Some Good News...Mostly Bad

When our SS got back from leave we called him on his very first morning back of course. He was of course a bit busy at the stage and needed to catch up with the construction manager who had been overseeing things in his absence. We met him on site later in the day and the news was pretty bad. In his opinion, is wasn't possible for them to have the house ready for handover by 29 April. This effectively meant that we would have to move house twice. This was exactly what we didn't want to hear. Apparently there was very little progress whilst he was absent due to tradies just not doing what they were supposed to do when they were supposed to do it. The flooring didn't get done because when the tradies who were doing came to start, they realised the floor hadn't been levelled by the company that poured the slab. The slab company had just decided not to turn up when they were scheduled to do so. This seems to be the typical scenario with the building industry, no matter which builder you use. The SS schedules the work but if the tradies don't feel like it they simply don't turn up. There is all sorts of excuses but there is no recourse for us, the hapless buyers. Later in the week our SS called with more bad news, they could not get our downlights until at least 2 May because they are out of stock at the supplier. Are you freakin kidding me? How can the biggest builder in Australia not be able to source downlights. We've been waiting almost a month for them. Why couldn't they just go to a different supplier, surely they have more than one supplier on the books for most things? This item is apparently essential for the QA, which was supposed to happen on 18 April, but now is pushed until at least 3 May, the day after we settle on our current house and have to leave. Thank goodness we have family we can stay with for a bit, but moving 2 young kids twice in a short period of time will be hell, as will moving all of our stuff.

Anyway, now that we have cleared the air bit, time for some good news. We went down to the house today to erect a letterbox, and were pleasantly surprised to see two tradesmen hard at work on our place. The carpet layer was completing the carpet to the ground floor, whilst the bricklayer (brickie #3) was putting the top of the exterior of the fireplace back on. We also slipped in to take some more pics:

This picture shows our mirrored wardrobe doors and no, they weren't my idea:



This picture shows what they had to do in order to prepare the slab for the timber flooring. First they grind the slab and then they put a thin layer of cement and polish it or something. At this stage (below) they have just grinded it (nice cracks too):



The next picture shows one of the timber floorboards. It's the flooring option available straight from Metricon, which is Boral Silkwood. Our chosen variety is Blackbutt, and this particular one looks fantastic, can't wait to see it laid:



This next shot shows the Balcony Tiles. Very happy with our choice here, was probably the easiest Tile to chose our of the whole lot. You'll notice that we still have no actual balcony rail, and the saga here is that first, the developer made us change to a glass rail, then, within the last month, the law has changed and now M have had to re-order a thicker glass, and they are waiting for this to come in. What a crock!:


These 2 photos show the finished shower screens, firstly in the ensuite and then in the main bathroom. We're happy with the way these came up, would be even happier if they had some taps etc as well:


Yes, we have toilets too (well, at least 2 of them, with 1 still missing). Two of our basins are also missing. Funny how these things just 'walk away' after they've been on site for a while:



Quite a few bricks still need cleaning, here is one of the many window sills we had to get them to re-do due to them laying very wonky bricks originally:


This picture shows that the carpet goes well with the feature wall in the master bedroom:



The brickie is shown below putting the 'lid' back on the fireplace exterior. You can also see the posts for our fence which is presently half way through being built. Now Adam, our fence builder is one tradesman who does what he says he will do when he says he will do it. He also kindly offered to fix the crappy rear fence that Australand built. Once he finishes our fences we will post his details here. I think he's already picked up a number of other jobs whilst being at The Range.



And this is my current effort toward building the new house, a crappy little letterbox, which we needed as we had already directed mail here thinking (stupidly) that we would be actually living here by now: