Now with added pictures for your viewing pleasure...

Another busy day, this time ferrying things between the storage unit and the house.  In amongst locking in a date for the concreting to start, the antenna to be installed and getting a quote for the security doors, I managed to take a few photos of the place before we 'ruin' it with furniture.  Enjoy!

 Give me an H.  Give me an O.  Give me an M.  Give me an E.  What does it spell?

 From the rumpus, looking into the now fully completed kitchen

 And again

 Our back yard.  Plenty of work to do there.  Fence still to come

 The kitchen with our new mess hall style stools

Plenty of cupboard space on both sides

 The cooktop.  Can't wait to give it a crack.  It's HUGE!

 The laundry.  Nothing special to see here, moving right along...

 The spare bedroom.  Plenty of space to store a box.

The completed bathroom.

Good things come to those who wait...

Well, after an epic build, we've finally made it to the day we'd been waiting for.  Handover!!!  360 days since we first contracted to purchase our block of land,  266 Days after the signing of the building contract, 202 days since the slab was laid and what seems like an eternity since we completed our final inspection, we finally have possession of our new home.  .

To say that the completion of the house was somewhat of a drawn out affair is putting it mildly.  It hasn't been a particularly stressful build, contrary to warnings we'd been given before starting the process, but it did seem to take a long time to complete.  Whilst the house was practically complete months ago, several small items held things up significantly.  The largest issue was that there was a need to replace the front door frame and windows as they hadn't settled well and had bowed since installation.  Not such a difficult task one would think?  Wrong!  Seven weeks later and a supplier (who we were assured was subsequently given a rather frosty time by the builder) finally managed to supply the door frame.  Luckily for the builder, Sarah and I are patient people, and had the attitude that it was far better to get the house completed and completed well than to hassle everyone to speed things up. From there it was simply a case of installing the final finishings and away we went.

Sare and I managed to attend a final inspection on April 4 to take a look at any of the things that needed fixing prior to completion.  The SS was more than helpful and keen to point out things that he still intended having fixed before handover.  Most of the issues were paint related and quite easy to attend to. 

Easter delayed things slightly but Metricon had previously obtained the occupancy certificate and our SS managed to get the right tradies in to fix up the issues pretty quickly.  We were issued with our final invoice on April 12, which I quickly forwarded on to the bank for them to process.  Sweet, we'd have our house in a couple of days, I thought.

Cue the delay in the valuer completing their end of the process (seriously, what is it with anyone even vaguely associated with real estate that means they should have a licence to be the most unreliable people on earth?) and the bank hounding them time and again to get it done.  Still, it gave us time to buy a dishwasher and arrange for its delivery following handover.

As I like to make things as much of a challenge as possible, I told the bank on a Thursday arvo that they would need to have the cheque ready for me by COB Monday the 23rd, as we were not going to be happy waiting any longer.  I wasn't intending to waste my week of holidays by sitting around and getting the house after ANZAC day sometime.

We were off to Lorne for a wedding on the Friday and the bank assured me that the cheque would be done and dusted for me to pick up on Monday assuming the valuation was completed as expected.  Great!  Until I received a voicemail message from the SS on Friday evening asking if everything was going to be right for Monday afternoon as he hadn't had a call from a valuer to arrange an inspection.  Being as late as it was, I couldn't call the bank to confirm whether there had been a delay with the val.

Monday morning gave me the chance to follow up with the bank who advised that the valuation had been done (wish I had a job where I could just say I've done something and still get paid!) and that I could pick up the cheque that afternoon after the funds were transferred and they called me to confirm.  I made a few other phone calls to start herding all the cats involved in the process into place (fencer, concreter, insurance, etc...) and headed off to pick up the cheque.  One o'clock passed with no phone call, followed quickly by two and three o'clock.  Finally after going into the bank to confirm that the cheque was still unavailable I was beginning to think that it wasn't going to happen after all.

