The 35th Week: our new home!

It's finally ours! 35 weeks from the day the old house was demolished, we were today handed the keys to our new forever home.    After a short walk-through and the handover of a welcome gift from our builder, we were left to relax in our brand new home. To celebrate, we ordered Ubereats for dinner and ate it in front of our fireplace! Of course as we have no furniture yet, we ate standing up. Fortunately the food came with all the utensils and napkins we needed. And clean up was simple :)  Now begins the task of moving in.

Exciting news. The floor went in at the end of last week which kicks off practical completion week! We've been given a handover date which is exactly 35 weeks since we embarked on the massive project this blog was named after. It's quite incredible that the builders are going to be right-on-time! We'll be having our pre-handover inspection later this week to identify any defects ahead of final handover next week. And then comes the small matter of how we pay for the bloody thing...!

Literally. A. Possum. While we were inspecting the newly laid cement, we noticed the painter had left the front door wide open. Given the cement was still wet, we couldn't enter via the front. We circled around and found the back door unlocked and entered that way to close the door. We took the opportunity to have a look around inside. We were standing in the living room when started by a sound and movement coming from our fireplace. There was a dark shadow climbing out of the frame - it was a possum. We don't know where it came from or how long it had been there. It leapt off the frame and absconded up into the darkness upstairs! Given there was still no power connected, we didn't want to chase it up the stairs with no light. We shut up the house and left, hoping that it could find its own way out. The last thing we want is for it get sealed up in the walls - that would be a nightmare for us and the possum.

Just as Canberra begins the inexorable slide into lock-down due to COVID-19, our lighting supplier contacted us to say that we should immediately pick up our feature lights to avoid the risk of not having them available as and when required. There is still a great deal of uncertainty as to which stores are considered "essential" or "non-essential", so we figured it would be a safer bet to just go and get them. The lights themselves are fairly large and would not fit in either of our cars, so we rented a van to safely transport the lights from the shop to our home. Unfortunately, we weren't able to take the lights directly to the site because they weren't ready for them yet, and as the site was still not secure, it wasn't safe to leave them there. This was particularly annoying as we would have to rent another van when the time did come. When the lights were eventually installed, there were issues with pretty much every one of them! Firstly, one of ou...

We're getting to the point where we need to consider what to do about landscaping. The house takes up most of the block so we don't have that much space to work with and we want to make the best use of what we do have. This means engaging a landscape designer to help draw up some plans. We want a low maintenance and modern garden.  One of the key considerations is the selection of plants on the west side of the house that receives the harsh western sun. We like the look of bamboo along our splashback window and hopefully it will be suitable for the conditions.  Then there is the front courtyard that is accessed from the master bedroom, a private retreat if you will. We're thinking of a tranquil space where we can relax with a coffee and book and listen to the soothing sound of a trickling water feature!  Choosing a designer has been the hardest part. We've looked at countless websites and photos but we finally both agreed on a company we like. They're p...

We dropped by the site on a Sunday morning, and to our surprise there was a ute in the driveway and the place was a hive of activity. It turned out the plasterers were doing their thing and hanging gyprock walls. I wasn't aware tradies worked on Sundays, but obviously they were keen to get the next stage payment - pre-sheeting. This was very exciting to see and gave a real sense of how the finished product will look. Getting high ceilings on both floors has paid dividends - the place already feels light and airy.  Next we meet with the tiler to decide all things tiles, from colours, patterns, direction and grout. Spoiler alert: there is a lot of grey. 

As we drove toward the house this week, we noticed something was missing. That something was two levels of scaffolding and for the first time we got to see the unadorned front facade. For the past few months, while there was a lot of internal progress, nothing much appeared changed from the outside, so it was very exciting for us to see how some of our design choices played out in real life. We were particularly interested in seeing how the wood panelling feature on the front turned out and how our colour selections came together. We think it turned out quite well. Next week, the plasterers start, but not before the solar guys get in to do their pre-wiring. It was lucky they were able to fit us in on such short notice otherwise we might have ended up with some ugly external conduits. We were lucky that the lower roof finally went up ahead of a week expected wet weather. Now we need to start thinking about landscaping.

