Post handover

We are happy with the house, the design is working for our requirements and the look we wanted we have received.

thanks to the team at Carter Grange for responding to our issues, in the end we have achieved an amazing house and any remaining "main issues" have been attended to and rectified, it's just minor maintenance items now.



 

 

1 week to go!

Handover is a week away! 

Busily arranging everything to move in on day of handover. 

Here's a fee things to be done at or after handover. 

1. Concreting

2. Decking

3. Gates

4. Removalists

5. TV antenna

6. Blinds and curtains

7. Roller shutters

8. Furniture deliveries

9. Telstra 

10. Pendant Lighting installed

11. Dishwasher

Most issues have been addressed by our SS. He is true to his word and has genuinely tried to help us. 

We are still not happy about the tiling grout but national tiles have advised CG that if they clean the tiles and grout it should turn a darker colour. Hmmmm ok. 

Otherwise most issues have been fixed and the plaster is looking a little better. 

Their painter needs to be *replaced, lots of patches and the doors are terrible (hairs left from roller all over doors). A new painter has been promised to complete our work, he is supposed to be good so let's hope. A stone bench top that was chipped was repaired but very noticeable and hoping it will be replaced. 

The fireplace/ concrete unitex tender looks amazing worth the coin spent. 

Led lights under the overhead cupboards in kitchen makes for a very very nice feature! Suggest you add this into your contracts :-)

Will post a few final photos once we settle and before the kids destroy the place. 

No news

Not much to report this week. 

Mirrors look to be installed, old gas line removed and new installed, our neighbour keeps us updated on trade movements or lack thereof, he misses nothing!

I went through the house before starting a new job as I may not be able to attend PCI. Stuck postit notes where we identified issues. 101 issues were identified. 

The main issues are:

The tiler seems to have used the wrong colour grout. The colour is a light grey and we selected a dark graphite colour. I ordered a sample grout online and sampled it on our tiles, it is very distinctly different. 

The kitchen cabinets under island bench do not line up with the benchtop, one side sticks out about an inch too far and the other sits under the same amount. The issue is that the flooring is now done so moving it could be an issue. 

The square set is still not very square. We asked for metal square set cornices but looks like paper was used. Going back to the plastering sheets when installed the ceiling boards and wall boards did not join up and the paper doesn't fill the gaps in sufficiently and therefore couldn't possibly be straight. A metal strip would be straighter and stronger. 

We have crooked walls in the hallway, on either side of the front door and a few other rooms. 

The tiling has not been grouted or the wall waterproofed behind our back to the wall bath. The bath has been installed and the tiler attempted to grout around it. 

The wall mixers in showers and bath are too small for the hole cut out by the Tilers. Hence a gap appears around each mixer. CG asked if we could source a back plate to cover the hole. Dodgy. We gave them the cad drawings at tender for our tapware, oven and rangehood. We have requested the tiling to be redone in these areas. 

Around the edges of the carpet we can easily feel the sharp spikes from the carpet trim. A few ouch moments as we wear bare feet when inside so the carpet isn't damaged or gets dirty. Talking about dirty, the whole interior is dirty and lots of surface dirt still around. Hopefully this does not damage the flooring. 

Kitchen

Hallway

Facade

Some photos

Ensuite 2

........

Fence gone!

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Island bench kitchen

.....

Kitchen sink

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Ensuite 3 with wall light. 

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Pantry

...

Laundry cupboards

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Getting there

Tuesday 14th Jan

Electrical pretty much done. Some plumbing has been done such as toilets and bath. Intercom system is awesome can't wait to use it. 

Some sinks installed. 

Insulation installed in roof. 

Wall lights looking fantastic and in general happy with the progress the last week. Outside we now have a garage door and Downpipes. 

Front door has been painted and looks good. Theatre has been painted a very dark grey almost black on all walls and ceiling, makes for a stunning look. 

Things doing this week:

Plumbers installing remaining sinks and tapware. 

