The 35th Week: our new home!

As Xmas approaches, the builders are making great progress on our build. They were keen to finish the work up high to take down the scaffolding so as to not have to pay rental on it, but it doesn't look like they quite got there. We were able to squeeze in one final visit for the year and walked up our new staircase onto the 2nd floor for the first time! The views are quite nice up there! The Exsulite appears to almost be complete on both levels and it won't be long before it is ready for paint. It also looks like much of the roof has been installed which should help weather-proof the site somewhat. The builder thinks sheeting could be complete by February. On another note, the great aerial shots of the site almost came to an abrupt end this weekend when my drone encountered some rogue foliage that sent it crashing about 6 metres to the pavement. Amazingly it suffered no major damage and was even able to launched for a second flight to take the photos below. Fortunatel

We've hit a few snags of late - nothing catastrophic, but minor annoyances that impact on our designs. The biggest issue was when the builders put the splashback window in the wrong place. It's not entirely clear what happened - sounds like a steel beam went in the wrong place and meant the window had to be moved further along the wall. This had flow on implications for our kitchen design . It meant the cabinetry had to be changed and consequently the island bench no longer lined up with the other bench. It also forced the kitchen designer to have to relocate the WIP door which now impinges on access. All those little changes add up and move us further away from what we agreed on. In the WIR, somehow the door got relocated (another reshuffle of cupboards and shelves) and somewhere along the line, about 50cm went astray... Again, if this is the extent of our troubles, we're probably doing well, but it is frustrating to have these things sprung on us and being forced

Got a call from our project manager inviting us to a site inspection. Upon arrival, we found that they had put up the scaffolding to finish the roof and work on the second floor.  We are now getting a real sense of how the completed house will look. At the moment things look a bit smaller than we thought, in particular, the master bedroom and the alfresco area. We didn't bring a tape measure to verify our impressions but will do so next time. On the selections front, we've had to change our choice of materials and some tiles because our selections have been discontinued. The kitchen guys decided they would no longer use one of the products because they found it wasn't as durable as they were promised, so we had to pick another and the colours weren't quite an exact match. Our bathroom tile choice had been discontinued so that required another trip to the tile shop. They made us lock in our choices very early on, which is good in some respects, but then things like th

When we turned up this week, it didn't appear there had been much progress, however on closer (and aerial) inspection, there was progress on the alfresco area and brickwork, and the timber for the roof trusses was balanced on the frame.