Main Floor tiles re-selected.

National Tiles was having a 25% off sale over the longweek, despite "Frank Walker's" voice being so annoying over the radio we snapped up a good deal!

We managed to buy "Belgium Stone Ice" at $33/m2

 http://www.nationaltiles.com.au/qld_sp/belgium-stone-ice-17191?___SID=U

For a long time as you probably seen on our previous post, I was pretty set on glossy large format tiles. But after much research and thought and my wife! We decided against this due to maintenance and cleaning. 

This has a beautiful textured feel on the surface as described like fine grain cement. 

The other option was a Lappato version which was slightly more glossy on the surface but we didnt like it.

Cabinetry

This is probably where most people get excited.....

All the cabinetry arrived last week and was installed. We are so happy with our colour selections and choices. Cant wait for the stone to arrive!

The silver balausters were removed and how good do the black ones look!

Main Bathroom 

Powder room - Sublime teak, caroma liano basin 

Laundry Room - Sublime Teak and Parchment silk

Kitchen - Sublime Teak - Riven Finish

Butlers Pantry

Our tiles were also delivered on Friday. All our plasterwork is complete.

Week 16 - Fixing

After a very slow month to get to enclosed we finally got there.

I was away for nearly 2 weeks and it was exciting to get back to see all the action!

All the brick work was completed and cladding installed.

Really happy with our facade colour choices.

All the doors have been hung, handles are still to be done.

Our amazing 1.2m pivot door - very happy with the last minute decision to upgrade!

Entry

Beautiful Tasmanian Oak Stairs 

 Our stairs for the most part have been installed. Unfortunately they put in silver balausters when it should be black!

Powder Room Door - Cut down door for linen cupboard.

 It would have been good to be able to access the rest of stair case for storage.... may be a post handover thing.

 All the waterproofing has been completed. Its interesting to note that the powder room is waterproofed more sparingly.

Entry way again 

Laundry Entrance

Study sliding door

 Cornicing, achitraves and skirts are all being fixed on.

Corridor and Butlers pantry

Upstairs

My landscaper has also finished leveling the back yard.

Eventually stairs will be build to the terraced level and will have grass for the kids to play.

Cheapies and wins.

Not often you get a win in the building world, most mistakes cost money but I've found that sometimes their mistakes are a win!

Here are a list of a few!

1. We wanted to upgrade our front door from the standard 920x2100 6 Glass early on in our contruction phase. We were quoted the 1020mm wide and the 1.2m pivot door. The initial quotes came back $300 for the 1020mm and $550 for the 1.2m. I couldnt believe the prices and these included an admin fee. So of course I jumped onto the 1.2mx2100 pivot 6 Glass door in lieu of side lights. A few days later, we got an email saying they quoted the wrong prices and said it should have costed us over $1500. So because of their error they will give it to me for $650 with a handle upgrade.
2. Our other win was with our ensuite wall tiling. I initially just agreed to pay for increase tiling to ceiling in the shower area only. On our final plans we have floor to ceiling tiling on a whole extra wall.
3. As I have blogged earlier they made a big bungle on doing soil tests and slab design on a different piece of land. In the end they had to redo the design and increase the footings at their own cost.
4. Another win we had is when they didn't stock our sinks that we had chosen in our colour selection. We ended up getting a free upgraded sink too!
5. I got a quote to change our mandatory security screens to secureview mesh, rather than the ugly diamond grills. I got them to quote all windows but wet areas, but when it came to the build all upstairs windows got changed!

Week 14 - Plastering

Rain Rain Rain.

We lost about 4 days due to weather. But we still have made progress.

Once the scaff was up, the second floor was wrapped and the insulation and plaster was completed..

Insulation - they did a pretty good job. Everything was pack in nicely with no gaps. They did miss a spot where the air conditioning ducts run and under the bath tub.

Scaffolding was put up for works the second floor

Downstairs - plastering all completed.

Upstairs

We had some further delays to our second level bricks as the bricklayer decided to take another job on to complete that first..  lost about another week .

We have probably lost around 4 weeks of work due to weather and our brick layer woes... Can't wait to get to lock up!

Week 12 - Brickworks

After a 2 week delay in finding a bricklayer we have brick off!

The moon dust bricks with off white mortar look better than I thought.

Pretty much the bottom half of the house has been bricked as of yesterday. Scaff is going up today for the rest of the house to be bricked.

Week 8 - 10 - Electrical and Plumbing Rough-ins

All the plumbing and electrical was completed by week 9.

I went through our electrical plan to make sure all switchs, power points, downlights and data was completed exactly.

I picked up on a few downlights that wasnt quite in the right position, and I asked them to move our security equipment higher in our WIR so I can put a full height wardrobe in later. 

I got my own electrician to run our CCTV cameras before the plaster went up.

Other items completed was our ducted airconditioning and all our plumbing done...

Our ground floor was wrapped, ready for the bricklayers to start just after easter, but unfortunately our bricklayer decided to quit! so we currently stuck without a bricklayer !!!! frustrating but part of the game!

Lots of water over easter - Not allowed WATER NEXT TO OUR SLAB.
I brought this to the attention of our builder who got all this water sucked up!