We're in!!!

Have you had enough suspense?

We moved into our beautiful home last Friday!!!! 5 months to the day & 6 weeks early!

Bank came through with the goods in the nick of time & handover went smoothly, unless you count having your oven STOLEN the night before settlement as 'smooth'!!! The only saving grace was that the builder was responsible for replacing it and they didn't do any damage when removing it. Can you believe it???? Was an inside job too as they had let themselves in with their trade key.

That aside, we are all moved in now and our oven has since been replaced. We have unpacked lots but still have boxes waiting their turn to be up ended.

The boys are happy that they can finally watch cartoons again now that we have an arial & foxtel went in today.

Quotes for drive way tomorrow.

Busy times but it has sooooo been worth the wait. We are all just loving our new home.

Will be back with more of an update and pics when I have more than a phone to update with.

By the skin of our teeth

ANZ are a pack of tools!



There I said it!  I am positive that anyone who has had to get a house loan, in particular a construction loan will have called their lender a tool (or worse) , at least once!

Our relationship with ANZ had actually been going quite smoothly until this final invoice.  We were told it could take 5 - 10 working days to finalise this payment as they need to organise a valuer to confirm the house has actually been built as per specs and ummm, well, that's about it really.  I wish I had a 10 day turnaround to perform my tasks at work!

So, last Monday, the same day I received the invoice from Eden Brae, we sent the request off to ANZ via our Broker.  At the time we were hopeful we might have been ready for handover last Friday so our Broker asked if it could be looked at urgently.  "Nope, sorry it could take up to 10 days", was the reply.  Awesome.

Our Broker has been following up ANZ regularly and one minute she's told the valuer has been booked and then today someone confirmed the valuation still hasn't been booked!!  We're 7 days into the turnaround timeframe and no sucker has passed on our SS details to the Valuers!  The tools let slip who the Valuers are though so our Broker got on the phone to them and has now got the ball rolling.

Oh and the best bit?  They have had us and Eden Brae running around all last week in circles chasing down an Interim Occupation Certificate (said they needed it before releasing payment) until the bright spark at ANZ today said, "Oh, hold on, they're in NSW aren't they?  Then we don't need the interim certificate after all!"

There.  Vent over.  It had to be done.  No home build is complete without a dummy spit over the bank!  It would have been positively un-Australian not to have had one.

On to much cooler news......It is verrrrrrrrrry likely handover will be this Friday.

*Fingers crossed*

So close yet still so far

At the beginning of the week, when we thought we may have a final walk through yesterday, I changed my work days around so I would be free to do so.  As Friday rolled around it was becoming rather obvious (to us, not so much the SS) that nothing would be happening but it meant 'B' and I had a rare day when we both had the day off and the kids were at pre-school!

Our SS never made it to the house on Thursday (as he said he would) to check everything was completed nor did he make it out yesterday (as he said he would).  As far as he's concerned he *thinks* the house is finished & ready to handover however if he'd actually gone out on site to keep an eye on things he would have noticed there is still a fair bit to do!

'B' and I naturally dropped by the house and were stoked to find a way in!  We weren't expecting that!  So we took our time and checked everything over - without feeling rushed and now that there is nothing left to go in and in decent natural light!

Here it is all nice & clean.  The floors need another mop but I'll do that when I move in anyway.

Our original list of things left to do still stands - except 4 out of the 5 touch catches in the kitchen have now been fixed (they missed one)...

1. Clean brickwork (grubby where it's been repointed & a few of the sills have mortar chunks on them)
2. Fill in some of the gaps between cladding & brickwork at the front
3. WIP & WIR shelving
4. Shower door in our ensuite opening wrong way
5. Fix the tiling in our ensuite and where the towel rail has been removed in main bathroom
6. Install a shower head in bathroom
7. Privacy lock in bathroom
8. Silicone in bathrooms
9. Touch catches in kitchen
10. Garage step
11. Manhole cover
12. Light & fan in our bedroom isn't working
13. Roof service (cracked tiles)
14. Door service (they make sure the bi-fold tracks are cleaned and fix any scratches etc)
15. Fix dented window frame

In addition to this list, we picked up some extra things yesterday:

Paint splatters all over timber flooring

The scotia was removed when the oven was installed and never put back

The carpet in our bedroom still looks rubbish and needs to be pulled tighter

And now that we've finally been able to see the carpet in decent natural light, we've noticed the join in the carpet that looks terrible!