Finally, at half past three on the dot, I received the call and it was action stations.  I collected the cheque, jumped into the car and headed out to the house.  Sare was running late at work and unfortunately couldn't make the handover itself, but thankfully she made it along shortly after so that I could give her the grand handover.  The SS handed over a bundle of paperwork and warranties, explained the workings of the appliances throughout the house and confirmed that the issues that we'd previously identified had been rectified.  The final act involved me handing over the cheque and receiving the keys in return.  Easy, right?  Not quite.  Handing the cheque over was pretty straightforward, as you may expect.  Of course, having somehow seen everything finally fall into place, it seemed appropriate that the keys I received did not actually open the entry doors!  That will hopefully be rectified tomorrow...

It was finally time to pick up Sare and show her round the place, and introduce our brand new kitchen stools to their brand new home.  Metricon were kind enough to give us a lovely welcome package of some homewares which will go nicely around the place.  We locked up and headed home to plan our next steps.  I've got a week ahead of me moving bits and pieces into the house and arranging for tradies to come visit.  We'll be in before we know it!

No pictures just yet, but I'll update the blog and add them over the next couple of days.

Say hello to my little photos...

Well, whilst progress has been slow, it has also been steady.  I managed to get out to the site this week to speak to a fencer and get a quote.  Whilst I'm still waiting for the quote to be sent through, at least it was progress on the previous experience with other fencers!

Even better news was that while I was at the site waiting for the fencer to turn up, another ute pulled up with a tradie in it who proceeded to open our front door and get to work.  I couldn't resist the opportunity and had a quick conversation with him about the work he's been doing.  Turns out that he had replaced the entire front door fixture the day before (that explained the frame and windows lying in the front yard) and was doing a few other small jobs touching up some of the other finishings.  This was also a great chance for me to ask to have a quick look through the place, which was met with no resistance.  Awesome!!!

It was pretty much as I'd expected, having had plenty of opportunities to look through the windows previously.  Essentially, I was pretty happy with the majority of the work having been completed and feel confident that the remaining issues will be fixed well before we go to PCI.  Anyway, without further ado, some photos:

 

 The front, including our sad, dead little tree that we'll have to move when we switch our crossover to the left.  The landscaping is looking like a daunting task.

The pride and joy.  The kitchen.  So can't wait...

Looking through into the rumpus (aka my centre of entertainment!!).  Looking through at the new rear neighbours house...

 The bathroom.  You know, the bath, in the room was probably a giveaway.

It's the final countdown...

Well it's been weeks since my last post, and that's because of a range of different factors.  Life has been going at a million miles an hour so far this year (so what else is new!) and getting out to the site has been noticably more difficult than it previously was.  At least we've been able to get ourselves into a good shape to handle the move and the other works required when we do finally get to settle on the finished home.

Work on the site has been achingly slow over the last month, with the few big and noticable jobs happening in amongst the multitude of minor detail focused jobs.  Whilst since the last update the most noticable job completed has been that the flooring has been laid throughout the house, the other things also completed include the showers having been fitted, the bath installed (which has come up sensationally well!), all of the door fittings attached and flywire screens put up on all of the windows.  Unfortunately with all of the doors locked, it's been impossible to get in and have a good look (and worse still, we haven't been able to take any good photos).  From what we have been able to see though, we've been pretty happy with everything so far.  Our site supervisor has given us  a lot of confidence in his ability to deliver a good quality project in the end, giving us regular updates on progress and being pretty open with his thoughts on the work being completed.  A couple of issues he's encountered with the completed work have been rectified before any progress was made, the largest of which being the reinstallation of the front door frame which had not been done to a high enough standard.  I've got pretty good faith (hopefully not misplaced) that by the time we get to PCI everything will be done to a top quality standard.

Speaking of which, although we don't have a date yet, we're getting pretty close to it.  From our last visit a couple of weekends ago the temporary fencing had been taken down, and the only noticable jobs to be done were the installation of our stove and cooktop, rangehood, shower fittings in the main bathroom, hot water unit and front door.  In the grand scheme of things, not very many tasks at all considering where we've come from.

