Getting ready for after Handover work

After Hand-over there are few tasks to complete before we could move in. here they are:

- Flooring
- Additional Electrical work
- Driveway (rest of the landscaping can be done after we move in)

So, we getting ready for the above considering tentative dates in mind.

For Electrical below items need to installed:

• 24 Cool Downlights for throughout the house - Ordered
• 4 Warm Downlights for Alfresco - Ordered
• Three Pendant lights (for Kitchen Island) - Ordered
• One Wall light - Ordered
• Two Lights for batten holders in Garage - Ordered
• TV Antenna 
• Three Lights for batten holders outside
• One Globe for pillar at front facade

Pre-wiring had been done for most of these.

We already ordered below ornamental light fittings:

Glaze Hand Blown Glass Light (Brown)

Modern Chrome White Glass Wall Light

Now searching for Clipsal's downlights which need to be purchased from wholesalers or suppliers only to match other downlights installed by MJH:

On the landscaping side: we agreed with our potential landscaper on the cost of all desired items, though the alfresco deck price is going above our budget!

Yet to visit flooring stores to reconfirm our quotation taken earlier.

P.S. Ordered 28 Clipsal 11W downlights from Electrical Express. After calling many Clipsal suppliers, found this website is offering the cheapest, so went for them. Clipsal downlights seem very expensive (~33$) compared to other downlights in the market. Not sure why MJH is using this brand!! Wanted to avoid the hassle of moving installed lights to other rooms so that we can go for a cheaper brand. So, Clipsal it is throughout the house.

Oh! Damn Downpipe!!

I wanted to write about our journey towards our first home, all of it, not only the positive things. Today one of our friends sent a picture of the build, and we just realized of a mistake that we made when we signed our plans back in March'16.

There were downpipes locations drawn in the plan, very tiny and insignificant things those were. And we trusted on the default placement of those done by the builder. It never crossed our mind that a downpipe could be placed at the front Facade to ruin the look of the house.

Here it is:

Gosh! I wish to bang my head after finding this out. But there is not much can be done now unless we plan to shift it somewhere else after handover.

I am glad that we paid for a downpipe color (Taubmans Braidwood) to exactly match with the brick (Urban One Pepper).

Taubmans Braidwood

Urban One Pepper

Those who are yet to sign the plans, please carefully check the location of downpipes. We missed to check it and are now devastated. Yeah you learn from your mistakes!

The complaint I have for MJH is that when clients choose their facade seeing the graphic images displayed at their website, they are unaware that few designs are bound to have downpipe at the front facade. I say, why would you design such a facade in the first place, and if you do, please put that downpipe in those Facade images you display at your website so that clients won't be disappointed at the end .

Hope after painting, the downpipe will blend in as in this picture: will still be visible from side though!

Wet Area Tiling and Kitchen Installation Complete

MJH informed us on Monday that Wet Area Tiling has been completed and Kitchen has been installed. Planning to visit the site only on next week-end (which is a long week-end yeyy!!). So I do not have any photos of the finished look of the tile and the kitchen at the moment! I am dying to see the Kitchen bench-top, splash-back installed. Also eager to see the front facade to bagged and painted.

Our SS informed us during our last visit that we can expect our PCI (practical completion inspection) around third week of October. So, we are getting prepared for it: doing online research, preparing list of items to check at PCI. Also the process of hiring an independent inspector is in progress.

Wet Area Tiling ongoing, Painting started

Wet area tiling is ongoing, painting started from this week. Looks like it is not very far to get a call for PCI.

We actually went for the 'Pre-tiling discussion' today. Thank God the tiles were not wrong, because the speedy tiler had already used them. Tiles had been laid on the bathroom and ensuite floor yesterday. Laundry floor screeding is also done. They will start wall tiling today. Hopefully wet area tiling will be complete by latest next week.

However, we haven't checked the grout color which is yet to be used. 

Now let me recall our wet area selection items:

Bathroom selections were:

Benchtop: Caesarstone Linen
Cupboards: Polytec Artisan Oak Matt
Tiles: Cotto Tibur White

Cordova Two: Bathroom Color Palette

Our Ensuite selections were:

Benchtop: Caesarstone Walnut

Cupboards: Polytec Gesso Lini Matt

Tiles: Cotto Karl Beige

Cordova Two: Ensuite Color Palette

Here is the current state:

Cordova Two: floor tiling and screeding

Painting is also going in parallel with wet area tiling:

Cordova Two: Painted in Taubmans Smooth Pebble (first coat)

Our paint selections were Taubmans Calico Beige for Bedrooms & Home Theater and Taubmans Smooth Pebble for the rest of the house. Ceilings and cornices had also been painted in Taubmans Illusive White

Butler's Pantry in progress:

Cordova Two: Butler's Pantry

Photos of few other places around the house:

HT has been painted in Taubmans Calico Beige (first coat):

Cordova Two: Home Theater

Mirror sliding doors of built-ins have been taken out for painting:

Cordova Two: Bed Two

Laundry linen door issue has been fixed (looks better this time):

Looking at the progress, it seems we can hope for an early-November handover now. We are excited at the same time anxious about so many pending tasks! Flooring choice made earlier needs to be reconfirmed, additional electrical items need to be dealt with, so on. 

Progress Update: Kitchen Cupboards etc

There hasn't been significant updates to the site compared to earlier weeks. No tiling discussion happened yet, and no sign of tile delivery on site.

