12-12-2010 (Day 165)

We managed to get into our house yesterday and got some photos of the inside :) Seems like there is still a bit to do. The tilework is not complete, there is still some more work for the elctrician, bedroom cupboards and shower screens not fitted yet, paintwork and plaster needs touching up, carpet needs to be put in, and of course the last thing is appliances and a good cleanup of the whole house before keys get handed over to us. Getting closer though.

7/12/2010 - Day 160

The house is 85% complete! Latest pics show the insides have been painted and real doors put in and painted. Wall and floor tiles have been installed too, although we would have liked to get inside to inspect in more detail, the builder has locked all doors so we couldn't get in. Good thing for preventing theft i guess. One thing which we cringed a little at was the laundry sink surround tiles, which were recommended by our tile colour consultant. They are in "Cafe Cream" colour and just don't look that great along side our laundry cabinet (dark timber brown) and wall colour (silverish grey). Luckily these tiles were only selected for the laundry area.

We just hope everything was done properly so that when our pre-handover inspection comes along there will be little rectification. Not long to go now! :D

Oh and on a side note our neighbour has finally started building! We were worried that they would NEVER build as that piece of land was left vacant for a long time, and we didn't want to have moved in before they start. Now we will have a house shielding us a little from the hot westerly sun! Their concrete slab has been laid so hopefully in a few months time they would pick up speed and be almost finished as their builder is very quick.

29-10-2010 (Day 121)

Hello everyone, we had a "bust up" with our Site Supervisor recently! Mainly over a lack of communication, which probably contributed to a lot of our anxiety over the defects found by the inspector we hired, and whether are rectifying those defects properly. The Site Supervisor basically said he has had enough of us putting him down (we have been complaining to his superior about receiving no response from him), and he even said that we are "a bad apple among a bunch of good ones" and hard to please!! :angry: Anyway i don't want to get into the nitty gritty of it all in this blog, as i had a lot of fun responding to his remarks yesterday, so long story short we had a re-inspection performed on our house today and as expected most of the defects are either covered by plaster or other building material and not everything could be re-inspected by the inspector. So where do we go from here? At least we have it on paper, and the builder did agree to fix majority of the defects found. However frustrating, its still a lot better than not having the inspections and be living in a house riddled with ALL those defects.

Our next inspection will be at pre-handover and i have seen inspectors pick up 150 defects at that stage alone!

Here are some latest photos of the house, as you can see plaster is up in majority of the home with some ripped off presumably for rectification purposes. Shower bases, bathtub and some cabinetry are in. Our cornices have also been delivered and lots of dirt around our house waiting to be landscaped when we are closer to moving in.

09/10/10 - Day 101

House looks almost ready to live in doesn't it? :p We had a "Pre-Plaster" inspection a couple of weeks ago and there were 12 more defects that needed rectification/justification. Money well spent on the inspector we have to say but frustrating to find out about defects. However that hasn't slowed the progress on the house as you can see the front facade render has been applied, although one of the defects require the brick wall on the front porch to be pulled down and rebuilt! Plaster walls have also been put in even though there are still some outstanding timber frame issues, and we are also yet to find out if our wall batts (insulation) have been put in. Will update more about it after the builder has rectified things and a re-inspection performed.

18-09-2010 (Day 80)

Bricking is almost complete! Still needs a wash and some time for the mortar to dry though. The front facade will also be rendered and painted so you won't be seeing any bricks at all from the front of the house in time to come. You can also see from the pictures that the developer have installed part of our fencing which looks pretty good. Only small issue is that our block is sloping backwards slightly so the fence is on an angle but its no big deal. You will also see that our bathtub andpolymarble shower bases have been delivered. Next week, we will have the private building inspector back in for a Pre-Plaster inspection and then we should be at "Lock-Up"! Thats when all the insides and bits of the outside gets finished, meaning not long to handover!! Can't wait!! :D

Bricks, bricks, bricks!!!

11/09/2010 (Day 73) - These are the bricks, delivered and left all around the property.

14/09/2010 (Day 75) - Brick layers making good progress! :)

30-08-2010 (Day 61)

Just been advised that there is a 10 day delay on our bricks.

So work on the house is on hold for now.

25-08-2010

The roof tiles are up!

19-08-2010 (Day 50)

So.. Good news and bad news. Good news is the guard rails, gutters and fascias were installed today and our roof tiles have been delivered. And if you were wondering what the black gooey stuff around the pipes are (sorry for the upside down pics), that is some kind of termite "shield"! All i know is that its some rubber polymer mixed with natural plant extracts and its meant to seal off the gaps between the pipes and concrete so termites can't get through. They could have made the job look neater though, some others look like the BP crude oil disaster! The next step is to install a reticulated chemical system around the house but i am not sure when that will be done.

Now for the bad news! The inspector we hired found defects! However we are glad we went ahead and hired an inspector because all the defects he picked up would have easily been missed by us. Our builder's site supervisor has been pretty much useless in picking up defects, and we also found out that a Building Surveyor only really assesses safety standards, not quality or defects. We are now waiting for the builder to act on rectifying the defects before we make any further payment :) Wish us luck!

Frame complete (or so it seems..) 14-08-2010

Nice day to take photos :) Windows and sliding doors are in and gutters, fascias and roof tiles were meant to be installed this week but due to the 150km/h winds, tornadoes and crazy storms Melbourne has had, no work was accomplished the past few days :(

The builder's surveyor has apparently given the green light to the frame but we are conducting our own frame inspection in 2 days using "New Home Inspections" so we shall see what they pick up. We know the builder's contractors were never going to get everything right hence we are taking extra steps to make sure we pick up as many defects as we can, before we live in it! Defects are inevitable when it comes to new home ownership so the more we pick up now the less we have to worry down the track.

And the Termite treatment i was worrying about before was indeed justified because the builder didn't do it! Don't know the reason why because it should have been done but i had to ring them to push the issue before being told it will be done on the 18th this month so lets wait and see.

Frame almost complete 6/8/2010