversation a couple of times. EEK!!!!
So lets hope things go better from here.
We are still dealing with some problems. One of which is I have to choose a new bath spout. I had picked a laundry spout knowing it may not work. The builders assured me it was fine several times and then the other day told me there was no way they could do it. Stupid builder. I wanted a mixer on a gooseneck swivel spout from the hob- basically doesn't exist for a bath. I had to settle for a wall mounted gooseneck swivel spout with separate mixer. You have to understand my bath is my favourite place in the whole house so it was quite a big compromise for me to make.
Windows have been installed, aircon tubes are in and top storey render and eaves have been painted.

Last weekend our visit to the block only showed slight progress to the electrical works and the upstairs wall corners had metal cornering placed on them. This weekend's visit had the entire top floor plastering done! Very happy to see.

As we were leaving we noticed the top of the columns at the front of the house has been rendered. We feel like a lot of time could have been saved with better scheduling..... but at least there's progress.

Building makes time go slower....

On Monday 13 we had a meeting on site with the site manager to talk about our most recent issues. A few of them we were dead right about. However, rather then apologise the guy would just say " that's an easy fix'. What if we weren't so observant? Would we just  have had to put up with the mistake forever?

One of the things that couldn't be fixed was the annoying plumbing in two of the wardrobes. He will encase them in mdf so they are less noticeable. We reiterated several times our annoyance at this never being on the plan, if it had we could have planned around it, put it in a better location. 

We thought they had put provisions in for gas (we aren't having any gas connections) but the manager said it was actually just where the main water supply was going to run into the house. Which makes sense....except the hose they had there split in to two (our water goes to the solar upstairs or booster out the back to warm up) and then a few days later the hose completely disappeared. Fancy that!

The only progress that week was the lowering of the scaffolding to allow the painters to paint the eaves. The following week the only progress was that the electrical work was started. I don't know much about electrical work but it seemed like good progress for a week. For two weeks though and with them trying to catch up on all the lost time due to errors, it doesn't seem good enough.

The site manager did say he was hopeful he would be finished BY June....We shall see!