Cupboards and shelves have been installed both in kitchen and butler's pantry. And the colours look good. We had chosen Belgian Oak Matt and Marni Lini Matt from Polytec respectively for under-bench cupboards and overhead cupboards & shelves. Here is how it looks:

Cordova Two: Cupboards in Belgian Oak and Marni Lini Matt

Cordova Two: Cupboards in Belgian Oak and Marni Lini Matt

I am sure these cupboards are so waiting for the Caesarstone Linen benchtop :)

Shower hobs have been installed and vanity installation is in progress:

The laundry linen door mistake has been rectified though it doesn't look well-corrected (see the right side of the frame): Now we know why it took only half-an-hour to correct it!

Cordova Two: Laundry

Initially it was placed like this:

Cordova Two: Laundry

Apart from these, the holes for down-lights, electrical outlets have been cut in Gyprock.

Now eagerly waiting for Tiling updates so that we can proceed with wet area tiling.

PS: Got to know from our SS today that tiles will be delivered on Tuesday afternoon and tilers will be working (i.e. screeding) on site from Wednesday morning. We plan to visit on Thursday though for our Tiling discussion.

Lock up!!

It was amazing to see how much had been accomplished throughout last week. All architraves, doors, skirting to bedrooms and home theater, glass door to built-ins, main door, rain water tank, water proofing to wet areas are done.

The House at Lock up:

Cordova Two: Classic Facade

A closer look at the front door and the garage: Front door will be later painted in Taubmans Mountain Wine color.

Cordova Two: Garage door in ColorBond Surfmist 

Cordova Two Classic Facade: Front door

Rain Water tank had been installed:

Rain water tank: Colourbond Jasper

All the glass doors to built-ins and skirtings have also been installed:

Cordova Two: Bed 4

Cordova Two: Bed 2

Cordova Two: Bed 3

 Water-proofing has also been done to wet areas:

Main Bathroom

En-suite

 All the cabinets for kitchen, pantry, bathroom vanities are waiting to be installed:

Cordova Two: Cabinets delivered

 Also all the architraves had been completed.

Few more pictures of living area:

Cordova Two: Living area showing door of Mastersuite and HT

Cordova Two: Living Area showing Hallway Entrance, doors to Pantry & Laundry

Kichen Area:

Cordova Two: Open Kichen Area, also showing IT desk area and Bed 4

And garage door from inside:

On our visit, we found that the laundry linen door has been placed incorrectly.

To be honest, we were terrified whether this could be easily fixed as there is a frame inside the linen structure. We informed our SS straight away through email and text. We also spent the whole Sunday and Monday worrying. On Tuesday morning, we called SS and got to know that they fixed it on Monday, took them only half an hour.

But, we expected this should have been discovered by MJH themselves just after Framing was completed more than two months back. Not sure how a framing error like this came this far without anyone else noticing it.

So, with this, the 'Fix-out' stage of our house has been completed. Next comes wet area tiling, followed by Kitchen installation. We are notified by MJH to arrange for pre-tiling discussion on site, also given an option that SS will send pictures of the tiles for confirmation. We haven't decided on how we would proceed yet.

It's All about Landscaping

A house is life-less without its landscaping. Looking at the speed of construction, it seems we may get the keys sometime in November, latest December. So, we decided to look at the landscaping aspects of the house from now.

We met with our potential landscaper on site this week-end, discussed few changes on the original landscaping plan we submitted to council earlier. He also provided some useful suggestions.

Here are the changes:

• Wheelchair access to Patio from Driveway: need to replace a meter from the existing garden-bed in the plan with concrete. This is a condition for HAF rebate eligibility

Cordova Two: Patio Access from driveway

• Pebbles & Stepping stones instead of turf for the side: Picture below

Cordova Two: side of the house

• Concrete under front Eaves instead of turf: so that the turf won't touch the walls
• Concrete replacing a part of Garden bed: to allow access to left side of the house
• Extending Alfresco with composite decking materials: Planning to extend the alfresco 

Most of the above items are self explanatory. However, the decision on Alfresco deck is not final yet!

As the construction progresses, we felt the alfresco is quite small for our need. And when we consider installing a BBQ station and Basin in future, it will even feel smaller. But not much can be done about it. So we are looking to extend the alfresco area using decking materials as an alternative.

Some samples along with our alfresco is collaged below:

We already have the service area (Garden water tank and Aircon box) in the backyard as shown the the picture above, which we plan to hide using some garden screen and vining plants. The deck extension will be maintaining the same length of this garden screen (i.e. service area). We learnt, as this is still inside the Gutter area, there won't be any special permission from council required for deck of this size.

The Alfresco will be extended on two sides (0.8 meter until service area at the back and 0.4 meter on the side): giving us 4.4 sqm of additional space, no roofing is considered as the deck will under eaves anyway. 

Hope this will give us slightly more room without losing much of the backyard. 

 We are also thinking of using composite decking material which is low maintenance compared to wood and would prefer a dark reddish tone like below:

And at last, I wanted to include all the plants those will be added:

Front-yard:

• 'Callistemon Little John' and  'White-Anzac-Bottle Brush' for the flower bed between Driveway and path led to Patio
• Purple Tick Bush at sides and front (for hedging)
• NSW XMas Bush on the left side of the driveway
• Native Frangipani on right side of the plot

Back-yard: we opted for a plain simple backyard because of 1.5 meter drainage easement restriction

• Tuckeroo
• Wonga Wonga Vine (to hide service areas)

White-Anzac-Bottle brush for front-yard

callistemon-little-john for front yard

Purple Tick Bush for front yard

Native Frangipani for front yard

NSW Christmas Bush for front yard

Tuckeroon for Backyard

Wonga wonga Vine for backyard (to hide service area)

And last but not the least: Sir Walter Buffalo Turf

Sir Walter Buffalo Turf

Planting schedule and size of the plants: