Electrical Walk Through

On Tuesday, 23rd I will be meeting the builder, Mark Porreca at the house to walk through and make decisions about the placement of TV, phone, power and light points through the house.
EEeeeek
I don't want to do that on my own at all!

I have started drawing it up to get an idea what I have in mind. I don't know where to put computer lines. I don't know what kind of light I want in my bedroom. I can't decide on the kitchen
Oh woe is me :P

Progress Payments

Today I received an invoice for my next progress payment. It's the frame stage one, and definitely looking at it, I have a frame! I still don't have a receipt for the slab payment so I sent off an email reminder tonight.

I also received a call from the kitchen company, About Kitchens to say that they had commenced construction of my cabinets and asked for the sum that I will be paying over and above the allowance in my contract. The contract allowed for $8k for the kitchen. Before I signed the contracts, I needed to make sure that I could actually get a kitchen for that much. The allowance is worked out based on the cost of the house, not necessarily the kitchen that the architect sketches into the space shown as kitchen.

I went to About Kitchens which is the one that my builder, Solid Constructions use. I explained that my budget had no budge in it! The kitchen they drew up for me came in at about $10 under. Then I added the waterfall edges and that pushed it over a little.

The Kitchen. The island is in two shades of Mocha and the cupboard doors are just off white. No doubt it will date badly. The bench top around the stove is also in the mocha colour.

The laundry on the other hand, had a budget of just $1500 and I blew that by as much as the kitchen! All the cupboards and the hanging rail over the bench were over the budget. But a house must have cupboards!

The Laundry. Space for washing machine on right and under bench space for dryer on left. My current dryer is wall hung and I can't actually reach the things in it! To the right of the cabinetry will be the linen press.

And the house by day reveals more!

 First thing this morning, Kate had a flute lesson and as the new road into the suburb was open, making it easier to drive from old to new house, we did a drive by.

 Kate went round the side and pointed out what I hadn't noticed the night before in the dark...

 They have put the piping in for hot and cold water!

 So here we are on the 13th with a roof frame and some plumbing and some bricks.

 It has been a week of noteworthy progress

After I dropped her off at the lesson, I went carpet shopping. Before I accepted the contract on the house, I went and got a quote on carpet to make sure that it was going to add up to an affordable bundle. I haven't checked my figures from today but I have a sinking feeling that it was significantly more expensive today than in March/April when I first asked. I am peeved and annoyed and somewhat worried. I have been to Carpet One and Carpet Choice.
I am waiting on Carpet Choice's estimate, but the estimate from Carpet One is that I need 62.5(m?) of timber laminate and 16-17m of carpet. All up laid I am looking at $8,300. (Builder's range). I think that is about a thousand more than the original price I was guestimated. Hurrumph

And now a roof by night!

Today I finished my second week at the new job. After a sick kid and two visits to the dentist, I was feeling like things were not progressing fast enough. I needed a bit of time at work just to read up on a few things. So I stayed on late to read about formatting ministerials and minutes. And tried to find a legend for the icons in our email system (unsuccessfully). The end result was that by the time I got to the house, it was dark.

At first as I drove up and aimed my lights at high beam on the house, I thought they had only finished bricking the garage. Well that was a little disappointing...

Then just as I was reversing out, I realised that they had put the roof trusses on!
Tadah

Well I was so excited, I jumped out of the car, in the dark, and took photos of the house in the headlights... then noticed the car was still in reverse....eeeeek
Jumped back in and drove off a happy camper.

With Roof Trusses by the full moon and under headlights!

Bricks by Night

Every night I drive home via the house. The nights are getting shorter and so have my working days since changing jobs, so tonight it was possible to snatch a blury picture of what happened today...

 Bricks!

Progress Report in Pictures

Here are a few photos of the progress so far. Pretty much as I reported in the last post

 Looking from the North West. It looks bigger than it will be. Note the mess on the next door neighbors block. Hope my folk didn't do that!

