Just what the title says. Why did we not just go with a local private builder? Why? Why? We had a walkthrough with ss which is a pre pci walk through to pick up any issues and problems and there are many. It took all day and ss did not have time to do the outside walk through with us so that remains undone and has just informed us that he does not have time right now to finish it off. That's basically how we have been treated by this company from the start. We are over our contract time even including the extensions that they asked for but ss is now claiming other extensions to our time that we would have thought we should have been notified of in writing not just over the phone in response to us asking the question. So who knows when we will be finished at this point, probably still at least another two months away and with no compensation for it. We have watched house after house go up around us and finish and it is really becoming heartbreaking. We are talking of selling and just losing the money on this house.
I wish I could say it was going to have a happy ending building with M but I can't see it turning around.
Tash
Wednesday, 27 March 2013
Saturday, 23 March 2013
Range Hood Decision
This range hood business has caused a tad bit of stress. I think once the kitchen was installed I really thought that the triangle shaped range hood I had picked out just didn't seem like the best idea. Since the kitchen company had done such a great job on our island gables I got greedy and had the idea that they could also perhaps do us a built in range hood.
The issue has been though that our overhead cupboards have a bigger gap then our 90cm oven and we weren't sure how we would go about slotting something in there. Between the kitchen company and us we came up with around few ideas. One was to add two little skinny cabinets at either end of the overheads to fill the gap and then that would leave us with a perfect sized 90cm range hood or alternatively we could put them either side of the range hood....hoping I'm making sense here. Another option was to just take all the overheads down and start again, this seemed like too much work and too much money. In the end we have just decided to make the range hood fill the whole space which means that the range hood will be quite larger than the space down below for our oven. We have drawings and it looks pretty good, just hope in the flesh it doesn't look too silly being a lot larger. We based in on Mel's from Georgica Pond as it is simple and achievable for our space and budget but I also checked out White Verandah's hood and the way that one was done was really interesting.
This of course will have to be done after handover as ss would not even let the kitchen company install the carcass of it so that the tiler could tile exactly right up to it. It now means that the kitchen people will have to come back install our new range hood and then we will also need an electrician to hook it up and I'm thinking a tiler to finish off the tiling. Gee I hope I made the right decision. I did look around for another range and quite liked the squarish one from Ilve but it was around another $1000 which was dearer than the getting the custom one through the kitchen company so husband wouldn't hear of me trying to back out to purchase it.
I have been really torn about whether to keep the range or to do a built in one. If I was able to get a beautiful one like the ranges below I definetly would have done a big beautiful stainless steel one but the options in Australia are so plain. Fingers crossed it looks okay.
There are so many different types of ranges that just don't seem to be available in Australia, so many shapes sizes and colours.
House update - We have our first walk through on Monday to dot any imperfections. We will also have an inspector there to help us out. We went out on Saturday and the house already has een covered in dots, seems they have been more thorough then I would have been. I didn't go in but as husband described it there are dots all over the place. He also was not happy to note that the chippies who came back to put our skirting on now our wooden floors are in seemed to botch the job and had to pull it and reattach in spots, leaving patched up bits on the walls. These skirting boards throughout the house are the one thing I am not happy about.
Penny rounds have finally gone up in the powder room as well as our shower screens, mirrors and sliding doors. On sliding doors, they are glass and I know I will hate them...don't know why I didn't change them to panelled sliding doors to suit the house but it is on the list when budget hopefully allows to be changed.
Tash
The issue has been though that our overhead cupboards have a bigger gap then our 90cm oven and we weren't sure how we would go about slotting something in there. Between the kitchen company and us we came up with around few ideas. One was to add two little skinny cabinets at either end of the overheads to fill the gap and then that would leave us with a perfect sized 90cm range hood or alternatively we could put them either side of the range hood....hoping I'm making sense here. Another option was to just take all the overheads down and start again, this seemed like too much work and too much money. In the end we have just decided to make the range hood fill the whole space which means that the range hood will be quite larger than the space down below for our oven. We have drawings and it looks pretty good, just hope in the flesh it doesn't look too silly being a lot larger. We based in on Mel's from Georgica Pond as it is simple and achievable for our space and budget but I also checked out White Verandah's hood and the way that one was done was really interesting.
