More damage and trying to settle in

This last week we have been busy moving things and trying to get settled.

This afternoon we removed the glass globes for the hallway lights from the laundry cupboard and attached them to the pendant lights.

My heart sank this afternoon (it's happened way too often with this build!!) when we pulled out the glass globes for the hallway pendant lights to find that one was broken :( So we couldn't fit the globe to the bedroom light :(

I'm extremely upset about this as I checked each and every one of them before the builder's cleaners came through, and we popped the three boxes in the top of the laundry cupboard to keep them safe. These glass globes are packed very well with a fair bit of space between the top of the box and the top of the glass globe. In order to break the glass the top of the box would have had to have been hit very hard, or it would have been opened before being hit... 

Here is a photo with the lights turned off. 

Here is my poor broken glass globe. You can see that someone has knocked it on top...

In other news we finally had the downpipe connected at the front of the house last week. Although he didn't actually connect it to the stormwater... You can see the stormwater pipe popping up in this photo. It needs to be moved around to align with underneath the downpipe and then connected. We have been promised that this will be done 'tomorrow'. We have heard the word 'tomorrow' since last week... It has been a common occurrence with this build, things will always be done 'tomorrow'. 

We are still also waiting on Melbourne Stairs to come and fix some squeaky steps between the garage and the house. The original stairs had to be replaced as they were 2mm too high to pass the building inspection. When they removed the old stairs they also had to remove one side of the skirting boards on the landing. We are also waiting for the builder to replace this. Once these stairs are fixed the builder has to arrange the stairs to the polished/lacquered. I'm a little disappointed this hasn't been done yet as I had this week off work and it would have been perfect for the stairs to be fixed this week as I could be home to arrange access for the trades. Now it will be more difficult for them to get access. 

You can also see our German Shepherd lying around here. 

Last week we also had a subfloor ventilation fan fitted. The builder had to fit these as the bricklayer placed the front ventilation grates in front of the joists/bearers so they can't actually work... Anyway, it's great that they finally fitted the fan, and I can just barely put up with the hum we hear when its running but I'm not happy about the ongoing power bill to run the damn thing! Especially because it was something we had to fit because someone many months ago stuffed up.

There are many other things outstanding which I won't go into detail with today. I think I'll reserve them for future posts! 

Hubby and I are looking forward to the day when everything the builder is supposed to do/finish is finally done so we can concentrate on other things such as landscaping. 

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Sometimes you have to Do It Yourself

After seeing the weather forecast for the next few days we decided to go and buy some temporary downpipe to connect the rain head collector (which we are still waiting for them to move to the side of the parapet since we flagged it in February) to the stormwater pipe. 

We did ask the builder several weeks ago to do this to prevent further water running into the subfloor area. As it has been several weeks since the request, and especially given the track record of things not being rectified in a timely manner, we decided we may as well just do it ourselves. 

The last few times we have had rain there has been significantly more moisture in the ground in the vicinity of where the rainhead collector is and the batter is starting to break down and expose the footings for the brick piers under the house. 

Anyway, for under $15 we have hopefully fixed this problem with this temporary downpipe. It's a sad day when we have to fix something that should have been done a long time ago.

We were lucky enough to finish just as the rain started. 

There were no trades on site again today, despite there being plenty of work to do outside. Given there is now rain forecast for the rest of the week my guess is that not much else will be happening. Again.