Taking shape!

dining room window

It's beginning to take shape! I visited the site today, met the carpenters (and brought them some refreshments, non-alcoholic of course!), and walked through the framed house. Oddly enough, the rooms actually *do* feel larger now that the frame is there, and you get a sense of proportion of the rooms. Everything feels pretty good, except: the main toilet, which seems to be about the size of a shoebox, and the 'tv nook', which is large enough to contain a few bunk beds. And a tv. Gladly enough, the toilet in the ensuite is big-ola. I think I'll be spending a lot of time in there... lol. Some of our timber windows were there too, and they are gorgeous. That's something I forgot to mention- the window sizes. The holes in the walls for them are HUGE. That should be pretty nice- lots of light. Lucky Tony is a window cleaner!
family room / dining room - side of house

Framed Photos

OK, not so clever title! Here are the photos of the slab with the frame 'mapped out'. You can see photos of the timber and trusses required. These will form the skeleton of our house. Standing inside the wooden 2x4s and 2x10s, the rooms still feel small to me. But Tony feels they're pretty big! (The old glass half full, half empty phenomenon I guess.) Here are some photos of our continued progress. Looking forward to enjoying these sunsets from our front verandah!

Abi's room (photo to left).   In the bathroom.

 That's Tony, standing in the study.

What's a picture without a frame?

Shayne, the construction manager, left us a message yesterday that the frame is going up this week, and should be completed by Saturday. Everyone who's built says, 'you'll be amazed at how quickly the frame goes up' and also, that we should get a much better 'feel' for the size of the rooms once the frame is in place. Can't wait!

We have slab!

God is good! All the time!
We finally have a slab, and a beautiful one at that. (Well, I think so.)
Bizarrely, the house seems much smaller than what we anticipated, however friends have commented that this is quite common- because your eye has no stopping point or something?!
However, I got out my measuring tape and measured, and it seems pretty accurate vs. the plan. Well, maybe 10mm out, but then I doubt my measuring is that accurate.
The back and side yards are much smaller than we thought, or at least it seems so... thanks to our oh so lovely tree at the front, which pushed the building envelope back. Oh well.
And, the depth of the slab at the back is 850mm, which means the house as a whole is quite elevated. Which is not a bad thing- should look good, and also give a good view of the forest at the back.
Here's Luka, running across the slab, in what will be the front bedroom.

And here's Abi, writing her name on the slab! For the archaeologists to find in 1000 years...

Let's play spot the difference...

18/03/2010
View from the rear (north east) aspect of the block.




























And here's the same view from the 4th of April, 2010. Hmmm... it's cloudier?

Maple syrup with those waffles?

We have the waffles (big styrofoam blocks) which form the basis of the waffle slab, and the wire meshing that stabilises the concrete. We were promised that the slab would actually be poured before Easter... and as we've come to start expecting, this did not materialize! So we are assuming (in the absence of anyone from the builder actually updating us) that the slab will be poured this week... maybe even tomorrow?
This is the view from outside our ensuite, looking into the bathroom. Our bedroom is in front of that (going away from you). To the left you see some of the pipes for the kitchen.

Abi, standing outside what would be the living room. (North side of the house.) The pipes in the background are the main bathroom and laundry.

The view from the back verandah (alfresco area) into the living room. Picture timber sliding doors at the back of the deck.

We have pipes!

The pipes have been laid in for water in the house. It's interesting to walk amongst them and imagine where the rooms are. We're hoping this means the slab will be laid soon. Pipes are in on Tuesday 16 March, supervisor estimates the slab should be in Friday.

This is Abi, standing in the main bathroom.

Not only do we have pipes, but we have rock! We spoke to a couple of guys who were digging out a block a few houses down (which had many large piles of large rocks). They said that it looked like we had just about 1 cubic metre of rock, which is the 'tipping point' for getting charged for excessive rock. No word from the builder yet as to their opinion! We put a $10K allowance in the contract just in case, however we don't want to use too much of that, as there have been a number of 'necessary' variations (most of which, unforeseen by us, but foreseeable by the builder) which we'll need that stash for. (These include steps from the garage to account for a 600mm fall towards the back of the block, and having to move the sewer point because it was under the garage site.)

The most exciting phone call of the year

Well, so far, anyway! Martin, our site supervisor, called to introduce himself on Friday. He let us know that (all going according to plan, of course) that the house will be pegged out on Wed, then the plumbing and electrical pipes etc. laid down. At some point (before this?), a fence goes up, toilets get delivered, and the slab goes down. (We have no idea when all that other stuff will happen, or in what order- not too conversant with the fine details.) Anyway, Martin sounds competent and experienced (20 years in the industry, most recently with Simonds), and he has a sense of humour. Let's see what happens Wednesday - hopefully it will stop raining by then!

And here are the plans!

This is the bush at the back of our block, behind the laneway. We're hoping this will never be developed!

Kitchen specs refinalised!

Had an urgent call from the builder on Monday to supply our kitchen appliance specs as they were putting in the order with the kitchen cabinet maker and needed to know oven dimensions (to leave a space in the bench). (Funny how 'urgent' only applies to requests from the builder, not from the client!) 
So Tony (my husband) spent Tues am at Clive Peeters... we ended up with an Ilve 90cm Siena (T90CCMP) freestanding oven + X39 canopy rangehood, and a Bosch SMS63M08AU 14 place setting dishwasher. Very good choices on Tony's behalf! I will be very excited to use these, in about 8 months from now! Especially my fish burner and rotisserie! Woo hoo! And the great thing is that Clive Peeters will store them for us in their warehouse until we need them.
On Wed am, the builder called and said we had to finalise our splashback colour "today". (I thought we had chosen this back in September, but apparently no record of it!) 
So, final kitchen colours:

• cabinets - WilsonArt Slate Grey (P91) [at the time when we did our original specs, they didn't supply Laminex unfortunately]
• benchtops - Caeserstone Osprey (3141) - whitish with small grey-tinged and beige 'flecks'
• splashback - "Vapour" - a cool white with a slight hint of grey

At the moment, our paint colour for the walls will be Dulux Lexicon Quarter, which is also a cool white. (Tony is painting it.) Door frames, architraves, skirting etc. will be (I think) Lexicon Half. Ceiling will be 'ceiling white'!
We are organising our own timber floorboards, and at the moment think we will install 130mm wide Blackbutt boards, natural grade (with all of the streaks and knots). (Slightly wider than normal, which is about 85mm.) We are looking to stain these a matt grey colour.
Carpet (through the builder, via Carpet Court Melton) is Oyster Bay solution dyed nylon, 46 - Natural Canvas. (A cool toned beige-y off white-ish with a tinge of... you guessed it... grey!)
We also marked on the plan where we wanted some extra stud walls (also called noggins?) behind the plaster, in the bathrooms, toilet and laundry, to make affixing things to the wall (like towel rails and the dryer) easier. (Again, we had done this back in September when we signed our contract, but guess that got lost!)
I was told Monday that our site supervisor would have our file yesterday, and make contact with me once he's had a look through it. All of the orders for materials went out on Tuesday, apparently. So does this mean we are making some progress?! We can only hope!