After the silence last week, things are moving again. Yay! No photos though. I really like my two panel internal doors.

The Dynamic Duo have done all the architraves, hung all the internal doors and done most of the skirting. I only had their services by default - they were supposed to be doing the trusses on my niece Kylie's house but it was too wet to get the truck onto her block (yes, it's a real H family thing with this builder lol - he is building 4 of our houses at the moment). However they got most of the work done so the cabinetmaker can do his thing. The fibro/gyprock/whatever it is has been delivered for the eaves and Al's ceiling. The delivery truck got bogged and took out the yellow-tipped white post that marks my corner :(

I also had Paul the Painter turn up and start puttying nail holes. He will be spraying the internal walls next week and I have until Wednesday to choose what colour of off-white I want. Who would have believed that WHITE could have so many shades !! The ceiling will be Builder's White - the white you have when you aren't having white. I have no idea on the walls yet but my journey to find a white did produce a good result in other spheres.

Despite having the flu at the moment (aaaaawwwwwwww) I ventured out on Friday to hunt for Whites. And what a charming picture I was; dripping with sweat and red-faced with fever lol. On the way back from the paint shop, I stopped to get more laminex samples from Barrys ( a girl can never have too many samples) and next door was a Clive Anthonys electrical store. Went in to check out rangehoods and ooo! the de Longhi one was $899, down from $1249, as they are end of line. Had a think at home about it, then Zoe and I went to the local CA store to buy one. The salesman told me they had a cancelled builder's order for those rangehoods in their warehouse and I could have one for $699 if I wanted. He had to ask???? So it is now tucked safely up in the dining room walkway for everyone to trip over for the next month or so :) Clive Anthonys are definitely on my list of People I Like during this build - the local store happily put my order for the stove, dishwasher and fridge on hold, until I need it (which will be soon!) and they gave me good prices for all of it.

I met up with the cabinetmaker later that day and now I can't change my mind any more over colours. Just bite my nails and hope it all looks ok. It is sooooooooo hard to match all this stuff up from teensy chips. The bathrooms are the same as I described earlier. I have really only used 4 colours overall:

Main bathroom and powder - Pumice cupboards and Roman Marble (gloss) benchtop
En suite - Burnished Wood cabinet and Pearl Grey benchtop
Laundry - Burnished Wood on the bottom cupboard and Pumice on the benchtop and wall cupboards.
and finally!! the kitchen - Burnished Wood cabinets and Caesarstone Ice Snow benchtops. The CS colour isn't showing well on my monitor; it's a whitish colour with flecks of greys and pale browns.
I will decide on the glass colour after it's installed.


We were woken by the roar of the wind and rain in the storms on Wednesday night at 2am. I haven't seen rain that heavy in a long long time. Next morning, my new house had a moat again - up two bricks high. There are 3 courses to floor level. Phew! It will be better once the storm water is installed properly. But there were no leaks anywhere inside :)

So that is this week's update. Stay tuned for the next episode of The House of Jan - same bat channel, same bat time, same bats :)

I have a door!

The cornices are now finished. And the mighty carpentery duo, John and Frank, are back to do the internal fitout.

I have a front door !! But they locked me out :( cos I also have an internal door from the garage. They have started the architraves and internal door fitting. I know this because they kindly left the sliders unlocked :)

I lost my shoe in the mud walking around to the side of the house too lol

Sounds of silence

Nothing much happened this week.

The brickwork was finished on Monday when the brickies put the window sills in and stacked up the leftovers. There's about two pallets left over.
The cornices still aren't done.
The tiles have all been delivered.
On Friday, they cleared away the rubbish and scraped around the house.

It doesn't look like it will be finished by Christmas now. The electrician finishes up on 10 December for his holidays. There's just not enough time left to get it all done :( and everyone else is pushing for their work to be finished too; the tradies will all be flat out for the next month or so.
I'm a tad disappointed (!!) especially since I have holidays from Christmas eve onwards for a few weeks, and now I can't spend it organising the new place.

As far as I can figure out:

*Cornices
*Internal joinery and front door
*Garage door
*Cabinetry (I haven't even seen the cabinetmaker yet!)
*Painting
*Tiling
*Plumbing fit out
*Electrical fit out
*Shelving in wardrobes and pantry (still trying to decide if I should get the Elfa system for my walk in)
*Eaves and al fresco ceiling
*Connections for gas, electricity, phone, water, sewer and stormwater
*Tank (including the slab for it)
*Concreting Al and the entry (can't do driveway yet because of sub division work so I guess the garage will be a storeroom for the rugrats' furniture)

Somewhere in amongst all that, I have to arrange for the cooktop, oven and dishwasher to be delivered; buy a rangehood; and fit the data/phone points and buy the hub thingo. I'll have no phone and no net without it ! eeekkk!!

I also have the new fridge to organise and apparently my lounges are waiting for me at Hardly Normals. It figures that the one time furniture arrives within a fortnight, it's when it can't go to its new home lol. And I need a new bed desperately and I'm trying to wait until the house is finished to get it. Then I have to stop spending money!