Electricians fixing a few powerpoints that were at wrong heights and some replacement points where doubles were installed instead of quads. 

Stone bench/waterfall sides on island bench should be installed. 

Plumbers to fix off Downpipes to storm water connection. 

Cabinet doors to be reinstalled in kitchen.

Plasterers to fix square set and thee plastering issues. 

 

We also have an estimated finish date of mid Feb!

Happy new year

No action at all for the last 2 weeks. Pre Xmas list had not been attended to so we are not overly happy. 

Probably no action until 6 Jan, plumbers are apparently booked in to do some plumbing. Can't see the plumbers being able to fit off the bath as the tiling hasn't been completed. 

5 months has passed since the build started, was fast to start with however progress has been very slow recently. 

Quite a few walls and square set cornices are out of square. The front door wall is out at least a 1cm to the eye. Will need to get the CG plasterer and our independent building inspector to have a look at it. Ensuite bathroom tiles have a gap of about 1cm where the bulkhead has bowed. Lots of wavy cornices/walls, square set should be square in our opinion. 

Let's hope for a good start to 2014 for all. 

Pre XMAS

A few things were supposed to happen before XMAS. Not sure if they will get done (as of today 20/12 they had not been) but here's a list of things CG advised would be done before Xmas:

Tiler finish (about 95%done)

Electrical fit off (mostly done but a few errors with putting in double GPOs instead of the quads we had in plans, power points missed and ensuite 3 GPO on wrong side of bench - all rectifiable)

Render completed to alfresco (50% done)

Downpipes installed and plumbed( not done)

Site cleanup and temp fence removed (not done)

Drawers and cabinet drawers installed in kitchen (not done)

Island bench stone completed (half done)

Garage roller door (not done)

Aircon and heating vents installed (not done)

On a positive note all our side and rear fences are done and are looking good. 

Merry Christmas!

SS on-site meeting 3/12/2013

on-site meeting today

all went well, tiling underway - any damaged tiles to be put aside and hopefully we will have enough good ones to get the job done, Alucobond pretty much done.

Yes I am including a happy face, good to see some positive action on-site
:-)

p.s A big hi to CP!

Tiling underway, Alucobond underway, kitchen partially replaced 2/12/2013

Not much action the last week but today a little more action to report on site

Tiling has commenced. Tiler reported today he found a few boxes of tiles that had damaged edges and bowed during manufacturing. When we told him how much $$$ we paid extra to national tiles for these Argentinian porcelain tiles he said he would try and have them replaced. Meeting with Site superior tomorrow so will let him know the issue. 

He is a good tiler and a nice young man, they have good trades at CG. 

Kitchen has been replaced partially today, old kitchen removed and new cabinet shells have been installed. Pot drawers and cupboards are now equal widths and we have pot drawers on island bench instead of cabinet doors. Doors and drawers should be in by Xmas. 

Alucobond has also been about 80% installed. It has finished off the facade nicely can't wait to see render finished and Alucobond unwrapped!

This week 23/11/2013

This week we should have painting finished off (still needs theatre room, front door outside, skirting, and a final coat on all walls - in our opinion). Tiles have been delivered so tiling should begin this week. We read about optical hazing issues on national tiles porcelain tiles and hopefully as ours are made in Argentina we won't have the same issues. 

We should also have the incorrect kitchen removed and new cabinet shells installed (draws and cupboard doors to come later). 

Render outside should also be completed this week. 

We have missed our last 4 visits with the Site Supervisor, I am thinking he may be avoiding us! Our next scheduled meeting is this Tuesday 9am. 

Painting continues and waterproofing

Waterproofing of wet areas is being undertaken this weekend. Ready for tiling mid next week hopefully. Looks like no early Christmas present from CG as kitchen error will likely push the build back to early 2014. 