There's big gaps in some of the grout around the bath tub and none of the excess grout has been cleaned off tiles or floor (can see it better now that it's been "cleaned")

I don't even know how we never noticed this little gem of tile work before.  Can you see how it slopes up at the end?!  It's on top of our bath hob.

Our kitchen splashback still has excess grout all over the tiles and there is paint all over the metal ends

And ummm are the windows meant to do this and completely lift out?!  Not all do it but a few do.

Had everything been actually completed and cleaned before our PCI, we would have picked up most of these additional issues at PCI.  Lesson learned.

So, aside from feeling like a picky whinger the house on the whole is looking great and oh so ready to move into.  It's getting frustrating knowing how close we are yet how many trades still need to be coordinated to finish it off to a satisfactory level.

We're also getting tired fast of feeling like a nuisance each time we try & get in contact with our SS!   

I haven't even pointed out some of the additional paint touch ups that need to be done as we're just going to do it ourselves later.

Hopefully, we'll have some kind of result next week!

We're *this* close!

Yep, the title says it all!  It's nearly alllll ours!

We dropped by the house this afternoon and the cleaners were there and kindly let us have a quick look around!  Yesss!

The painters have been back and done all their little touch ups and repairs.

Here's the front of the house with the cladding painted in the correct colour - woollooware 

Much nicer than the icky grey it had been accidentally painted

Here's one of my boy's feature walls - Bristol Reservoir 

And here's my other son's feature wall - Bristol Regatta.  Loving both of them, nice splash of colour.

The towel rails have been removed and the correct one has been installed in the granny flat.

Some minor electrical's have been done such as fixing some of the bedroom lights.

Also, the carpet looks much better!  Someone has clearly been in to fix a couple of things and pulled it tighter because some of the random lumpy bits are gone and it is nice & straight against the skirting in our room!  Very happy about this as I thought we'd have to raise it at the final sign off.

Left to do...

1. Clean some of the brickwork around the front & on porch
2. Fill in some of the gaps between cladding & brickwork at the front
3. WIP & WIR shelving
4. Shower door in our ensuite 
5. Fix the tiling in our ensuite and where the towel rail has been removed in main bathroom
6. Install a shower head in bathroom
7. Privacy lock in bathroom
8. Silicone in bathrooms
9. Touch catches in kitchen
10. Garage step
11. Manhole cover
12. Light & fan in our bedroom isn't working
13. Roof service
14. Door service
15. Fix dented window frame

Gee, so much has happened this week I'm kind of surprised there's so many things left to do!  Mainly small things though apart from the tiling.

Don't think we're quite ready for the final walk through this Friday as SS had hoped for but I'm not worried, we're only a matter of days off now....

Blinds & shutters!

I went to the house this afternoon with great anticipation as I saw the Abbey Blinds & Shutters van at the house this morning.  When I got there I kicked a major goal as I was able to be let in by someone who had a key!!  Yipee!

House was a bit dark and not all rooms have globes / working lights yet and I only had my phone to take pics, so apologies for the quality of the pics but here goes...

We got shutters in each of our bedrooms (more about that here). This is one of the boy's rooms.

Here's our bedroom

From another angle with better light

The photo's don't do them justice, I had a colorbond moment when I walked in the room!  I just LOVE them!! 

In our living areas we chose sheer blinds because generally we just want nice, big, un-obstructed windows during the day to let lots of light in.  The blinds are really there for privacy at night and the sheer fabric enables some light to filter in during the day if needed but you can't see through them at night.

Problem.  They've gone and put block-out blinds throughout.  Sigh...

Not the greatest pic but you get the idea.  Should all be good though, it states "sheer" on the signed quote and at least in the meantime while we wait for their replacement, we'll have some privacy.

The Tyrrell's Inspector also came out today.  I noticed some of his green tape around marking a couple of things we missed.  I'm looking forward to seeing the report next week.

Paint touch ups were meant to happen each day this week however nothing has been done yet.  Has probably worked out for the best though as Tyrrell's have pointed out some extra things anyway.  I think we've also been waiting for the Carpenter to re-fix the skirting (after they were removed to put floor boards down) and make our internal garage step before painting happens.  Our SS indicated they should be there over the weekend.  Hopefully anyway. 

Neeeeeearly there!