Bricks complete

Paid a visit to our block yesterday and the bricks are up and the structure for the roof is coming up too. It's happening real fast.

The window frames are in, the roof structure is up.

The brickwork facade for the front.

Looking closer at the study - the one with 2 windows, which we intend to use as our theatre instead.

Taking a good look at our long corridor.

Our garage and our meter box. We sighed with relief the builders got the meter box right - after they got it wrong on the plans a couple of times.

Bricks

We went to take a peek at the progress on our block today as we haven't been there in 3 weeks.

Guess what?

We found that the bricks have arrived and they are getting put up.

The builder had advised earlier this week that the estimated date of completion is 30 November 2011.

Here are the pictures from today's visit.

This was the sight the minute we got out of the car at the back of the house. It was exciting seeing the bricks.

Bricks on our slab.

From the front. We were excited that the bricks had arrived. We were even more excited that a section of wall has been put up.

Close-up of that section of wall.

Wall from the inside of the house.

Gap between our wall and the neighbour's house.

That's all for today. Stay tuned for our next update!

Slab down

We received another letter from our builder during the week regarding payment for the next stage now that the slab has been laid, so we decided to pay the land a visit yesterday to view the building progress.

In this picture you can see the grey concrete slab in the middle of the picture. That forms the foundation for our house. This is taken from the back of the house, where our garage will be.

You get to see more detail of the slab in this picture.

This picture was taken from the front of our land. And yes, that is our little car right at the back. 

Look at the smoothness of the slab. You can even see the indentations on the slab where the bathrooms will be.

Rain and earthworks

The weather here has been really stormy lately and I was wondering if that would affect the earthworks and if this would make our house more unstable after it is built.

I've asked a building expert who's response is along the following lines:

It should be alright but the supervisor should check it prior to slab pour which happens the next day. Usually the builders do not leave the clean fill for more than a day or so. They will not pour the slab if there's significant change in the sand pad. The rain shouldn't have done that, but the builders won't pour in the rain anyhow.

Phew.

Earthworks

Earthworks have started on our land. We just drove past since we were in the area today and we realise it has begun.

A friend's husband who is in the industry was explaining that earthworks means:
1. The builders take away the top layer of sand/roots/rubbish etc.
2. A layer of good sand is laid
3. Sand is compacted for the foundation
4. Trenches for the footings are dug (not sure if this comes before the sand is compacted)
5. Concrete is poured on it to form the slab
6. Concrete left to be cured

After the concrete is cured, the bricks are delivered and the rest of the building process happens. Apparently, from earthworks it is 20-30 weeks to the handover of the completed building. Not as far off as we think!


This is what our land looked like on 15 May 2011.

This is what our land looked like today

From the back

From the back showing more of the neighbours fence. We are going to have to adopt the neighbour's fence colour for our house too for a more uniform feel. The neighbour's fence looks so different in this picture than in the picture we took above on 15th May with the overcast sky.

From the back again showing the expanse of the earthworks. The land has an 11m wide frontage.

From the front.

It's so nice a flat now. And clean - except the front bit. However, since our neighbours have moved in it seems to be a lot better than when we visited the land late last year.

Looking forward to seeing the slab down very soon.

Exciting stuff

After much to-ing and fro-ing with regard to our building plans, we have finally signed off the plans and made the first payment of the installment today!

We received a letter in our mailbox advising that our contract file has been processed to our Construction Department and earthworks will commence within 10 working days!

We visited the site a couple of weeks ago. It was fun meeting the neighbours who have moved in. Looking forward to getting our house!

Pre-start Costings

Our pre-start costings have come back, and we think we will be out of pocket approximately $40,000. Time to go through the list and cull the stuff we don't need.

Air-conditioning the house was a whopping $10,000, but I don't think we have a choice if we want to survive our next summer.

And I am trying to get external quotes for painting the house and possibly tiling the kitchen too.

We had to go shopping for another rangehood as well, as the builder can't get the one we want.

Choices, choices, choices. Time to run through the list in detail...

Bathroom selection

Whilst waiting for the pre-start costings to come back, here's some of the items we have chosen for the bathrooms!

Basin

Bathroom mixer

Shower rail

We have selected the same colour scheme for the toilet and the kitchen in terms of wall and floor tiles.

Wall tiles from Crosby tiles - with cocoa feature tiling:

Floor tiles from Crosby tiles for the kitchen, laundry and bathroom

We will upload the cabinet colour scheme for the kitchen and bathroom when we get around to taking pictures of it.

Pre-start Over

Pre-start went pretty ok today, except we forgot to ask about a few things like installing a security system. Next is to find out how much all our upgrades will cost us.

We drove by the block to have a look at how the neighbours have progressed. I think some of the neighbours have moved in already!

Here are some pictures.

Our land today - has bits leftover from the neighbour's build.

The empty block from the front.

The block from the front where you can see the limestone wall, except there's stuff all over the ground and a pallet blocking it.

What our garage opens to.

Our neighbours' houses seem to be progressing nicely.

Our neighbours' houses on the other side. The sloping roof one looks great! If only we could stop people from throwing their TV out randomly and littering the place with pallets and stuff. It should get better once everyone has occupied their premises.

House Plan Before Modifications

This is the house plan we had finally decided on before modification.

Pre-start is scheduled for tomorrow!

To Bosch or not to Bosch?

How hard is it to choose an oven. This is so confusing, and online research doesn't seem to help much.

To Bosch or not to Bosch?

Pictures of the empty block

Here's some a picture of the empty block! We took this picture about 6 months ago. None of the other neighbours had built then.

Just before settlement, we were advised that there was a drainage pit on the plot and that could lead to some restrictions to buildings. This is where we think the drainage pit is located on the block.

Here's how it looks like in relation to the whole block.

A few other blocks were affected, and here's some pictures of what our neighbour's drainage pit looks like (they had their pit dug up).

A close up of the exposed drainage pit.

Thankfully, our builder had managed to work around the drainage issues so it turned out to be a non-drama after all.

Now, the site looks nothing like these pictures. We took a drive by before the Christmas holidays last year and most of the neighbours either had their slab down and brick walls up. Some were in the process of getting their roofs done up.

Pity we didn't take any pictures on our last visit, but we will the next time we visit the block.

Beginning our Build

We're beginning our build of a small 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house on our block in Canning Vale. We are on our way to Pre-start with our selected builder which will happen on Wednesday.

Yesterday, we went to choose our appliances, and we've chosen our colour schemes and paint colours.

Looking forward to posting pictures of the building progress!