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.

The things we have learned

For novices who seriously had very little clue about the whole house builing process, I think we did okay however we did learn a few things along the way...

(1)  Go over your contract & drawings with a fine tooth comb.  Then go over them again.  And again.  Each time we went over our drawings we'd pick up something new! 

Pay particular attention to the little things like which way you want your doors / shower doors to swing, are your windows centred on the drawings, are your window heights all level with each other, are the heights of your openings the height you would like (we wanted 2340mm square set openings like the display house but the standard was lower, there wasn't any extra cost to raise them). 

We had so many variations that I ended up doing an excel spreadsheet (snapshot below) and went through each page of the contract, room by room and noted what should be in each space.  This really came in handy at walk through when our SS had one thing noted and I had another as I could tell him exactly where the written instruction could be found.  Also made life so much easier for us knowing exactly what was meant to be where.  So many months pass from when you originally choose things that it can be easy to forget exactly what door knobs you selected...

(2) Turn on the '"read recepit" on your email. Helpful to know that your emails have been read if you haven't received a response.

(3)  When you're in the contract stage and adding things in, changing things around etc, liaise with your Customer Service Consultant by email so everything is in writing.

(4)  Have you made your windows larger?  Can be difficult to get certain window furnishings.  We found that with our 2600mm wide windows in living areas.  A lot of blind fabrics only span 2400mm.  In the end we chose to "rail-road" the fabric which means the fabric hangs the other way and it's ok but it does have a slight ripple effect to it.  Hardly noticeable in the sheer fabric but was quite obvious in the blockout blinds they had accidentally first installed.

Sheer fabric

Block-out fabric

(5)  If you choose timber flooring, you might want your internal doors to be a little longer.  We found out too late that the internal doors allow for carpet so they sit about a good inch off the finished floor level.  Not the end of the world but I would have definitely chosen better fitting doors had I known.

(6)  If you raise the height of your ceilings, you may want to increase the height of your doors too.  We didn't worry about the bedroom doors but for the front door and the granny flat which has the internal door in the Entrance Hall with a ceiling height of about 2900mm we raised the door sizes accordingly.  It would have looked ridiculous otherwise.

(7)  If you are on recycled water, the standard inclusion is 1 recycled water tap. Don't assume you automatically get one at the front and back of the house like we did.

(8)  Get yourself a good Mortgage Broker, it makes all the difference sometimes in getting the loan for the amount you want or getting the best deal.  Hey, we all try and push the limit don't we?   We used Kevin Lee from Smartline and we did everything over the phone, fax & email.  He was great and it was so convenient.

(9)  And last but definitely not least, read this thread from the Homeone Forum.  It's 18 pages of other people's hindsight!

And we all love a bit of hindsight!

L.O.V.E!

Our floor boards are in!  Our floor boards are in!   LOVE is an understatement!

When we originally started choosing our colours, it was hard to know where to start.  Once we decided we wanted these timber laminate floor boards, 'B' had the good idea to choose our floor colours first as the choices were more limited compared to paint, bathroom and kitchen colours.

Slowly, actually not so slowly, we've watched our colours all come together and we've liked what we've seen but it's the floors that have just brought everything together.

The lovely floor contractors (2 of them) started only yesterday morning and were at the house finishing up at 5pm today.  What an amazing effort and the workmanship is just fantastic.  Walking around with the lights on and nearly finished, it really felt like home.

Enough with the gushing, on with the pics!  'Scuse the dust particles!

Standing where future kitchenette will be in Granny flat

Standing over near the French Doors in Granny Flat looking over to bathroom and future kitchenette space

Standing at the front door looking down the hall (off to left is internal door to flat)

Looking into mudroom / laundry

Ta da!  Standing in family room looking toward kitchen

Standing in Dining Room

Non-floor space below is the Living Room and will be carpeted

Study Nook

Rear hall near bedrooms

Playroom / Guest room.  We chose to not carpet this room seeing that it has the french doors going outside and figured it would be more kid friendly.

Bring on the carpet, blinds, shutters, fly-screens, bathroom mirrors, wardrobe & pantry shelving and last few bits & pieces!

Oh and if you're overly attentive, you may have noticed the dodgy tiling behind rangehood has been completely removed, ready to be done properly!!  Woo hoo!

Electrical & Flooring Selection

We had our final selections yesterday for electricals and then tiles & flooring with Di Lorenzo.  Ended up being 6.5 hours in total which we weren't banking on!  However apart from some final amendments and of course waiting for a couple of new quotes, we are pretty much done!!  Yay!!  It has been fun choosing everything but I will be happy when there are no more decisions to make.

Electricals

So, starting with our electricals we sat down with Craig at Home Options and he was great.  Nothing was too much trouble and he was really helpful.  I had a rough figure of $2000 in mind for extra electricals however it ended up being just under $5400!!!  Whoa!

