Photos photos and more photos

We had a site visit on Thursday with our SS to go over work that has already been done, things that still needed fixing and future work.

The eaves were being done at the time and the bricking was finished. There are still many things not fixed from our private appraiser's report, which we find a bit annoying but as long as they are done prior to gyprocking then we will be happy. They have taken all the stacker sliding doors out so they could finish the bricking. The doors are sitting there with warped frames, covered in splashed mortar which was very upsetting. We said to the site supervisor that we will expect them to be replaced if they are too badly damaged and don't work smoothly when re-installed.  Our question was why were they installed so early if they need to be removed for the bricking? Our SS said they had a management meeting at our site last week to discuss that very point and used our house an example of why the doors should not be installed before bricking. They have now changed the process so stacker doors will be installed after bricking for future builds. Too late for us but hopefully others will not end up having to have their doors replaced.

Timpelle were also there measuring up for our kitchen.

This week's issues: guttering badly scratched in places which leaves it susceptible to rusting and brickwork on bottom window sills uneven and doesn't match upper window sills.

Any way here are lots of photos. Enjoy!

Alfresco

Alfresco from kitchen with pool at back

Back of House (can see the stacker doors sitting inside house)

Backyard from upstairs, full of Autumn leaves

Balcony off Master Bedroom

Bedroom 2

Bedroom 3

Bedroom 3

Bedroom 3 from outside

Views of Chatswood from Master Bedroom Balcony

Double Hung Sash Windows at front of house

Downstairs Linen Cupboard

Eastern side wall

Eaves in progress

Ensuite with main bathroom behind

Entrance hall

Entrance hall looking towards living room

 Upper front of house

Front balcony from west side

Front balcony

 Garage

Garage

Downstairs Guest Bedroom 1 (Originally Home Theatre)

Downstairs Guest Bedroom 2

Downstairs Guest Bedroom 2

Kitchen

Kitchen

 Kitchen Window from Alfresco

Laundry

Dining, Living and  Kitchen from Garage

Alfresco from upstairs

Living Room

Main Bathroom

Master Bedroom with Walk in Robe on right

Powder room looking through to Walk in Pantry

Roof

Study

Upstairs Toilet

Upper back wall

Upstairs Living Room

Western Wall

 Walk in Pantry

Walk in pantry (left) and fridge space (right) with powder room behind fridge space

Master Bedroom walk in robe

My Colorbond Moment

There wasn't much activity last week so I didn't bother posting anything. The only thing that happened was our 2nd storey roof was completed on Tuesday 6th May. I had a Colorbond moment when I first saw it and just wanted to keep looking at it. We are very happy with our decision to go with Colorbond and are also very happy with the colour which is Dune.

The brickies finally returned on Tuesday 13th so that is progressing along nicely this week and is due to be completed next week.

We also noticed that our buckled kitchen window was replaced but most of the other things in the private appraiser's report haven't been fixed yet.

We also decided to change some bits of our main bathroom. The vanity was framed by walls on the plans, and one of these walls also formed part of the shower wall. Once we saw the frame for these walls in the actual bathroom we realised that once gyprocked they would block natural light to the shower and mirror over the vanity coming from the bathroom window, and would also make the bathroom look too boxy as it is not a big bathroom. So we are having the walls removed and the shower will now have 2 full glass walls and the vanity will sit flush to the bath. The site supervisor was more than accommodating in letting us make the changes and Wisdom only charged us $645 which is to cover the cost of the increase in size to the caesarstone vanity top, the extra veneer to the sides of the vanity, removing the existing framing and admin costs. 

No roof for me

SS made the usual Friday call to update us. We had watched our site sit quietly unattended all week despite glorious sunny days and expectations from the previous Friday's call that we would have all bricking finished and a roof, so this call was highly anticipated. Why didn't the bricking get done? The scaffolding was built incorrectly and needs to be reconstructed to allow the brickies to finish. P@#&ed off? You bet we were. Why wasn't the roof done? The company who cuts the colorbond sheeting were behind with their orders so roof sheets weren't delivered until Friday. SS said he had a big team ready to get it installed on Saturday so it could be done quickly to catch up. Drove by on Saturday afternoon all excited and guess what, no roof! Not happy Jan.