8/11/2013 Painting commenced

Painting looks to have commenced on Friday 

Received a call from CG manager on Friday offering a credit of $2000 if we accept the kitchen as is. We advised that we would like the kitchen we designed and paid for, so thanks but no thanks. All pleasant conversation, he was just giving us the option of having a credit if we could live with the existing cabinets. 

Cabinet photos

Laundry in white laminex (standard)

Floating entertainment unit (white gloss laminex upgrade)

And

Ensuite in white gloss laminex (upgrade)

Master ensuite laminex white gloss (upgrade)

Kitchen (the wrong one) in white vinyl wrap and finger pull drawers

Kitchen

CG's building manager has confirmed today that yes the kitchen is incorrect and yes it will be removed and a new kitchen built and installed. It looks like somehow the cabinet makers "reverted back to the old plans". Looks like our site supervisor needs to eat some words. Expensive error as we had vinyl wrap cabinets, and a lot of them. Hopefully it won't put the build too far behind, on a positive note the building manager picked up all the same issues as we had with the kitchen without me needing to prompt him. 

The bathrooms and laundry cabinets are looking good! Pics to follow

Oh oh - kitchen wrong

We happened to be at the house location last night talking with the new neighbours and getting a front fence quotation when the kitchen cabinetry was delivered. From what the plans/drawings that the cabinet people had provided to us with the delivery of the cabinets, we seem to have wrong cabinetry in the kitchen, island bench, pantry and wrong benchtop in ensuite 3. From my eye it also appears the powder room cabinet is also a bit too large to fit in the cavity space provided (15-20mm too wide). Surely they could not be working off the old plans again!
We have raised this on so many occasions that it is now not funny, if it is incorrect as we suspect then we have lost trust in CG.
The cabinets are still being installed today despite the fact we have asked them not to be installed until checked but the building Manager has promised that the kitchen is correct and that he will personally drop past with the latest plans and check for himself on Friday, however I can almost 100% guarantee that they are wrong (again).
We are at the point of terminating CG services and running the rest of the build with another builder, if they cant even manage to work with correct plans, even after being asked numerous times by us to check and recheck. We know things happen in a build but we have encountered these issues with almost every stage of our build and we have had to raise all the issues for rectification.

Plastering continues

Plastering continues

CSR inspected the water damage in theatre room. Plasterboard has been assessed as being ok however insulation requires replacing. 

Plasterers are hard at work doing the square set and painting preparation. They are great guys and do a fantastic job. 

We are now looking at concrete driveway and sideway etc. 

Here's our colour:

Kitchen cabinets and laundry go in this coming week. We received a email from CG to advise the cabinet handle we chose is discontinued. Luckily we were around the area and popped in to their office. Their new renovations look great, so good infact that we are looking at the new concrete look render on our fireplace walls, aka Matt and Kym from the block 2013. We also realised we had the wrong colour glass splashback, we wanted a metallic sparkly look however we had selected the same as our wall colour lexicon quarter. We now have white pearl metallic glass! Overall a productive visit. Oh and we selected a decent replacement cabinet handle too. 

Raining inside

Well, after a bit of rain last night we visited the house to find our front theatre room inundated with water, yes water coming through the roof and walls. 

A little frustrating as it was entirely avoidable and I had raised the potential for water damage in earlier visits with both the site supervisor and building manager. CG were reluctant to put up our Alucobond at this early stage of our build due to its fragility. We suggested that perhaps they use some temporary cladding such as cement sheeting to help protect the internals in front of the house. Once plaster and insulation went in this was even more important. Alas our concerns fell on deaf ears and now the front room is drenched. 

Our issues are that wet insulation is not good, it stuffs the thermal properties of the insulation and can breed mould and create damp smells. The wet plasterboard is not good either as it does not handle water well and becomes unstable. Wet wooden frames over time can lead to rising damp. 

CG have promised to rectify all issues which is great but it was totally avoidable and therefore I must vent here :-)

Also our meter box is hanging off the wall and is also allowing the elements in.