Extra lights purchased

Two weeks ago we went to Beacon lighting and selected all the extra lighting that we need for the house. We decided to wait for a sale as we weren't in a rush. Fortunately, Beacon has a 'Up to 50% off' sale starting today so we took advantage of the opportunity and made the purchase :)

Here are our selections:

Dining table pendant

Kitchen island pendants x3

Alfresco ceiling fan and light

Front portico beam lighting x2 

Home Theatre wall lights x2

Plumbing fit off - 90% complete

Was surprised to see that most of the plumbing fit off was completed today even though the tiler hasn't been back to grout or finish off the tiling. 

They will need to come back out again to do the shower rails, mixers, laundry taps etc... 

Laundry sink (taps awaiting tiling)

Taps under sink for washing machine

 Bathroom sink

Main toilet

 Kitchen sink and tap

Cold fridge tap

En-suite sinks and taps

En-suite toilet

Kitchen full shot

External tap (recycled)

Portico/Pillar render painted

The render on our front pillars and portico has been painted finally!

The colour is called 'Organic' by Dulux. It came out a little darker than expected but we are happy very with the final look.

The count-up begins!

We have officially gone over the promised completion date set-out in the contract. So we decided to set-up a timer to see how many days over the contract we will go...

As for progress on the house, not much has happened really. Door handles fitted, tiling commenced and window angles installed. That's pretty much over a two week period. Kind of disappointing really but to be fair our SS has been away all this week.

We're being told to expect hand over 3rd or 4th week of August but we're not holding our breaths. The annoying part is it's hard to give notice to our real estate for the current property. We might just have to bite the bullet...

Some photos from this week. House has been locked up so didn't get any photos of inside.

Garage rear roller door

Our rear garage roller door was finally installed yesterday.

Apparently the installer had been on-site about 4 times before he managed to get it in. Something to do with mounting surface.

Not sure I'm happy about how it's been installed but will have a closer look and discuss with the SS when I see him next.

Basically they have bolted through the plaster into the brick.

Portico weep holes

So whilst we were looking at concreting options for our driveway, pathway and portico we noticed that are weep holes are at the same level as the adjacent concrete in the portico.

Initially, this didn't phase us as we decided to just paint/seal that concrete. It wasn't till further looking into it that we found out that this is actually a defect and the minimum height of weep holes/DPC under a covered area should be 75 mm or approximately one brick course. 

Turns out reducing the step down in the Portico wasn't such a good idea from PD! 

We are in a little bit of a pickle because we can't raise the DPC/weep holes as they will be above the house floor level which is also a defect and definitely will not be touching the concrete base underneath it. 

It seems a lot of houses are being built this way as we have already seen some in our estate and on some other blogs. We might just have to live with this one... We believe that it won't reduce performance as long as we don't block them in any way. 

Joys of building... 

Build issues - List is growing exponentially

So I've been monitoring the build pretty closely since I've been back from overseas and the build issues list that I had initially created is growing and growing.

I went through the house yesterday wall by wall, room by room and the end result is a whopping 65 items that need attention. 33 of those are issues such as paint touch ups, dints, damaged cabinets etc... These items I have flagged as 'PCI' as they will most likely get picked up by PD and I don't want to be micromanaging our SS.

As for the other more urgent issues, well I'm not going to list them all but here are a few that I really didn't pick up before but need attention;

One of the garage door bolts is loose and garage door was banging in the wind

Slider door does not work smoothly and jams halfway. 

And this is the pick of the bunch. One of the walls/skirting in the house is not plumb or straight at all! Yes, I did check every wall, skirting etc... 

I know the first two are an easy fix. The last one though is going to be a big discussion and might cause some delays because the only way I can foresee this being repaired is to rip the plaster and skirting off, straighten the walls/studs, re-plaster and paint sigh... We will just have to wait and see!