However we have pretty much got everything except downlights as one of our Electrician mates will do that work for us after handover.  Not only do EB charge $107 per downlight which is crazy, but we'd rather give our money to a mate!  So, for our money we got:

• Powerpoints in every spot that we want them (13 single, 19 double & 5 quads this includes 1 under the eave for future christmas lights and also 1 on the Island Bench in kitchen)
• Surge protection for the whole house
• 2 way & 3 way switches in places
• Stainless Steel Fan Lights in each of the bedrooms
• Wiring in place for all ceiling lights and future lights set up ready to go
• 2 Foxtel points which include a phone point & provisions for wall mounted TV's, DVD's etc
• An extra provision for another wall mounted TV
• 2 Phone lines
• Exhaust fan in laundry
• 3 x heated lamp / lights / exhaust fans for bathrooms
• Stainless Steel fan to Alfresco
• 3 Smoke Detectors
• Door bell
• Junction Box for future outside lighting
• Provisions for external sensor lights 
• 22 Ceiling lights
• Sensor light to pantry

I think the pricing for most of the above was reasonable except for the door bell.  That cost $257 and you can only choose between about 5 of the daggiest looking doorbells.  Next step up from there are about 3 x the cost (and the rest) for intercoms (we'll do that later with so many other things!) Each light baton cost $58 and each double powerpoint is $63 so it's a little surprising how quickly it all adds up.

Di Lorenzo - Tiles & Flooring

Next we went to Di Lorenzo and felt pretty confident as we'd done a fair bit of homework there before and pretty much knew exactly what flooring we wanted and just needed to make final decisions on bathrooms and splash back for kitchen.  Well 'C' our consultant was crap wasn't overly helpful.  Her favourite phrase of the day was, "yes but it will cost you extra".  Almost wouldn't matter what you asked, that was the answer!

We were told that anything with a yellow sticker is standard for us and even though our tile allowance was $24 psm, if it had a yellow sticker and cost $30 psm, we didn't pay extra however if you choose a tile without a yellow sticker then you pay the difference from $24 upwards. What we didn't know was that if you chose a bathroom floor tile that wasn't exactly 200 x 200 then you pay extra for labour which is an extra $18.50 psm! Wall tiles had to be 300 x 300 but we chose a 400 x 200 with a yellow sticker and that was fine.

Main Bathroom

Bathroom walls will be at 1200mm tile height with a 400 x 200 Gloss White Tile laid horizontally.  Floor tiles will be that tile in middle of the below picture 200 x 200 (this colour is not standard and is already $11 more psm so we couldn't justify going next size up).  The top of the 2 feature tiles shown is natural stone and is going to be on the whole bath wall including on top of bath hub (these will be laid horizontally).  We ummed and ahhhed about these as the feature tile over whole bath is costing around $1700 *cough* however after recovering from our shock we realised that it would be such a beautiful feature and we didn't go overboard with anything else in bathrooms so thought it would be worth it.  Our vanity will be white.

Floor tile DC4133 & Feature tiles VM126

Ensuites
Our ensuites will be reasonably simple, with the same white horizontal 200 x 400 tiles on walls up to 1200mm height and same 200 x 200 floor tiles.  We've decided not to do any feature tiles however we are having the below laminates for our vanities.

Pure Calcite for tops of vanity & Fudge Stream for actual vanity (laid horizontally)

I know the Fudge Stream is a little different however after seeing the following photo's we thought it could be really nice feature if everything else was kept simple.  The one below will be the most similar to ours with different handles and a squareform benchtop.
                       

       

Splashback

For our kitchen splash back we chose a beautiful 600 x 600 gloss porcelain tile with same coloured grout.  It will work out around $400 and look like a glass splashback but will be about 1/4 the price of a glass splashback.  Only grout lines will be between tiles as they're the perfect height.

Time Chocolate Polished 600 x 600

The main problem with Di Lorenzo is that a lot of tiles are fixed on the wall and you can't compare one next to the other so we found ourselves going around in circles a lot of the time which was a bit frustrating but hey, we got there in the end.  Apparently as of Monday though, Di Lorenzo will be in a new show room around the corner and will have a library of tiles which you can pick up and move around the show room to compare against each other which will be so much better.

Main Flooring

Moving onto our flooring, Elisa was great (also at Di Lorenzo but in the carpet section).  We decided that we wanted to go with a timber laminate for our main flooring with carpet in Living Room and all Bedrooms (except playroom).  We did have a moment of dread when Elisa mentioned that we'd have to check with EB if we could do this type of flooring as part of the contract but she checked and it was fine.  If money was no object we'd go with beautiful glossy hardwood floors but we just couldn't afford $150 psm so we found a lovely replica which is in actual fact much harder wearing (with kids and pets about) and gives the warmth of a wooden floor.  Our wooden laminate is costing us $55 psm fully laid so works out about $4200 we think - yet to get quote.  We chose a carpet from the standard range which is a 50/50 blend of wool and nylon (I think) and looks nice and will do us till kids are older and we're ready to replace. We did upgrade to the best underlay though which was an extra $7 psm.

