Frame now finally done. About time!

Our frame was finished this week. We were expecting that things would be a bit slower at this busy time of year, but it has been a blow to see our neighbour's house moving along at a cracking pace. I am trying to ignore all the things he's getting done, like roof (although he went colourbond, so quicker), plumbing, guttering and now bricks :( he works for them so I guess he has the advantage!
They cannot give us an idea of brickwork commencement, not until next year (at least LOL!). Anyway, here's the latest pictures....we took the kids and my mother in law up there last Sunday to have a look, so the extra bits of reinforcement timber which are criss crossed through some of the pictures are now gone as all the steel strips have gone in now.

View from lounge room window:


Jade near lounge room doorway, across the "hallway" is Alicia's room:


From the backyard, L to R is Andrew's room, then Cheyenne's Room, and then Jade's:


The front...we have main bedroom to the far left, then Ryan's room, then lounge room:

I will get some pics of bathroom, kitchen/dine, rumpus etc now that all the bits of timber are gone.

With the wrong window saga, it turns out that we have the right ones as our upgraded crosses are stuck on. I don't know whether to be relieved or not, I am slightly alarmed I am paying $1250 for stickers! Oh well, if they look good and last then that's all that matters I guess.

I probably won't get a chance to update before Christmas as we're quite busy and I guess nothing will happen with the house at this stage anyway. So Merry Christmas everyone....hope you all have an enjoyable, relaxing day :)

Tamsin :)

Frame almost complete

I am not sure why ours took so long, everyone else's took a couple of days :/ Anyway, I really hoped to not whinge again, it seems to be all I am doing about this whole building saga. As of yesterday we still had the roof being finished (well I hope it was being finished...I haven't been there today to check). It's been over a week, and it's kind of shattered the idea of having any brickwork done by Christmas, as everyone will be on holidays soon.
I sent an email on Wednesday morning, and I am yet to hear an answer on whether we are scheduled to have brickwork begin before Christmas. It's now been two days so I might be needing to follow up the lack of response again.
We did hear back about our concerns regarding dirt which wasn't removed (which we had paid $1400 for!!) and they are going to credit our account. Now I am annoyed about the $1250 I paid for upgraded windows, and I got standard ones :( I only got a few upgrades for the facade, the windows, the cut off eaves, and the panel lift roller door. I don't have the patience to wait for them to order new ones, get them fitted, and then have the brickwork consequently put off until goodness knows when.
I will update with some photos when I get the chance, and I would like to take some more, however it's bucketting down rain all day according to the BOM....actually quite fitting for my whinging pom post today ;p

Framework begins!

Yay! I still haven't heard anything from the builders, but at least there is action. We noticed last night there was timber around the edges of the slab, so we thought that it may be soon, but what a surprise I got when I drove up there early this afternoon and most of the upper level had been done! At the rate they are moving we are thinking the whole frame will be done by knock off Friday!

Photos:




After a disheartening start to the week, I am glad they've started something. I never thought that building a house could be so stressful and after so many disappointments and lengthy unexplained delays by the builder I was just hoping that something could go to plan!
The kids, who are mostly over driving up to look at the "stupid block" now can't wait to check out where their bedrooms are going to be. Jade is very concerned over the size of her room, she wants to get up there straight after school tomorrow!!
Alicia has been suffering with chicken pox since Sunday, and Andrew has been in hospital again since Saturday (asthma), so it's a bit of excitement for them too. We're all suffering from cabin fever here!

Nothing happening....

Although this has become the general feeling for us with this whole building experience, so nothing new! We signed our contract in July 07, and I never dreamed that we'd still be sitting here now waiting for our house, with only a slab poured and that's it!
Well, the meeting with the contracts manager has turned over nothing to this date. It's been two and a half weeks, with an email reminder last Tuesday from me. This was promptly answered, but only to tell me that he hasn't been able to solve any of our issues! I also wanted to know when the framework was going to start, but he still hasn't got back to me on that one either.
I asked for a rough idea of when our house will be ready, but apparently he can't give me any idea here either...not until the kitchen goes in. We haven't even though about the kitchen at this point, we are still waiting for a frame!
So, unfortunately nothing to report other than us being left mighty annoyed and disheartened by our treatment, yet again :/

Frame and brick delivery

Went up to the block today, and while I was pulling into the estate I noticed a truck with a timber frame parked on the side of the road. As there are only 2 or 3 slabs awaiting frame delivery (one being ours!) I wondered if it was ours. As I drove up to the block I noticed we had pallets of bricks delivered, so I took some photos with my phone to send Nigel! After doing that the truck came up the road with the frame! It was ours LOL!