This of course will have to be done after handover as ss would not even let the kitchen company install the carcass of it so that the tiler could tile exactly right up to it. It now means that the kitchen people will have to come back install our new range hood and then we will also need an electrician to hook it up and I'm thinking a tiler to finish off the tiling. Gee I hope I made the right decision. I did look around for another range and quite liked the squarish one from Ilve but it was around another $1000 which was dearer than the getting the custom one through the kitchen company so husband wouldn't hear of me trying to back out to purchase it.
I have been really torn about whether to keep the range or to do a built in one. If I was able to get a beautiful one like the ranges below I definetly would have done a big beautiful stainless steel one but the options in Australia are so plain. Fingers crossed it looks okay.
There are so many different types of ranges that just don't seem to be available in Australia, so many shapes sizes and colours.
 |
Via Georgica Pond nice and simple |
 |
This will hopefully be similar to ours |
 |
This has the skinny cabinets I mentioned either side but in the end we went the simplest route of just having one oversized range. |
Penny rounds have finally gone up in the powder room as well as our shower screens, mirrors and sliding doors. On sliding doors, they are glass and I know I will hate them...don't know why I didn't change them to panelled sliding doors to suit the house but it is on the list when budget hopefully allows to be changed.
Tash
Tuesday, 19 March 2013
Long Overdue Update
I know I haven't posted anything for weeks but I just haven't really had the energy. This building business just sucks the life out of you at times. We have had lots happen but at times it still feels like so many little things still to go.
With so many weeks and weeks of rain here it was turning into a giant mud pit out at site, inside and out and I avoided going out there as the mud all through the house was just too much for me to look at. Sometimes I just prefer not to see the "in between" bits of the build, I prefer to just turn up and "taa daa" it's all nicely done.
I had to go back and see that the last thing I posted was our range hood dilemma, after this post I will update you all on what is happening there.
So last update on house was that the kitchen had gone in and all our vanities. We have since had all our taps and basins put in and our caesarstone has gone in...and some of it out haha. The back bench in the kitchen was the wrong thickness and a last minute change to our bathroom vanity must have meant somebody didn't get the memo and they cut the hole for basin in the wrong spot so that went and came too. Shower heads are in too and look very schmick.
Stone cladding was done to the bottom of our pillars at the front, this was delayed by us as we wanted to wait till hubby got home from trip so that we could discuss it. Tiler was able to send us to another house that I had coincidentally had been looking at as it had a similar stone cladding to what I was hoping for. The did a great job with it and I am very happy with how it looks, blends it nicely with our house but just adds a little bit of texture to the outside.
Our cupboards in bathrooms have been changed over to panelled doors and ends to match kitchen and I have only seen pics of these off husband's phone but gosh they look so pretty, worth the extra cost.
Somebody must have been listening to my wishes regarding our carpet choice as I had been hoping that somehow we would have to re pick our carpet and that is exactly what happened. I ended up hating our original pick, don't know what I was thinking. This ended with us spending two days in the carpet store agonising over what to choose. Carpet is so hard to choose as it changes colour depending on the light. Alot of our choices were discontinued (don't know why they had them out in the showroom) and it eventually came down to one choice really. It ended up being an upgrade to the Platinum range at no extra cost, finally a win for us! Just so thankful I got to change, I really dodged that mistake as my original choice was horrible.
The wooden flooring has been laid and I at first thought it was too dark but now I have adjusted and I am happy with it. We thought we were going to need an expansion gap, something I have only just heard of but thankfully that didn't happen.
We are not happy with some of the gaps under our skirting boards and that will be brought up, not sure how that can be fixed without creating more issues?? Not everything goes smoothly does it in building? But it looks pretty ordinary.
