Showing posts with label Eden Brae. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eden Brae. Show all posts

Thursday, November 10, 2011

3 Month Maintenance Inspection

Hasn't time flown?  On the 15th November, we'll have been in our new home for 4 whole months!!  Feels like we've been here for years and only 5 minutes all wrapped up in one.

True to their word, Eden Brae came over on Tuesday to conduct their 3 month maintenance inspection.  Tim couldn't have been more helpful and happily wrote down everything on our list.  Even the missing toilet roll holder from the granny flat which technically was our mistake for missing it prior to hand over!

So, "How has the old new gal held up since moving in?", I hear you ask.... Pretty well.  Nothing major, really.  Here's our list...


1) Carpet in our bedroom still rippling and not secured at the edge near ensuite


2) Carpet edge in Living Room not secured properly and is fraying.  Di Lorenzo Carpet were really the weakest link in our whole home building experience.  Shockers!



3)  Few spots need to be re-grouted in all 3 bathrooms


4)  Some timber quad (trim) lifting in the kitchen

5) Patch & paint dent on pantry ceiling

6) A service and some sanding & re-staining required on bi-fold doors.  They're a bit 'sticky' to open which causes the doors to scrape on the bottom door frame.  Also, where they've patched some nail holes before staining is showing as a different colour.


7)  Patch & paint some damage on the Alfresco ceiling

8) One of the touch catches in the kitchen isn't working

9) Some of the floor boards near laundry are a little springy & one other spot seems un-even


10) Door lock on internal garage door doesn't work

11) A few cracked roof tiles that had never been fixed but should have been prior to handover

12) Cracked tile in Granny Flat ensuite where they've secured the shower screen


13) Toilet roll holder missing in Granny Flat ensuite

14) Repair brickwork at front of the house (this section has never been right!)



15) Point up some brick sections at front porch and clean down bricks

16) Stormwater pipe broken at end of driveway

No cracks in walls, no leaking pipes, all major appliances work i.e. air-conditioning, oven etc, so not too bad really.  Majority of these things were picked up within a couple of weeks of moving in so it's not like things have continued to deteriorate or anything.

You only get one chance to make a list by the way, so it helps if you write things down as you notice them.  Also, best to keep a few bricks just in case you need some replaced like we do at the front of the house.  If they had to order some more bricks, chances are they'll look a different colour as each batch slightly differs.  Also good to keep some spare roof tiles (make sure yours don't get taken away by the cleaners like ours did!)

Our Maintenance List has now been handed over to MGH Contracting to coordinate the relevant trades to do the repairs.  I heard from them the same afternoon Tim had been out and twice since.  Everything has already been pretty much confirmed and lined up for a few weeks time.  They ask you to provide about 3 dates within a week or two and then they try and get all the trades to come on one, maybe two of those days and then organise the painters to come on the last day if required.

Assuming all goes well from here, I'm impressed.  Again, this has been straight forward with no hassles.


Friday, August 5, 2011

resting on our laurels

HARDLY!!!

We've been in our home now for a few weeks and have all settled in beautifully!!!  We've been super busy with all the unpacking, shopping, organsing quotes, shopping, landscaping, shopping ;-) ....you get the drift!

Here's my youngest with his tool belt on feeling all important!


And here he is helping his Poppy put together a kitchen in the flat!


And did I mentioned we've been busy? Mainly thanks to a lot of landscaping that poor ol' 'B' is pretty much doing solo.  He's doing a cracking job though and it's going to look fabulous when it's all finished.  Though I definitely need to shout out a big thank you to 'B's' brother 'S' who was a huge help for a couple of days and 'B's' mate 'M' who is giving him a hand today!!

This is a before shot.  Swampy much?


And from another angle.  The weather was against us in the first week.


Here's 'B' carrying one of the many beams that will be part of our retaining walls.  He makes it look light!


And here he is with the kanga hammer digging holes for the posts to go into.  Each hole is 900mm deep and majority of them were through slate!  'B' now has muscles on top of his muscles!  If you've ever lifted one of these machines you'll know what I'm on about.


And in enters Russell and his excavator!!  Saving us, oh let's see, 1000 hours of manual labour!


Here he is out the front excavating our drive-way



Here's dedication for ya!  Once 'B' got everything out of the hole, he'd scoop the last out by hand to make a flat surface for the post.



You can see the excavated back yard here...
 


And wasn't it a relief to get a drive-way put in!  We had rain for the first week and it became so muddy.  Not great when you have a very independent 2 year old who was most put out when not allowed to walk through it when getting in the car!

We received 3 quotes for the drive-way:  $6200, $5300 & $4600.  Pays to shop around!

Its just plain concrete at the moment to match the existing section of battle-axe drive-way.  Once all the landscaping is finished, we'll clean it with a gurney and then paint it.



Yay for Dave the concretor!







