It's been very exciting seeing the exterior of our new home go up. Despite the shortage of brickies at the moment Metricon have managed to complete our bottom floor brickwork. The ground floor bricks took a week to do followed by a week and a half of delay due to issues with the scaffolding company. Apparently, the company they used failed to meet contract agreements and Metricon had to find a replacement company to complete the works. So many things you don't consider which could delay construction!
A couple of views from the front of the house...
A view from the back of the house, rumpus room wall...
The ducted heating pipes & sarking for the Colourbond roof have also been installed over the past month. It's a maze of silver up there and can only hope it's all in the right place!
We had our pre lock up private inspection a couple of weeks ago once all but the garage bricks were done. We would have waited a bit longer till the electricals were complete but a bit of mis communication led us to believe that the place was ready for lockup when in fact we were still a couple weeks off. As a result the inspector couldn't check the electrical outlets and we had to do it ourselves which wasn't too difficult but just time consuming.
A number of things came out of this inspection which we just wouldn't have noticed ourselves. Here's a few of the more significant ones:
1/ The metal support beam running along the top of the garage door was about 5cm too short on either side. It's not so much the length of the beam but the amount of support under either end of the beam which was insufficient. The engineering report specified 200mm of brick support but they only allowed 150mm. Given we have a relatively wide double car opening this was a rather significant shortfall.
FIX - Beam has been replaced by longer beam.
2/ Vertical gap between the window and the fireplace brickwork. Based on the inspector's report, this could have been avoided if the mortar used in the fireplace brick wall was more consistent with the rest of the house. For some reason, the mortar width on this wall is less than that used around the house. As a result, the brick wall does not quite reach the window and has created a gap. Similarly, around a couple of other windows, there is a small gap between the brickwork and the window edge.
FIX - Gaps will be filled by an aluminium strip to match the window edges. Hopefully won't be noticeable.
3/ Patch of brickwork near the front door is made from a poor selection of bricks which basically look crap. Less of a problem if the patch was out of sight on the side of the house but it's right beside the front door.
FIX - Redo the patch with new selection of bricks. Very happy with that outcome!
There's a few other items from the inspection but all fairly minor and Metricon have agreed to fix before the next stage. In any case, we wouldn't be paying until they were.
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