Kill Me Now

My husband just got in contact with our site supervisor. New person. Yes that is right. Our SS has left Coral and we haven't been told anything. Our house really should have been finished this week. But no. Our new SS doesn't seem to have any idea where we are at. He won't give us a PCI date until the driveway is done. I was under the impression that is the very last thing to be done. Surely he should have this booked in already and be able to give us a tentative date. He is thinking the driveway might happen the end of next week. The scary thing though is that the only thing he could tell us he is about to organise to get done, has already been done. That doesn't really give me any confidence in him. Also the fact that he asked why we were calling him. Ummm maybe for an update on our house that should have been finished this week. And if we hadn't of tried to contact him we would have never known that our SS has changed. And we have also been told that our water tank won't be arriving, as the company has gone bust. The new SS response on this "I will try to find somewhere else." Again not screaming with confidence here. It just really sucks that the wheels have completely fallen off the wagon so close to being in. Oh and apparently our servery top is no longer being fixed. That seems to have been thrown in the too hard basket. 4 weeks ago I would have praised Coral to anyone who would listen. Now people would get the good at some things but....

To Do List in Single Digits

Thankfully we have had some kind of movement at the house over the past 2 days. Not a lot. But some. So now my to do list is down to...
1. Water Tank
2. Outdoor Kitchen
3. Microwave
4. Splashback
5. Powers point on splashback
6. Carpet
7. Driveway
8. TV Points
9. Servery Benchtop

It would be so nice to see the kitchen finished. That would knock off half of the list.

Getting on my last nerve

I think at this point my patience has just completely run out. We were told the carpet would go down yesterday. Went out there. No sign of carpet. Husband spoke to SS this morning. Carpet guys can't make it until 02.07.2013. We were expecting to be all but in at that time. Now we are over a week behind. And now we are going to have yet another week of our house sitting there doing nothing. Last week we had a cupboard screwed onto the deck and some tiles laid. All of which took what 2 days. So there was another 3 days were nothing happened. And now we are looking at another 6 working days of nothing happening. When you are paying rent and a majority of the mortgage this is simply not good enough. Surely if your job is to organise a build you shouldn't have a house with nothing happening for that long. It is just pathetic. Also some sort of communication on this matter would have been great. At this stage we are trying to organise moving as the latest date we have been told all along was 08.07.13. We have lounges arriving on that date. It is the longest we could hold them off. Now we have no where to put them because the SS couldn't pick up the phone and tell us well actually I now have you at least another week behind. We have a landlord we need to inform of when we are moving. But no date makes that rather hard for us to give notice. Also for dates like PCI and handover we need to give our work notice that we will be taking leave. Again no communication on that. I have dead set had enough.

And now I understand why most people say they will never build again. This past month has been horrible. And the longer they take to stuff around the worse it is getting. Not to mention the fact that the house is full of issues. Honestly the paint job is the worst I have ever seen. Me and Dad painted their house and it is 10 times better than the crap job that has been done on our house. And we are an accountant and a draftsman. At this point we would have been better painting the house ourselves. There is bits they have missed on pretty much every wall. Between architraves they have just painted it white because they were too lazy to tape it up and paint it grey. They haven't painted the wall between the laundry tub and the door at all. A lot of the architraves haven't been sanded before they were painted. They are painted gloss white which means you can see every mistake. Our pantry door has chunks of roller in it. It doesn't look like they have taped up anything actually. The cutting in is terrible. There is grey paint on the roof, white paint on the walls and they have stained the woodwork from the door to the roof then painted the panel in between. So we have a cream panel with a stained border. That is just the painters.

Our servery benchtop still hasn't been fixed. This issue was brought up weeks ago. We are still trying to figure out if they are going to finish off under it as well. Because it is definately not staying with the jaggered edge of the mini walls. Two planks were left off the decking. Why? Who knows. When we went out there on Friday night our cement steps for the garage had been delivered. Thrown in a pile of mud at the front of the block. It literally looks like they were just tossed from the truck. My husband had to pick them up and move them closer to the house so no-one wondered off with them. Our garage door has a dint in it. Which the SS was told about when it first went up. Yet nothing has been done about it. One of our internal doors has been split. Our bathrooms are horrible, thanks to the tradies using our toilets instead of the porta-loo. Oh and our block has become a rubbish dumping ground because we are the only house in the street that doesn't have a lock on the site fencing. It now stinks because some idiot decided to put food scraps in our construction bin. Seriously I just want this to be over now. We have had enough. And our 15 weeks. Then 6 weeks tops is fast becoming a no where near it.

And that is just our construction woes. We have also had yet another issue with the idiots in head office. We received a letter with our last bill saying that we had to organise a gas connection so the applicances and hot water could be hooked up. So with much difficulty (run around by gas companies and trying to contact the SS) we organised a gas connection last night. Today when my husband spoke to the SS we were told the gas connection is already set up and we should never have received that letter. Apparently it only applies to QLD. Thanks Coral. We have now been charged a $40 administration fee by the gas company. I was willing to forgive the mistakes if things were getting rectified. But that isn't happening either.

On the positive, here are some pics of the tiles and cupboard. The only things that have been done in way too long.