Before you think it just looks like a whole lotta concrete, once the fences go up and we put our decking on the porch and landscape at the side of it (where the huge mound of dirt currently resides), it should look much nicer.  We also needed it to be reasonably big so we have the option of turning around when coming out of the garage.


On a final note, we had a few things to be finished off by Eden Brae after handover and I was naturally a little wary, wondering if we'd become yesterday's news once the house was officially ours and never hear from them again.  However true to his word, our Site Supervisor has continued to get some of the last few bits and pieces finished off for us since we've moved in, which has been terrific!!

If you're after a terrific concreter, call Dave from Ferral Concreting on 0415 221 001.

If you need an excellent excavator / bobcat operator, call Russell on 0418 220 372. 

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

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.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Paint (part 3) and so much more!

The Eden Brae tradies have been busy over the past week and our painting is all but finished now!  In fact as far as the painters are concerned, they are finished however they've painted the bathroom walls the wrong colour (notified SS last week but nothing was corrected!) and they haven't done the feature walls in the boy's bedrooms.

First thing we noticed this afternoon was that our lovely timber doors have had a coat of lacquer & the portico ceiling and lintels have been painted in surfmist.


Close up of walnut stain & clear lacquer


Eaves have been painted in surfmist


Down-pipes and meter box have been painted in Jasper


Cladding has finally been painted in Wooloware Woodlands Grey....what on earth?!  'B' is holding up the colour sample it was meant to be painted in.  Just a tad different!  Oops!


The tin of paint that dobbed...


Next we moved inside and saw that all the main painting has been finished and we LOVE it!!!  It's exactly the colour I was hoping for.  I love the warmth of it and the contrast to the Elusive White trims / doors without being too yellow / creamy.

Here's quite an accurate idea of the colour


Bedroom in granny flat


The painting wasn't the only happy surprise in the house!!  All of our air-conditioning ducts are now in, power-points are in, light switches on the walls and the plumbing has been done and is working!  We thought electrical & plumbing would be a week away.

Living Room in main part of the house - you can't really see but there's some TV points on the wall


Family Room - notice the light and air-con duct! 
(look at our swamp of a back-yard!)


Hello lovely!  We got the slightly bigger bath - 1700mm instead of 1500mm, mainly to fill the long bath hob.


Funnily enough, I don't mind the wrong paint colour in the bathroom as it matches well with the other colours (more so in real life) but it does draw attention the the 1200mm high wall tiles.  Wishing we went all the way up.  Oh well, once the correct white paint is on, shouldn't be so obvious.


Taps are in, we stuck with the standard range because we liked the look of them and I'm only 5 foot short tall so I like a shower head I can adjust.  

Just a note for anyone reading this still in the designing stage - get bigger shower niches.  The standard ones are 22cm high which doesn't fit any of the larger bottles of body wash, shampoo etc.  Still though, if that's our biggest regret....


Main bathroom vanity.  We upgraded to the next sink up in the range which I think was only an increase of $7.  Wish we could have gone extra spesh with the sink but the money fairy had long taken off by the time it came to choose bathroom upgrades.  Bitch.


And here we have our ensuite


Our hopefully still un-used toilet ;)



Our skylight & exhaust fan / heat lamps


Here's the granny flat bathroom, basically the same as our ensuite


This is the washer / dryer alcove with plumbing capped in the wall



Alarm pad & sensors are in


Plumbing in fridge space - bit of patching required


One of the boy's rooms.  We got ceiling fans in each of the bedrooms.  I'm not digging the fans at all though :(  They look cheap and yet cost $305 EACH!  Sob!


And here's one in all it's ugly-light-fitting-on-glory.


Took a pic of a discarded box hoping they got the model wrong.  Nope.  Oh well, will see if they can leave behind the caps and put down lights in instead.  Should make it look better.


Hmmm dented window frame


Our Dorf Veggie Sprayer tap is in


And lastly, a massive bone of contention with 'B'..... The Splash Back.........

Started off like this (they forgot to do behind the rangehood)


Then the tiler came back and did a lovely job but tiled around the rangehood (and as mentioned in a previous post, 'B' wants it tiled behind the rangeood in case we ever have to replace it and can't get the same profile, we don't have to worry).


Then 'B' went back on Monday night and noticed the tiler had been back and taken the rangehood down this time, only to do some make-do tiling thinking the rangehood would go on and it would never be noticed


And then we have today's efforts by the tiler (yet to be grouted).  It's more straight but some bits stick out more than others and there's still some dodgy looking make-do tiling going on.


See what I mean?



So there you have the latest!  All that's left now is:

  • Shower screens
  • Floors
  • Toilet roll holders / towel rails
  • Step in the garage (wondering if they've missed it?)
  • Fix some of the paint
  • Internal door hardware
  • WIP / Robe / linen cupboard shelving
  • Remaining couple of electrical bits & pieces 
  • Blinds & Shutters 

So close now!



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