Anyhow, I drove off and let them unload in peace...came back later with the kids and took some photos:




We also have a dunny now. That was another bit of excitement between then and now, although seeing as there are now about eight houses under construction in our street alone, three within a 30 metre radius, the sidewalk is littered with portable loos! It makes me think of Kenny whenever I drive up there!

So, we also noticed that our next door neighbour has similar taste in brick. I hope his facade is going to be different, I am worried about having an identical house!

We also had a meeting with the contracts manager last week after all the confusion regarding the slab problems. We at least now have some kind of explanation, with a few questions he needs to check up on and get back to us about. We now have a issues database, the issues were getting out of hand! To their credit, he also acknowledged the bad customer service, labelling it as "unacceptable".
I can also deal with him directly now too, which is great news as I can bypass the "diffuse, deflect and deny" armour of plebs which seemed almost impossible to infiltrate!

We are expecting that the frame will start very shortly...next Wednesday marks 28 days from slab completion. We would hope to see some action by late next week.

The plans.

I have here the plans for our house.



As you can see it has been modified from the original to add another bedroom (losing part of the rumpus), and we have also extended the kitchen and added a walk in pantry. We also made the laundry bigger, which Jade loudly objected to as it cut into her room!

Here are the elevations. Please excuse the pen scribble, Ryan wanted to share his talented artwork with everyone!



These ones have actually been updated as we have added crosses in the top of all the windows and changed the roller door to a panel lift door. I can't find those particular ones at the moment, but this at least gives an idea. After we made the changes at our colour selection they didn't send them off to get professionally drawn up anyway, they used a felt tip pen to draw some crosses in the windows and liquid paper and the felt tip to add a "panel lift door" ha ha ha!

Tamsin :)

Finally some action....

It looks as though we finally have some action on our block! I thought it might be a good time to start a blog, with the promise that things will progress at a steady pace from here. I intend on updating this blog as often as we have some new news to share, to keep all our friends and family updated on our house news :)

This has been an ongoing project for us since April 2007, when we originally put our block on hold. It was held up for a looong time with the developers while the engineers figured out what they were going to do with it, and three neighbouring allotments. We finally paid our deposit and signed our contract in July 2007, and it has been one long, tedious ride from there.

So anyway, the story so far:

We have a block in the Coast Estate in Seaford Rise, south of Adelaide. We love the idea of being by the coast, we love the view, originally it was a little too far south for us but the area has really grown on us now too. The block is only 600m2, so we are a little anxious to see how we'll adapt to a smaller block. At least there is a good amount of open space within the estate, a playground at the end of the road, a lovely wetland project and a huge reserve and bike track following Pedlers Creek which we actually overlook from the front of our house.
The house we are building is the Trinity Split by Statesman Homes. It's been modified to add another bedroom, a bigger laundry and a bigger kitchen.

Here is Jade and Ryan, back in August 2007, on the piece of land as we bought it. It stayed this way for some time, until June this year infact!

From the front. Sorry it's a bit dark.

In early June, excavation began!

Ryan loves dirt!


Benching is complete!

The "drop". This is the entertaining area.


And here's the orange plastic. We were lucky enough to have a whole month at this stage due to the builder's stuff ups. Hmm. This was actually orange plastic stage take 2, as it was ripped up after they did it the first time.


And here, we finally have it! The long awaited slab! They are doing the last stage by the time I got the camera up there for some action shots, but I am glad I got some pictures of it being poured.

Finito!

Alicia running into our "lounge room"!

And the view from our lounge room.


OK, so that's the story so far. I have taken some pictures of the plans and elevations which I hope to get up here very soon.

Tamsin :)