Private Building Appraisal

We decided to get our own appraisal done of the house before the bricks covered too many of the errors that we had discovered. Our SS finds my husband annoying so we thought if we got another qualified builder who is completely objective to make an assessment and present his findings to the SS, then we would be taken seriously. It was the best $440 spent. My husband called the Master Builders' Association to discuss our concerns and they directed us to their list of registered compliance inspectors. We found someone local and arranged a meeting on site with all of us including our SS.
This is what the appraiser found that needed fixing:
-Top plates of steel posts supporting steel beams needed to be welded or bolted to those beams.
-Void under steel supporting post in garage to be filled with non shrink grout
-Installation of hoop iron straps to secure bottom plates of the dwarf walls on the underneath side of lintels over wide span windows and doors to prevent sag of the dwarf walls as windows are not load bearing.
-Installation of dyna bolts to the bottom plate of steel support post at rear of alfresco
-Certification from the engineer that welded extensions to the steel support posts that were
cut too short are structurally adequate.
-Additional timber cleat in frame where stud was cut to allow installation of drain pipe.
-Additional studs of fixing plates to main bathroom
He also verbally advised our SS at the meeting to get the slab levelled in the living room otherwise we will have issues with our floorboards later.
The only thing we couldn't get resolved was the location of the waste plumbing from the upstairs bathrooms. Despite the bathrooms being at the rear of the house, for some reason the plumber ran the waste plumbing from the rear to the front of the house so the noise of water running through those pipes will be heard over our heads when we are downstairs. We were told this cannot be changed so we have asked if we can sound proof the pipes ourselves as the thought of going through the Wisdom estimating dept sends shivers of fear down my spine. The SS was sympathetic on this one as apparently out of the 2 people in estimating, one has resigned and the other one is going on leave. I pity all those people in Admin at the moment.
Anyway no progress on the house this week. Bricks were supposed to be finished and roof on but no one has been on site. Apparently the roof company didn't get our colorbond roof sheets cut on time.

Framework Finished

Our frame was finished on the 11th April and our bricking has started but the mistakes continue. If we didn't check regularly god knows what shoddy building work would be covered up by the bricks and gyprock. When my husband was building the retaining wall along the boundary with the neighbours, he noticed that a steel support post which is holding up the floor above had been placed over part of the slab that was damaged during excavation work for the waste water plumbing. So there is barely anything but crumbling concrete under a major structural post. In fact we can fit our fist under the post which is only secured with one bolt because there was nothing underneath to attach the other bolts to. The contractor that installed the post would have seen this but obviously chose to ignore it. Had my husband not seen it, it would have been covered by the bricks and not discovered until our floor started to drop. Don't expect any professional duty of care from these people. As one contractor said to my husband they don't see a home when they work, they just see a building site. They don't really care about the big picture or the long term consequences if they make a mistake, because it is the home owner that is left to deal with the problems afterwards.
There have been other steel supporting posts cut too short, a buckled window installed, slab not very level in our living area which will affect our floorboards if not fixed, upstairs waste plumbing installed incorrectly, which if left means we will have some bulkheads that were not on the plans. We are also pretty sure that a lot of dirt has gotten into our rainwater system due to poor capping of the pipes, which according to our neighbour who built with Allcastle and has the same problem, is very difficult and expensive to remove.
I still love the layout  and look of the house but am very concerned at the level of care taken by the sub-contractors used by Wisdom. Our SS has 20 builds to supervise and said to my husband that he is so busy that he only spends a couple of minutes at a site to check the work has been done. He is doing his best to rectify the problems but at the same time is getting very impatient with my husband for constantly raising issues. However we will not be made to feel like a nuisance and will continue to raise issues as we find them, and if that means we have to regularly meet him on site, so be it.
I also had to chase Wisdom this week because the Demo company they used to pull down our old house, removed our electricity meter and did not return it to Ausgrid, as they were supposed to. I have over a $1000 in estimated electricity bills for a house that doesn't exist, because my Utilities company haven't received a final meter reading from Ausgrid because Ausgrid don't have the meter to read. Wisdom assured me that the meter was returned last week but I am yet to see my power bills cancelled.
Oh the dramas and incompetence. Will it ever end?

Our Pot of Gold?

 

Pooling on the slab 15mm at deepest point which means slab is not within tolerated levels.

Steel support post in alfresco doesn't reach the slab. A piece has been welded on to the bottom now so it meets the slab.

Framed in fridge space. This has been fixed now.

Tools, Trucks and Tradies

Things are moving so quickly now. We've only had  a few days with no one on site and that was while the slab was curing.

Site cut was on 12th March, form work and piers went in on the 19th March, slab was poured on the 26th March, plumbing on the 31 March and frame commenced on 3rd April. The pace is really moving along much quicker than we expected. The only downside is we have made our first progress payment which means we have to start paying interest on our construction loan.

The pain of the admin process seems to be almost a distant memory, although it has come back to haunt us recently. Due to errors made in our drawings we have had a few mistakes made during construction that, because we can visit our site daily, have been noticed immediately and communicated to our site supervisor.  The first one was an incorrect placement of the pier under the rough in for the air conditioning unit. Somehow Wisdom had reverted to some old drawings which had it in a different place and these were provided to the concretor. It was fixed quickly by placing a new pier in the correct place before slab pour. The plumber cracked a drain pipe badly by driving over it with his own machinery and left it that way. we have been told it will be replaced when they connect all the pipes up. After the first floor frame went up we found they have framed in our fridge space and parts of the frame cover some of the drain pipes because the plumber placed them in the wrong spot. We still have to tell the site supervisor about these mistakes. The fridge space should be easy to fix but not so sure about relocating pipes that are set in concrete.

We also have to install a retaining wall urgently on the boundary with one neighbour as after the plumber excavated they started having subsidence issues along the fence line. My husband had to rig up a temporary structure until we can get the materials delivered to build a permanent one. The site supervisor has given him permission to go on site on the weekend of 12/13th March which clashes with his monthly golf day. Wonder what he'll pick.

First Swim

Pool covered until after construction is finished

Site Cut

Formwork and Piers

 Slab

 

  

 

First Floor Frame