On the post-handover list of tasks to complete, we're finally starting to get some good traction.  I'll be meeting with a fencer and concreter for some quotes last week.  The original couple of fencers who did our two side fencers have been as good as useless to us, so we moved on.  It wasn't us, it was them!  Honest.  Serviceseeking.com.au certainly resulted in a huge number of responses to my quote requests.  Hopefully I'm not getting too overconfident here, but if we can get a couple of reasonable quotes, we'll be pretty quick to act on them.   Sare has been busy gathering ideas for decking and garden to take care of the next most important tasks we'll have.  Furniture shopping has been happening in amongst this as well.  Not too many commitments yet, but we've bought three stools for the kitchen breakfast bar, got a pretty good idea of our future couches, framed the print that was my xmas present to Sare and had a canvas made up of one of my favourite photos I took in Vietnam a few years back.  We've also been shopping for a dishwasher so that I can hang up my tea towel once and for all!

It may be time to open up the sweep on our exact handover date.  With absolutely nothing to base it on, I'm going to go with March 28.  Bring on the next few weeks!

Sneaking and Peeking

After a few weeks of relative inaction and no desperation to get out to our house to see how little had been done over the xmas break, I managed to sneak past today for a quick look.  There had been surprisingly more action than I expected, with a whole host of little jobs completed.  Even better, the thoughtful contractors that Metricon have been employing didn't even bother to lock up the back door.  Another perfect coincidence that allowed me a good chance to sneak through and get a look around.  It's great that I haven't yet had to resort to breaking anything to gain entrance to the place!!

In no particular order, the work done since my last update include: a garage door, painting throughout the house, lights, switches, powerpoints and data points installed, all of our internal doors and the benchtop in the kitchen, with the sink now also installed.  I didn't get a chance to take any photos as I was only able to stop by briefly, but will hopefully get another chance to do so soon, maybe even when Sare and I finally get a chance to meet our new site supervisor as we get closer to completion.  Next up looks like the tiling and flooring.

We've continued to develop our strategy for all of the small things that we'll have to do when we finally make it to handover date.  We've found our dream couches for the main living area, I'm getting closer to working out how best to network the house properly (because I still have no confidence that the big M's electrical contractors have done things right), we're mapping out the driveway, concrete and decking that we'll need, imagining our garden, about to discuss changes to our lighting plan with some specialists and even more importantly, planning the first dinner party menu!  So much to do still, but until we know our handover date, so much time in which to do it...

What a difference a couple of weeks makes...

It's beginning to look a lot like xmas, and our house is beginning to look a lot like a proper house.  We've been flat out for the last few weeks (what else is new!) and haven't had a chance to get out to see our future home.  On a whim this afternoon, following a morning spent helping Sare's sister move into her new home, we decided to take a left turn off Eastlink and head out to have a good look around.  Not expecting to see much up close, what with the place being locked-up and all, we were surprised to find the back door unlocked, allowing us full access to the place.

The front of the house with the brickwork now all completed

The rear corner where the verandah extends out past the rumpus

Sare standing near the al fresco, pondering how we should deck it and where to put the BBQ!

Overall, the place is looking fantastic!  The completed brickwork is great, with the colour exactly what we were hoping for.  I think it matches perfectly with the roof colour as well.  We can really get a feel for how spacious it is going to be in the living areas, and I guarantee we will not regret going for the high ceilings throughout.  Our entrance hall is larger than some bedrooms we've had in other houses and the kitchen, well, it is a work of art to be certain!  I couldn't wipe the smile off my face at seeing the size of the pantry, the great layout of the cupboards and pot drawers and getting to test the soft close drawers for the first time!!  The sink is currently in a box where the oven will be going, so it can't be too far away from having the caesarstone benchtops installed.

 The view of the kitchen from the main living area

The side of the kitchen where the oven and cooktop will be placed.  Love the size of the pot drawers!

The main bench with space for the dishwasher and microwave (or more likely space for the cookbooks!)