The council came back quicker than expected with the changes they require for the sub division. The driveway for the other back lot (Zoe's) has to be moved, they've put some angles on the easement driveways (we expected that) and they require stormwater proposal by 17th !! Luckily the hydraulics engineer is happy to do it quickly.




Al with walls




Bricks finished.

I like the way the ironstone roof changes all the time - sometimes it's very blue, others it's grey and when I took this photo, with the sun shining on it, very silver.
The bricks have the sandstoney appearance that I was after. So I'm happy with that choice.
In retrospect, I think I probably should have chosen the dark window frames; it looks a bit bland with the beige ones. It would also have been nice to have the front pointy bit to define the entrance, but the cost just wasn't worth it when no one will see it eventually.

The funny thing is the toilet window - no one picked up that it was the wrong size all through the plan drawing and building lol. It doesn't really matter or bother me; after all it's only a toilet window but it just amuses me that with all my anal checking this, changing that, that I missed something that is pretty obvious! ah well such is life. And the rest of the work on the house so far has been great.

Let's hope next week I have something more to show :) I can't really complain though. Some people are building their houses for a year or more - I'm so glad I'm not building with one of the big ones. I'm stressed enough now; I'd be homicidal if I had to wait that long lol

Progression

Progress. At the slow end of things now.

The plasterboard is all up and the plasterer has done his thing with the nail holes and joints. They have different crews/tradies for each section - one group comes in and does the board, then the joint guy (who has the niftiest stilts), and tomorrow (I guess) the cornice guy comes.
The brickies have done all the way around about halfway up the walls. Today they actually got high under the eaves on the bathroom side but were stopped by the rain; more than is showing in this picture which was taken yesterday.
They should be finished, rain permitting, by the end of the week.

I have uploaded pics of the tiles for the bathroom and en suite. They don't show very well unfortunately.

Main bathroom - the dark tile is a mottled grey/brown which flows well from the main tiles. The wall tile is an offwhite with satin finish. It picks up the colours around it. Leaning toward Pumice for the cabinet doors and Roman Marble for the top. This would be continued in the outside vanity.

En suite - the floor tile is a deep chocolattey colour with black lightning through it. The wall tile isn't showing it's true colour (on my monitor anyway). It's grey (with a bluish tendency) with darker grey lightning. Laminex chosen (so far) is Burnished Wood for the doors and Pearl Grey for the top.

The kitchen is the one causing problems! I have to meet with the cabinet maker sometime this week and I still have no idea what colour to do it. On days like today, it's quite dull inside despite the big sliding doors - a sky tube might be in order in the future I think.

I have put a number of possibles for the cabinetry on the floor tile. This tile will be all through the house except for bathrooms and bedrooms.

I'm leaning towards the darker Burnished Wood with a lighter stone top at this stage - the one shown is Caesarstone Ivory. I can also have colour in the glass for the splashback behind the stove.

Any ideas? opinions? Let me know!!! arghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!

I got plastered

The brickies have been on site for the past few days. To start it was a slow row of bricks around the base. I think they were waiting for the termite protection to be installed (???), which happened late yesterday. They had organised piles of bricks and mortar boards all round the house. Now I have most of one side bricked!

The plasterers turned up today and have put up most of the boards. A few walls, the edge bits and the cornice still to be done. I have rooms !

Classical Gas

The gas lines are now run. The bricks arrived today and are distributed around the house. They're a bit different to what I expected but nothing drastic.

Lucinda, Big G and I did a bit of tidying and re-labelling of the wiring and fixing the batts tonight; string lines have been run to help them stop popping out of the openings.

Cables

I took Friday off to organise cabling, and I don't think I've stopped since - ready for a biiiiiiiig nanna nap.

My trusty gang of subbies - Megan 'Monkey Magic', Dave 'Cable Guy', Lucinda '100 Tape Gal', Andrew 'Itchy the Insulator', and Troy 'Driller'; Zoe was at Indy preventing a t!tty crime spree.
My most grateful thanks to them all - I would still be going if I'd had to do it all myself.

The Soundscreen insulation was a nightmare. I didn't think it would be itchy stuff, HA! and it falls apart so easily. Why can't they put some kind of coating on it? We tried every tape in the universe and it was still slipping. It might, maybe, perhaps end up inside the walls where it's supposed to be, when the plasterers do their thing.




Cabling was erm .. interesting. With my trusty Dymo I had carefully cut and labelled about half the cables before everyone arrived. Dave and Megan scrambled around the roof looping, threading and poking. And we ended up with a jungle of vines in the garage.

By Sunday arvo, some of the labels were falling off so Lucinda had to relabel, then the Dymo ran out of tape.... Hooking it all up might be even more interesting .... Blue cords draped across the walkways was starting to look more attractive. But it's done now.

Plasterers are due next week and the bricks have been ordered.