Downlights were all put in but not any of our lights as we just are still unsure what is going where so we thought what the hell we'll wait and maybe have to get it done down the track.
After that long post how about the most important thing....Pics!
Tash
With so many weeks and weeks of rain here it was turning into a giant mud pit out at site, inside and out and I avoided going out there as the mud all through the house was just too much for me to look at. Sometimes I just prefer not to see the "in between" bits of the build, I prefer to just turn up and "taa daa" it's all nicely done.
I had to go back and see that the last thing I posted was our range hood dilemma, after this post I will update you all on what is happening there.
So last update on house was that the kitchen had gone in and all our vanities. We have since had all our taps and basins put in and our caesarstone has gone in...and some of it out haha. The back bench in the kitchen was the wrong thickness and a last minute change to our bathroom vanity must have meant somebody didn't get the memo and they cut the hole for basin in the wrong spot so that went and came too. Shower heads are in too and look very schmick.
Stone cladding was done to the bottom of our pillars at the front, this was delayed by us as we wanted to wait till hubby got home from trip so that we could discuss it. Tiler was able to send us to another house that I had coincidentally had been looking at as it had a similar stone cladding to what I was hoping for. The did a great job with it and I am very happy with how it looks, blends it nicely with our house but just adds a little bit of texture to the outside.
Our cupboards in bathrooms have been changed over to panelled doors and ends to match kitchen and I have only seen pics of these off husband's phone but gosh they look so pretty, worth the extra cost.
Somebody must have been listening to my wishes regarding our carpet choice as I had been hoping that somehow we would have to re pick our carpet and that is exactly what happened. I ended up hating our original pick, don't know what I was thinking. This ended with us spending two days in the carpet store agonising over what to choose. Carpet is so hard to choose as it changes colour depending on the light. Alot of our choices were discontinued (don't know why they had them out in the showroom) and it eventually came down to one choice really. It ended up being an upgrade to the Platinum range at no extra cost, finally a win for us! Just so thankful I got to change, I really dodged that mistake as my original choice was horrible.
The wooden flooring has been laid and I at first thought it was too dark but now I have adjusted and I am happy with it. We thought we were going to need an expansion gap, something I have only just heard of but thankfully that didn't happen.
We are not happy with some of the gaps under our skirting boards and that will be brought up, not sure how that can be fixed without creating more issues?? Not everything goes smoothly does it in building? But it looks pretty ordinary.
Downlights were all put in but not any of our lights as we just are still unsure what is going where so we thought what the hell we'll wait and maybe have to get it done down the track.
After that long post how about the most important thing....Pics!
 |
Antiqua mixer from Restorations Online. Great service we received this the day after we ordered it. |
 |
Cheapie mixer from Bunnings as I didn't fancy the square modern one they were providing us with. You will notice that this is not the round sink I posted in my kitchen selections, somewhere in our contract it was changed to this. Lucky I am happy with it as there was no changing it. Our kitchen sink was also wrong as we ended up with a 11/2 sink set up instead of the full two sinks. We decided to keep it and take the credit for it, I wanted to say something to the ss about how flexible we were as he has been very inflexible to say the least. |
 |
Bath that honestly no one will use but it looks pretty |
 |
En suite, panelled doors are not on in this shot. We deliberately didn't tile to the ceiling as I wanted to see the grey paint against the white tiles. |
 |
Main bathroom |
 |
Same Dorf shower head in both bathrooms |
 |
Kitchen after floors had been laid and caesarstone on. Extremely happy with how the caesarstone colour works with our cabinet colour, no hint of cream just a hint of grey in the bench top. |
 |
Looking into the kitchen as you walk from the front door. |
 |
Subway tiling to pantry before it was grouted, all of this is now completed although I haven't seen it yet. Just can't get over how much I love subway tiling. |
 |
Love, love , love the carpet...it came out just the right wheat type natural colouring I wanted. It is 100% wool which didn't matter to us really just wanted the right colour and something that was soft underfoot. It was called Olives. |
 |
Stone cladding to front |
Tash
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)