 Notes from the builder in the dishwasher space, which will probably be discovered again in another 50 years or so...

Sare wondering about the size and number of plantation shutters we'll need to divide the rumpus from the living area.

The vanity basin and cabinet in the main bathroom

Our front door, pre-stain and installation

Having spoken to our site supervisor during the week, we can now expect the painting to be done in the next week leading up to xmas, and apparently even having the tiling done in the three days leading up to the new year.  At this rate, the house will be ready to go sometime in January, even earlier than we optimistically thought we could expect.  I was also advised that we would be getting a new site supervisor from this week as the current one is changing the region he works in.  Whilst we never got the chance to meet with him, hopefully our replacement can keep the wheels rolling along nicely!


In addition to the work that has been completed, we've even had another fence built on the other side of the house and had two more progress payments made.  Big shout out to our friends at the NAB who have been flawless so far in their handling of our progress payments and have even been kind enough to drop their rates a couple of times in the last few months!  (Too blatant a plug do you think??)

It's looking like it will be a busy summer period for us in advance of the completion of the build with so many things to organise.  Our list currently includes concreting for the driveway, decks for the al fresco and verandah, shutters for the rumpus, blinds for the rest of the house, dishwasher, rear fencing and gates for the front, a letterbox, clothesline, tv antenna, furniture (we've fallen in love with the Bay Leather Republic couches!), landscaping and lighting throughout the house.  Looks like some of these things are going to become a longer term project as we settle into the house and get a good feel for exactly what we want!

Anyway, I probably won't have a chance to update the blog prior to xmas, so I hope everyone has a great xmas and new years.  For everyone celebrating this year in a new home, I'll admit I'm jealous, but also can't wait to experience it next year when I'll definitely be doing the catering!!!

All in all, it's just another brick in the wall

The word of the day is progress.  An awful lot of progress, truth be told.  "What sort of progress" I hear you ask?  Bricks.  An abundance of bricks which are quickly being assembled to create something vaguely reminiscent of our house.  Although it was difficult to imagine what the bricks we selected at Studio M would eventually look like when scaled to the size of a house, we are so far quite impressed with our choice.  Having been out there several times, it's been great to watch the brickwork progress from a half a metre at first viewing to now be all the way to the roof.

The back of the house

Sare at the entrance

The al fresco side

Looking through the garage at the bricks which have since been added to the house

Our Al Fresco water feature.  Some may call it a swamp, but our future dog and child will be able to swim about all day in it!!

In other action around the place, the initial rough-in of the wiring has been completed, with lots of blue wires for all of my lovely Cat6 data cabling to hopefully all the right places (its frustrating not being even close to 70% confident that the time spent with the electrical consultant was well spent), yellow cables for the speaker systems and all of the power throughout the place.  Quite by chance, Sarah and I were wandering along High Street in Armadale last weekend and popped into Custom Lighting to have a look at potential light fittings.  We started talking to the MD and he pulled us into their light room to demonstrate all different types of fittings we could consider for our home.  Service and knowledge were something that really set him apart from the clowns Metricon use, so we'll definitely be booking a consultation with Custom Lighting to at least discuss our options post hand-over, even if they turn out to be too expensive.

I recieved a call from our SS this afternoon (I vaguely remembered the guy from when we last spoke a month ago...) who advised that the brickwork will be finished by Tuesday, at which stage we could expect the plasterers to get their job started.  It's a case of good news/bad news really, as that pretty much signalled to me that we would likely be able to expect the next invoice next week and another one shortly after.  Ah well.  I guess the more money they get out of us before xmas, the better staff party they'll be able to have, and we'll be paying for nothing to be done for weeks at a time...

Oh, and lastly, another piece of the fence puzzle has fallen into place.  We'll shortly have another fence to complement the current one, leaving only the front gates and rear fence to arrange.  It surely won't be too long until we need to get moving on the concreter as well.  Looking forward to deciding on the colour concrete we should get...