The 35th Week: our new home!

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...