Facade looks beautiful, with a coat of paint

It use to look like this:

the fixing starts

So the plasterer has come back today to fix the silly plumber's unnecessary broken bits to our home.

In the previous post, you'll see that he forgot to turn off the taps which eventually caused a water leak in the bathroom making the walls too damaged they had to all be repaired (picture A). 

He also went in the roof and somehow managed to crack a hole through it. (picture B).

Pic A

Pic B

So now here's the first stage of the fix.

Below is the bathroom. A new plastered ceiling.

And below is the garage. The garage roof was left exposed to the elements during Christmas period. 

There were a couple of tiles that weren't put in and the water and hail storm got it which made the roof wet, then worp.

But they haven't really "fixed" it. They just stapled it up, instead of replacing it completely.........

We got Telstra today

soil that smells like poo!

Earth diggers arrived today with a mini bob cat to place all of our drainage pipes.

Who knew this stage even existed -  and now the soil thats been dug up smells foul and like poop. They must've dug really deep because (of the awful stench)  there was this huge pile of cement, the size of a large sink was pulled up from the ground...... 

Oh and the facade got a second coat  of render.

The gutters are now connected to the drain pipes. And the shit ones were removed.

timeline of build so far...

There hasnt been much progress on the house these last couple of days.

Chris and I were sorta annoyed with all this nonsense, we adjusted the amount of visits to the house. I mean, during the first stages, there would be someone to 'awe' about everyday - there was so much progress in one day. But now nothing is really moving. Everytime I go to visit the house (on a daily basis) all I start to see is the dust...the dust just moving around the house, lol. 

We're just really waiting for the plaster guy to come in and fix the walls before painting can progress. Darn you....

But to the point, here is an interesting timeline of the build of the house. These pics are from nearmap.com

6 April 2011
Silly people dumping tires on our land. It cost us $90 to get rid of them :(

20 August 2011

Our overpriced piece of land with a lot of grass (weeds, lol_)

17 November 2011

You can see out cool frame. You can also see our crates of bricks stacked on the right hand side of the land.

5 December 2011

the yellow bits are the rail support for the workers so they dont fall off the roof

there's also a lot of rubbish around the house from broken materials, broken roof tiles and cuts of wood

we also had a masssive sandpit at the front of the house. This was used for the mortar and bricks

17 January 2012

The cute little air conditioning system is in, and the hot water panels too!

Taaa-dahhhh

brick work

 Chris went around the house today with a fine tooth comb and noticed our bricks are not straight at all! and now that he's noticed one, thats all he can see when he looks at the wall of bricks around the house.

He is meeting with the SS about general things around the house on monday but also want to bring this up to him. Chris is pretty disappointed right now about it as we paid the $$$$ for Daniel Robertson bricks.

Here are some photos.

nit-picking...

Seeing it is going to be our house and paying a lot of monies, we expect things done right. Period.

So at this fixing stage, the builders are "fixing" things internally in the home, for example, doing all the cabinets, painting, lights, light switches, door handles etc.

Because there are lot of details during this stage, we've decided to create a shared spreadsheet between the builder, SS and ourselves.  **There's a good tip for new home builders ** 

This spreadsheet has been helpful as our Administrator,  SS and ourselves can keep track of things much easier. We also bring it a long at our catch up meetings to go through each individual thing my man wants them to bring their attention to.

I guess, at the end of the day, we're nit-picking... but for the right reasons of course. This just means we're serious and want a damn good job on the home.

I mean, we've mentioned a lot of things to the Administrator and SS and we expected certain things to be fixed and looked at and investigated. Some stuff can go back to 1 - 2 months ago. Sometimes these request  just dont get fixed. And the result of that is either more damages (i.e. like the hail damage on the roof bcos of a title missing on the roof) or further delays.

Back to the things we nit-picked today.

1. Clearly there's a gap between plaster and window skirts...

2. Um, who made that hole?

3. Joints are cracking..

4. Looks like someone nailed it the skirt, pulled it off and tore some plaster board with it.

5 And the saga continues with the bathroom. If you look closely, you'll see that the whole area needs to be re-plastered - there's too much water damage.

And we'll continue to add to this list....