We are in the fortunate position of having access to the premium solar feed-in-tariff, the contract for which doesn't expire for another 10 years or so. We had been given advice that it was possible to relocate our existing system to the new house and retain the premium tariff, under certain conditions. The main requirement was that the system components are still listed on the CEC's current list of approved systems. Our system is now a few years old, so no longer qualifiees. This led to a bit of a scramble to secure a PV system for our new home. We considered a battery, but even with the generous ACT government rebate, batteries don't quite make economic sense at this point in time. Now everyone who lives in the ACT knows about the "Canberra tax" whereby 'Berrans pay a premium on just about everything from groceries, petrol, cars, rents, tradies and yes, solar systems. There are a number of solar retailers operating in the ACT, however previous experience h...

Events seem have seem to have snowballed very quickly in the past few weeks, most obviously the fact that we now have a front door! We had another site visit where we met with the electrician to discuss all things electrical from the number and location of power points to lighting options, home security and solar provisions. Power points and light switches are essential in any home, but it's not something we usually give much thought to on a daily basis, but when you are building a home, there are a seemingly endless series of combinations and permutations. How many do you want? Where do you want them? How high do you want them? What style? What colour? Backlit? USB? Dimmer? Sensor switch? It's electrical overload - figurately and literally (we needed an extended electrical box to accommodate everything). And then there were the lights.  Stair lights? Pendants? Feature wall lights? How many? Where do you want them? On the left wall or the right wall?  At least on the que...

So this is Christmas. And what have you done? (built a bloody house that's what...) Another year over. And new ones just begun... We came back from our break to record temperatures, surrounded by raging bushfires and the worst air quality in the world. We drove past the site and nothing much had changed. The builders understandably stopped work during the hazardous air conditions, but it should be full steam ahead from next week. Here's a pic of the state of play in 2020.

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 b...

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.

No sooner had the ground floor frame gone up then the 2nd floor frame appeared!  Things are really starting to take shape and the builder said the roof trusses will be up by next week. We're very excited to see how much progress will be made between now and when everyone packs up over Xmas. 

Seemingly overnight, the frame sprung up above our newly laid slab. It's quite amazing how quickly things move.  For the first time, we could really start to see our home taking shape and get a sense of the true scale of the rooms. Again, Bumblebee (yes, we've named our drone) was able to deliver some cool aerials. Bumblebee also resumed his ongoing battle with the resident magpies for aerial supremacy. Not long after launch, he came under attack and had to hover higher to evade the onslaught. It seems that the magpies don't really attack high in the air, but do tend to swoop when hovering or landing closer to the ground, which is annoying because I really want to be able to do some manoeuvring around the site a bit lower, but can't risk being bundled out of the sky by an aggravated avian adversary. Hopefully the mating season ends soon and BB can resume low-level inspections. I also have to be careful carrying BB as I've been swooped when I've picked him u...

We got a call early on Friday morning from the builder. The slab was about to be poured in 10mins and did we want to come watch? Does a one legged duck swim in circles?  But talk about late notice! Fortunately I was able to shuffle things around and get to the other side of town to watch at least some of it. On the way to the house, I was following a cement truck from the main road turning into the suburbs and wondered if it wasn't heading to the site - and sure enough it turned in at our property. By the time I arrived they'd already done three truckloads, so I got the drone up as soon as I could. It was at this point that the drone attracted the attention and ire of the resident magpie that started swooping at it! Realising that the guys working below probably wouldn't appreciate a drone falling out of the sky and onto their heads, I quickly took my shots and landed. I also wanted to avoid a drone-shaped indentation in the floor of our new house... I was a little ...