 

Study

 

Our runway. :)

 

Kitchen. Missing the appliance that were taken out for tiling.

 

Main living area.

 

Outdoor kitchen cupboard.

My List

Because all of this waiting is driving me insane. I have made a list of things I think need to be done before we finish. Although considering I have pretty much zero knowledge of building I am probably missing quite a few things. So the list goes:
1. Bathroom shower screen (yes they only delivered one)
2. Window pieces (We have a bay window at the front that needs to have in between pieces put in)
3. Water Tank
4. BBQ (We have been warned this might be handed to us at handover as they frequently go missing on building sites)
5. Microwave (Same as BBQ)
6. Splashback
7. Power points in splashback
8. Tiling (being done right now)
9. Carpet
10. Flyscreens
11. Driveway
12. Steps in garage
13. Servery benchtop (We have one at the moment but it is horrible. It has been cut way too small and doesn't properly cover what it is sitting on. We are also wondering what is being put under the benchtop to hide the join. It looks really bad atm.)
14. TV points (We are getting these done ourselves. The holes have been cut, the boys just need to come back out and cover them. I would like this done before the bank does their valuation but hubby thinks it is fine. *insert eyeroll*)

So in the grand scheme of things the list isn't massive but it gives me something to cross off. We had a very dispointing moment on Wednesday when we went to the house expecting to see tiles and finding that no-one had been there at all. Thankfully there were some tiles down yesterday. Hopefully this doesn't put us behind. As always we seem to go through a busy week and a quiet week. This week has been rather quiet, which is pretty annoying when we are so close to the end. All that has happened is the outdoor cupboard was installed, a little bit of light cleaning and some tiles. Seems really unproductive compared to last week. I guess that is just part of the joys of building.

Always feels like I'm waiting for a date

It is kind of amazing that it was only a bit over 3 months ago that all I wanted was a start date. Now in what feels like the blink of an eye or eternity (depending what day it is) all I want is an end date. I feel like the whole way along flooring would always be the signal that the build was coming to an end. Today the tiling starts. Monday the carpet goes down. And yet an end date feels so far away. The crazy thing is we have had a fairly dream build, but I still feel so exhausted. I wonder if it is that the process is just emotionally draining or if it is the fact we are at the house every day. Argh I just want that date so I have an end in sight.

On a positive we received our bill from the electrician yesterday and it was a bit less than we were expecting. I think it is the first thing that has come in cheaper than we were expecting in the whole build. One less stress gone. We only have one more tradie bill to go and he is a friend so we aren't expecting anything too shocking.

Feeling a bit like Dorie. "Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming." Rekon I can sleep for the next few weeks. :)

Getting Closer

We have had a pretty full on week at the house. Lots of finishing touches have been put it and the house is all but liveable. It is making it very hard to leave. Plumbing is finished. Electricity is all but finished. We are just waiting for the splashback to be installed so they can finish off the power points in the kitchen. Hot water tank is in. And 90% of the kitchen appliances are in. We are just waiting on the microwave. Although I think the SS said at the beginning that he might just give that to us when we move in so it doesn't get knocked off. All of our door knobs are in and the sliding doors on our cupboards are in. Security alarm has also gone in, as well as the decking in the alfresco area. Really there isn't a whole lot left to go.

There has been a bit of an issue with our servery benchtop. Our SS wasn't happy with it and quite frankly neither were we. We weren't happy with the fact that it wasn't wide enough so the splashback would actually stick out further than the benchtop. The SS also didn't like the join and he could see a bow in it. When we went out last night the benchtop people have been back and it looks like they have just moved it back. Which means the benchtop now doesn't really cover the wall at the front. The SS is going out today to have a look at it.

So excited. Our floor tiles have arrived and are set to go in tomorrow. I can't wait to see them down. It is going to make the house look so different.

Now for some piccies.

 

Ensuite with shower screen and toilet in.

 

Ensuite mirror.

 

We are loving our oven and cooktop. It is so big.

 

Dishwasher.

 

Another pic of our lovely cooktop and oven.

 

Our mirrored cupboard doors in the spare bedroom. You can also see our door handles.

 

Mirror in the bathroom. Yes we are missing a shower screen. Apparently they only delivered one.

 

Towel rail and bath tapware. Yes it's the little things that make me smile.

 

Toilet done.

 

Love our decking.

 

And our kitchen light. We need to have a play with the lights to figure out where we want them.

Looking Pretty and Painted

After about a week and a half our painting is all done. We are really happy with the colours. We also had our garage door installed and our kitchen benchtops put in. The electrician said he will be in tomorrow. So we are looking forward to seeing things look a bit more finished. It is amazing how much difference it makes having the walls painted though. It is looking very close to finished. Hopefully we will see some flooring in next week which will just make the house look complete. We are still waiting for the panels to finish off the bay windows at the front of the house. We can't wait to see how it will look with those. So close. :)

 

Front painted and with garage door.

 

Side all painted. Should see the outdoor kitchen on this side soon.

 

Our filthy benchtops

 

 

We love our kitchen. Can't wait to see it clean.

 

Love our wall colour.

 

We are very happy with our colour scheme being continued into our cupboards. Makes for one fancy looking panty. :)