The bricks are sitting on the mound that eventually will be the patio. There will be a pergola over the top of it. I am not really sure what is going to retain the dirt. The builder said he would put in footings. I hope that means bricks and not just the cement outline that is currently there.

 These are bricks. That much is obvious! The colour is called Urban Mist. The pink is the part that is not so much seen and the white is the outside part.

And from the front. Now sign of the garage which will be all brick and no timber framework. The Zafira and Erin pose for photos

A story of appliances to fill the time that a house takes to build...

(Be warned, the story is longer than its title!)

The frame is finished and the bricks have arrived. Down the road Solid are building someone else's house too and I watch it nearly as closely as I do mine. I tried not to feel jealous  when their bricks arrived before mine! It didn't really work :)

It is raining this weekend and I like rainy days a lot, but the more often the sun shines on a weekday, the quicker the house will be built.

In the meantime, a story of ovens and cooktops!

My contract with Solid includes builder's range cooking appliances. In the three houses I have owned, I have had two lots of builder's range. Both time Chef. I am not impressed. This time the builder's range wasn't even to Chef level. It wasn't a deal breaker but it was something that left me keeping an eye open to options.

I have been watching Masterchef and they have been using Ariston ovens etc. They reminded me of the Eurolec stove that I had in house no.2. I loved that stove. The oven was enormous and the cook top large and delivered really good heat. The gas oven wasn't fabulous as the heat was uneven, but the size made up for it. So I started nosing round on the net, looking at stoves, ovens and cooktops. I was reading reviews and getting a feel for things. I have to say, this is the best thing to do before you need an item. Know what you might like in advance so that you can leap if it falls under your feet by chance.

And chance arrived. I listen to 666 radio and sometimes the stupidity of the callers to the program makes me so mad I resort to the commercial channel. So on my way to work I heard an add saying that Clive Anthony was closing down and clearing all stock.

It was a call to action. First off I went to Harvey Norman. I asked about the items I had chosen on line, best price. I was by then looking at De Longi which seems to get reasonable reviews at a moderate price. Armed with local prices and their opinion, I headed to Clive.

Well the place looked ransacked. The shelves bare. I headed down to the cooking appliances area and there were still some options available. The De Longi appliances were of a mixed bag. One of the ones I had ticked in my mind was at an absolutely excellent price, but no oven in that brand that I wanted. So I started looking at other brands for an oven. I ended up standing in front of Bosch. I started to get serious. It seemed that the prices were possible. Then I went hunting for a cook top. Bingo. Not on display, but wrapped in plastic, I found a cook top from Bosch. Waited for staff. Got a price. Tingled with excitement.  I wanted to double check the Bosch reviews for these particular items and I wanted to see if Harvey Norman could make an offer in the same ball park as I would rather be dealing with an ongoing business and they  had given me a very good price on my dishwasher.

HBA43B450A

The girl at Harvey was very helpful and she told me that the price I was being offered for the Bosch was less than cost. The reviews were good so I rang to pay a deposit. The fellow I speaking to said that the cook top I wanted was not there and I would have to pay $100 more for the next model. Well, I was disappointed but it wasn't the end of the world. I agreed and paid the deposit and the items were put aside for me.

Next day when I went to pay the remainder and collect, I noticed that the one I had originally seen was still there. I asked if I could go back to my original plan and they agreed cheerfully. (I was impressed with the service I was getting when the staff were obviously working so hard under difficult conditions)

 

Bosch PCH615FAULP

 In the loading dock, they brought out the wrong one. The up market one was being delivered to me. I brought it to the fellows attention. He left me for a while, scoured the store and couldn't find the one I had bought. Someone had picked it up! So he adjusted my paperwork and I ended up with the upmarket version for the lesser price. I saved thousands in the transaction all up.

So now I have an oven and cooktop that by review, is much better than anything I have ever owned before. It's exciting!