Bricking

Arrived at the site yesterday and they have started the bricking.

Not sure I am happy, frame not completed and bricking has started. Must say the brick work looks great, they are doing a really good job. The wife picked a good looking brick.

Will upload some photo's tomorrow.

Framing March to May

Have not had much to see on our house. PD had the roof tile, down stairs plumbing and guttering done.

We have our second Site supervisor (call him S2) and our second set of framers, there job is to fix all the problems with the frame.

Had the new supervisor S2 call and introduce himself. Also meet the framers, have high hopes for both the new frames and the new supervisor.

So to sum up the progress of our house, Slab completed, frame done but not completed, roof tiled, some plumbing done,

Its been almost four months and we have not completed the frame.

On top of that I will be having the inspector re-inspect the frame.  I am not convinced that I will be able to confirm all items have been addressed.

Framing Begins - so do the problems...

So far, site scrapped, slab laid ... all is good.

Frame is scheduled to start on the first week of February.
At this point we have been waiting to be contacted by the Site Supervisor. We will call him S (for site supervisor).

The frame starts.

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Framing continues.

Get invoice and email for frame completion 23/3/11.

Fantastic, frame completed,  then the problems start.

Go and look at the completed frame, roof not completed, missing door from garage into house, position of windows wrong, position of front door wrong, missing projection (for future fire place) missing.

At this point we schedule for someone from New Home Inspections (recommendation from homeone forum site) to inspect the frame.  19 items of non building code compliance.

I passed this report into PD and asked for a written response to each item. I have not received a written response to the items in the report, I was told via email that these items will be rectified as per the report.

Get told be PD that the Brick layer is scheduled to start but given that some of these items in the report relate to the brick work, I ask that these get addressed first.

Slab goes down

Site gets scrapped and plumbing goes in

Slab frame gets build.

Thats my lovely wife standing in front of the future slab.

The slab has been laid.

Now we wait for the slab to set and framing to start.

Things are moving fast, this is a good start the the house.

Colour and Electical Selection

We have previously completed the colour and electrical selection from Hopetoun and National Tiles.  We decided that we wanted to stay will group 1 options, trying to save where we can.

Bricks: Jarrah
Roof Tiles: Ebony
Stone Bench Top Kitchen: Zulu
Stone Bench Tops Everywhere else:Opsrey

For Electrical we added additional power points around the house, junction points for future lighting outside.

Structural Changes

We have made a couple changes to the design of the Cremorne, firstly we added an additional walk in robe (dressing room) for the wife. Added a shower to the powder room, added an additional door the to garage (from pantry), rain water toilet flushing and extended the length of the garage.

Ground Floor plan

First Floor plan

Next is the Colour and Electrical appointments. I have been told that you generally spend $5000.00 on extra's even though the initial allocation from tender is only $1200.00. This will be interesting.

House Selection

After looking at lots of houses, we finally decided to build a Porter Davis Cremorne 42 home. We mainly looked at Henley and metricon homes, but liked the layout of the Cremorne.

We didn't get the side facade or the balcony (you can't see in photo) on the side of the house.