Little happenings and disappointed

Downpipe at the front of the house was connected on Monday - finally! 

The concreters turned up today to form up the spa slab and another area we want concreted for the dogs. They left because they couldn't do it :(  They have recommended we engage a formwork company to form it up and then they can come and pour the concrete. Wasn't happy at all to hear this. I just wish they told us in the beginning as we would have organised it by now :(

We are still waiting on a few jobs to be finished by the builder. Hoping they arrange for these jobs to be finished shortly. 

Recipe: White Chocolate Pannacotta

I thought I'd share a beautifully creamy gluten free White Chocolate Pannacotta recipe with you. Visit here for the recipe.

In house related news Melbourne Stairs arrived this morning to repair the few squeaky steps between the garage and the house. At this stage we are unsure as to whether the fix worked as we can't walk on the steps until tomorrow. We were annoyed that they didn't phone first to confirm what day and time they could attend, as they previously advised they would. The repair guy arrived at 8am this morning and poor hubby had just finished nightshift and was woken up by their power tools :(

We are STILL waiting for the downpipe at the front of the house to be connected! Let's see if it happens early next week. Not holding my breath!

18000 page views!

Wow! This blog has hit 18000 page views!

I started this blog to document our home building journey, I didn't imagine that so many people would view it and follow our (long!) journey. Thank you to each and every one of you, from the silent followers, to the email subscribers and to the people who have offered supportive and encouraging comments throughout this process. 

Our home is not yet finished, there are still things the builder has to do. Then of course there is landscaping, finishing the Mancave and other bits and pieces we have to do. 

Stay tuned as there will be many more posts to come :)

Thank you to those who have already subscribed to receive my posts by email. If you haven't already you can enter your email address in the 'follow by email' field on the right hand side :) 

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. 

Don't forget, you can receive my blog posts by email when you enter your email address in the 'follow by email' field on the right hand side :)

Moved in! Sneak peek...

We have finally moved in!! Here a few snaps of the kitchen / family / meals area. The rest of the house is still a bit of a mess...

If you look closely you can see my baby girl on the left

We still have to take the protective film from the top of the rangehood and lower the pendant lights. 

Curtains and blinds installed

Wow! I never realised how hard it is to take decent photos of curtains and blinds when they're hanging, especially with an iPhone! Apologies for the crap photos, I will try to take better ones with a real camera. When I do I'll update this post.

These are the curtains in the master bedroom. Blockout curtain to the rear and sheer curtain in front. I love these!

The bathroom has a roller blond in a taupe colour. My step-son's room and the spare bedroom (which we are using as study) has the same roller blind.

Front study (ie. spare room) has a sheer roller blind inside the frame and a blockout blind in taupe on top. 

In the laundry we opted for a single sheer roller blind to filter light as required. 

The theatre room has a sheer roller blind inside the frame and heavy blockout curtains the full width of the wall. These are a grey colour but the warm lighting makes them look brown :-/

Tried to take a photo with the curtains open and failed miserably! Lol

The curtain is a lovely mid grey colour

For the two windows on one side of the Mancave we chose dark sheer rollers inside the frame with a very dark charcoal blockout roller on top. These work well against the grey walls. 

There are many windows that we didn't buy coverings for. Unsure whether we will or not. Many of the other windows are up high or are quite private so I guess when were living there we will decide.

Our fence guy was back today and should hopefully be finished.

Fingers crossed we have the surveyor coming out tomorrow. We still haven't received confirmation as to whether it has been booked in or not. 

Delayed AGAIN!

The surveyor's inspection for the Certificate of Occupancy was cancelled today as there are MORE things to be done before we can be issued with the certificate. Pissed off does not begin to describe how we are feeling right now. 

I am hoping that things can be fixed and the surveyor can come out again in the next day or two. I have curtains and blinds being installed tomorrow as well as furniture booked for delivery on Wednesday and I WILL NOT reschedule these things again. 

On the plus side the painter finished today. There are a few things we want him to do but are happy for him to return later to do these. He works for the new builder that has partially taken over the build so we know he will be back. 

The electrician is coming tomorrow to install a sub floor ventilation kit under the house. When the electrician is finished there shouldn't be any more trades through the inside of the house. So when the electrician is finished I plan to go through and clean the place as there has been a bit of dirt dragged through after the builder's clean was done last week. 

On the topic of cleaners they left a little shampoo, conditioner and body wash in the bathroom shower. Kinda cute...

Render finished

The renderer finished applying the top coat of colour today to the front of the house and to the retaining wall. The colour is Dulux Champignon. The renderer left the leftover colour for us which is great in case we need to do any touch ups in the future. We were extremely happy with this renderer and will be getting him back to render some retaining walls we are planning for the front yard. You can see in these photos that we have also had our fencing started. This week also saw the removal of the temporary fencing and portaloo. 

The painter was kind enough to paint our feature wall in the family room. We chose Dulux Teahouse, which is the same grey colour as the theatre room. I'm quite happy with how it suits the Dulux Beige Royal walls.

A shot of my kitchen without all the rubbish everywhere.

We had our final inspection by the building surveyor on Wednesday for the Certificate of Occupancy - we failed :( 

A few of the items have already been rectified and a few more things will be finished Monday morning. The inspector is booked to re attend Monday afternoon so fingers crossed it all goes well and we can have the certificate issued on Tuesday. Once we have the certificate we can organise insurance and start the ball rolling with the bank to perform their valuation inspection and arrange final payment. 

The painter has taken longer than originally planned but he is working tomorrow (Sunday) to finish off for us. 

I have rescheduled the install of the curtains and blinds to this Tuesday so I'm looking forward to seeing those go in in a couple of days :)

Render part one

The concrete uncoloured first layers of render have been done to the front of house, retaining wall and garage lintel. It looks so bright at the moment but will hopefully look much better once it's coloured. The renderer mentioned that he has to let the uncoloured render dry for a couple of days before applying the coloured coat. Hopefully he will be back tomorrow or Tuesday to finish. The guttering on one side of the house still has to be replaced as the new gutter delivered last week was scratched as it was taken off the truck.

We have a new painter (this is painter number 3!) starting tomorrow. Hubby and the builder are meeting him on site tomorrow morning to run through what needs to be done. We have our window furnishings booked to be installed this Friday so all the painting of the woodwork must be finished by then.