Goodbye Cement Dust

We have continued with our busy week and spent many hours letting trades in and out of the house, making phone calls and cleaning. We can finally say goodbye to most of the horrible cement dust as carpet has been installed.

The guys from Carpet Craft now hold the record for the longest trade to stay at the house. It took the two of them 8 hours to get our carpet down but they did a fantastic job. It is so nice to be able to lay on the floor! The media room carpet in particular is divine - so soft and fluffy. 

Our fencing and retaining has started to go up two weeks ahead of schedule, which is a lovely surprise. We can now see the shape of our backyard and get some landscaping ideas. It has made things a bit tricky as we told the removalist they would have access at the back via a vacant block as the concrete is being poured the same day. Worst case we will unscrew a fence panel for them.

I have to say that I have been really pleased with all of the tradesmen we have hired so far. Everyone has been so lovely and eager to help out, even with jobs that aren't theirs.  Next big job is the driveway, scheduled to be inspected by council tomorrow and poured on Monday. It is really looking more like a home now.

Media Room with carpet 

     

Activity Room

     

Bedroom 3

     

Bedroom 2 (the carpet looks a bit darker than it actually is in this photo)

     

Master Bedroom

     

              

Just before dark last night, with the driveway formwork complete

   

Plantation Shutters Installed

The last few days have been so hectic. Both Tom and I are dead on our feet! We have painted a feature wall, had some more electrical work done, earthmoving and installation of plantation shutters. 

It took our relative who is a sparky nearly 8 hours to put in two heat lights and our fancy ceiling fan. It turns out the fan needed double reinforcing and entirely new wiring at the switch to make it work. Here are the lights and fan, they look fab.

 

    

    

Our plantation shutters are also in and they look beautiful. They make such a difference in keeping out the hot westerly sun in our front bedrooms. The colour in our lounge room is more honey toned than I remember choosing, but I think they are an okay match. The footprints from cement dust all over the floor are driving me crazy.

    

Activity room 

    

Bedrooms Three and Four

    

Main bathroom

    

Master Bedroom (roller blind)

    

Ensuite (still pieces missing under the shutters for each bathroom, as they delivered the wrong size)

    

Media Room

    

A big thanks to Murray and the boys at Abode Blinds for their great work. Next job is carpet! 

Handover

On Thursday 22nd of May we received the keys to our beautiful new home. The last couple of days have been very surreal, it hasn't quite sunk in that the house is ours. 

There are a couple of jobs that weren't finished for handover, including replacing the oven door and adding soft close to the kitchen cupboards. All of this will happen in the next week or so, along with the many jobs we have arranged ourselves (carpet, blinds, driveway).

All I can say is that we are so thrilled with our house. McDonald Jones have done an exemplary job and the workmanship is of a very high standard. A big thanks to our site supervisors John and Russel, Jen at the colour studio and the many tradesmen and office staff who have helped along the way.

Welcome to our home :)

Here is the grand front entry way (love the four step cornice).

Turning right along the hall way brings you to the children's activity room. To the right of this room are the two front bedrooms with those lovely big windows. To the left a desk and hallway leading to the bathroom, powder room and bedroom three. 

Here is our main bathroom. I love the frameless shower screen. I do not love the light grout.

Across the hall is our powder room, which will be very handy for guests. 

If you return to the main hallway and follow it to the left, there are two large wooden doors that lead to our media room. The paint in this room is my absolute favourite shade in the house. 

Just across from the media room is our amazing kitchen. I can't seem to leave the kitchen when visiting the house, it is such a happy space. 

Looking out from the island bench you can see hallway to the laundry (those two wooden doors are the linen press) , dining, alfresco and living rooms.  

This space actually makes me feel enthusiastic about washing. 

The living room is going to be so cosy with the gas fireplace. Eagerly awaiting our gas bottles so we can fire it up.

 The master bedroom is at the back of the house, running from a small hallway off the dining area.  It will look much better with carpet.

The ensuite runs to the right of the master bedroom in resort style, therefore with no doors. There is however a toilet tucked away in the back corner with a cavity sliding door. The floor was just mopped in this picture so looks glossy, but the finish is actually quite matte.

That's all for now, but there will be more snaps as work progresses this week. 

Fences Down

Our fences came down on Friday afternoon and it's great to see the house out of its metal cage of security fencing. I've been obsessively checking the doors given our absence of fences on two sides and have found the laundry door not properly pulled shut twice now. I'll feel much happier when we can personally lock our doors each day. Only 3 more sleeps to keys! 

The facade is now complete and the columns look wonderful, I couldn't be happier. The photo was taken right on dark so it's a bit hard to see the details.

     

I knew it was going to be busy coming up to handover but I never really grasped the volume of jobs. We have booked carpet, shutter installation, phone line installation, foxtel and fridge delivery all for next week. We are working on our driveway application for council and just need to drop the form off. Miraculously we seem to have scraped enough money together to do all of this before we move in.  My parents have very generously offered to pay for our fences as a housewarming gift but the fellow can't come for 3 weeks. We will have to carefully close blinds until then - we have a nature reserve and walking track behind our house which has a birds eye view into the ensuite without fences! 

I will hold off on photos until handover, there will be lots I promise! I'm also being indecisive about feature walls, for which I have already purchased the paint. It looks so lovely as it is that I'm not sure I can bring myself to paint the living room another colour.

More decisions...

PCI Completed

This afternoon we spent several hours at the house doing our Practical Completion Inspection. Our current SS attended along with our previous one and everything ran quite smoothly. The house is looking fantastic and has been cleaned outside and in (at least until we walked footprints all over the new floors again).

We spent a long time looking very carefully through each room and testing doors, taps, toilets etc. At the end we have what appears to be a long list, however most of the jobs are small. Our SS is a very busy man so we appreciated the many hours put into going through the house, explaining features and what to expect after handover. Here is the list of pre-handover jobs we have signed off on with our SS:

• Installation of new bath as replacement for faulty product.
• Replace smashed oven door
• Ensuite toilet seat repair as loose on one side
• Paint touch up above bathroom mirror
• Repair latch on bedroom 2 door
• Paint touch up on cornice in powder room
• Adjust front door keeper as unevenly hung
• Touch up paint on manhole 
• Adjust catches to linen press as doors difficult to open
• Repaint wall over laundry bench
• Clean alfresco concrete and remove plaster from bricks
• Touch up stain on pantry door 
• Longer screws to pantry door hinges
• All kitchen cupboards to have soft close hinges
• Marks on 3 overhead cupboards in kitchen 
• Fill hole in brickwork on left side of house
• Fix door latch in media room
• Repaint and putty skirting boards
• Keeper to be added to garage door
• Fill and repaint mitre joint in merbau post covers on facade
• Hose out gutters to ensure no metal filings present (this causes rust). 
• Complete framing on facade columns and paint. 

Seems like a lot to do but our handover date is arranged for next Thursday 22nd May! 

So exciting and surreal at the same time. I had better start booking trades for carpet/blinds/appliance delivery. We also have been to the bank and had the valuer visit the site today, so hopefully all has run smoothly. I've been getting home and contents insurance quotes and once that is sorted we will be ready to go with our bank cheque for handover. 

I have to say once again that the credit union who have provided our home loan are just fantastic. We have not had a single problem or delay throughout the entire build in arranging progress payments and they have now offered us a fantastic interest rate. If anyone is on the look out for loans, I can't recommend the guys at Coastline highly enough. They are based on the Mid North Coast of NSW but have customers all over Australia. Link below :) 

The Sunny Splashback

In my enthusiasm for the new fireplace, there was another feature I almost missed today... We have a splashback installed!

This evening one of the doors was unlocked so we went in to close this properly (I don't want to see my appliances stolen!) and there it was in its shining yellow glory. This is almost too much excitement for one day!

It was a gamble going for such a bold splashback but I am so glad we took the risk. It's a deeper yellow that makes the kitchen both warm and cheerful. I did notice a very subtle green tinge as we didn't upgrade to clear glass and the downlights in the cabinets have a blue shade. I'm going to replace the globes with a warmer LED which should minimize the green. 

Only minor bother is that the carpenter has installed our pantry door handles really low down. They look a bit strange actually. I'm not sure if it is too late to fix this though.

Here it is! Excuse the unsightly broken oven door...

   

   

Whilst frolicking around the house like a child, I turned every single light on and off. This presented a lovely opportunity to get some night shots of the LED lights in the eaves. We are very pleased with the lit facade (just one more piece to go on the top of those stacked stone columns). 

   

   

Now I see fire, inside the loungeroom...

The last few weeks of the build are by far the most fun. All of the long awaited upgrade items chosen many months ago are finally making their way into the house. 

Today our Rinnai fireplace was installed *cue happy dance* and it looks AMAZING! It is a wonderful centerpiece at the heart of our open plan living, dining and kitchen area. 

The fireplace doesn't sit flush with the wall as there are heat vents at the sides. This particular model is designed for heating large areas, not just for visual appeal. We will have a slimline recessed mirror TV above, tucked away from any heat (when we finish paying for the 'essentials' like carpet and concrete).

Very pleased!  

     

                     

Stacked Stone

The last two days have seen the return of the tilers and the completion of the stacked stone on our façade. It looks fantastic and it's not too overwhelming, just some subtle texture on the columns. The tiler has done a great job of cutting the mitre joints for the corners. It is just a bit rough as real stone should be.

               

                                        

                  

At first we thought they must have run out of quartz pieces as the stone ends well before the top of the poles. After reviewing the elevations on our plans I saw that there are two finishing pieces to go over the top of the pole. You can see them pictured below. I'm not sure if they are finished in moroka or stained timber look. Hopefully they will look okay.

              

We also have had our baths, mirrors and shower screens installed but have not been able to go in and view them yet. I did get a shot of the ensuite from outside our bedroom door. I love this bathroom so much, I suspect the time I spend in the bathroom is going to increase greatly (I never make it anywhere on time as it is!).

                      

                    

Only 12 days until PCI!