Carpet is Savino "Forte" & Timber Laminate is UTF Diamond Tuff "Select Teak"

Colour Appointment

Well it's been a while between posts however apart from signing our life away - I mean contract, a couple of weeks ago not much has been happening unless you count moving house (to my Mum's while all this house building business is going on) and the endless hours of 'homework' such as multiple trips to PGH Bricks etc to work out our colours!

Packing our life away into storage! Couldn't have squeezed another thing in there! Thanks for your help Steve, Steve, Mark & Jules!

However, yesterday we had our day at Home Option Gallery (HOG) to choose all of our internal & external colours, along with kitchen design and so on.  We were prepared for a pretty full on day and in the end we were there for 6 hours but it all went really smoothly (much to our surprise).

We didn't go to the 'HOG' feeling overly confident based on a lot of feedback from fellow builders but our Colour Consultant Josie was excellent.  Everyone else we saw were also very helpful and prepared.  Each time we sat down with someone new to discuss something we felt they'd already looked over our plans and were familiar with it all before going over things.  As for our kitchen appointment (which is the area we'd heard the most negative comments) - it was ok - not a lot of forthcoming advice or recommendations but we had a really good idea of what we wanted and together we got the end result (nervously awaiting the quote now though!!!).

So, here is what we chose:

External
Bricks - Gravel (with off white 'ironed' mortar)
Roof tile - Wild Rice (traditional profile)
Cladding - Woolooware
Gutters - Dune
Fascias, down pipes & meter box - Jasper
Front door, timber bi-folds & timber french doors -walnut stain
Windows, eaves & garage door - Surfmist

Our bricks and roof tile

Internal
Walls - Antique Ivory by Taubmans
Skirting & Architraves - Elusive White

Below, you can see our colorbond colours on top left - Jasper, Dune & Surfmist.  The Woolooware coloured cladding is top right and our internal wall colour Antique Ivory and Elusive White for trims is just under that.  On bottom right are our bathroom vanity colours.  Ignore the 2 colours in bottom left, they were the original kitchen colours that we've since changed to below...

Kitchen (also see here for our latest plans)
Island Bench - All lower cupboards / drawers & back of Island bench - Alaskan laminex
Drawers & upper cupboards along back wall - Polar white laminex 
Squareform benchtops - Stipple Seal laminex (will replace with Essastone later on)
Splashback - VM319 Metal Blend / Natural Stone (as seen below)

Close up of splashback colours 

Notice our rear opening cupboards on island bench below?

Bathrooms - See pics in Floor / Tiles post.

All floating vanities - Polar White laminex in main bathroom and horizontally laid Fudge Stream laminex (in ensuites)

Squareform vanity bench tops - Pure calcite laminex (again may replace with Essastone later)

Wall & Floor tiles - see below.

Here's the Fudge Stream laid horizontally with a similar coloured bench top.  Both ensuites will have this vanity.  The main bathroom is going to have a polar white vanity as I didn't want it to compete with the feature tile all around the bath tub.

Another pic. Will probably date in 3 minutes but hey, we like it! 

A bit of a jumbled photo but the top middle tile is our bathroom floor tile and the long, thin mosaic tile will be laid horizontally up the front of the bath and on top of bath hob.

Window Furnishings
Thinking of plantation shutters in all bedrooms and sheer blinds in all living areas.  We were going to do it the other way around however we can't really do shutters on our bi-folds and we want lots of light in our living areas and thought that all the shutters may actually cut a fair bit of that light out.  The girls from Abbey blinds are giving us a quote and from prices they mentioned on the spot, they seemed pretty reasonable.

Floor Coverings - see latest post
Yet to have our Dilorenzo appointment however we're pretty certain we're going with the 'Teak' laminated flooring - beautiful colour and very hardy.  There are so many options when choosing a 'wooden' look flooring but we don't have a lot in our budget to pay for real wooden flooring and having young boys the laminate will be nice & hard wearing.  Basically we wanted the warmth from the look of wood and are happy that we'll achieve that with this flooring.  Will come back & update once we've finalised wet area floor tiles & carpet.


Upgrades & approximate pricing
Off white mortar - $250
Stain to front timer door instead of paint - $250 (same front door as below)
Flyscreens for all opening windows - $500
Parent Retreat Entry Door - feature door - can't recall exactly but around $150

Solid door & deadlock from garage into house - $200

Privacy lock to main bathroom - $30

Freestanding 900mm oven - $750
1700mm bath instead of 1500mm - $40
All toilets to next model up - $25 each
Kitchen tap - Dorf vege sprayer - $200
All showers to frameless - between $300 - $500 each
3 coats of Taubmans living silk paint (1 undercoat & 2 coats of living silk) - $1500
Double towel rails instead of singles - $20 each
Converting all shelving in pantry / wardrobes to malamine - $500
Sound proof bats in walls between my Father's bathroom and our living room and also between the laundry and our bedroom - $500

                Our beautiful front door will look exactly like this!

Our beautiful french doors

We were going to get some heated towel ladders in our ensuite and main bathroom however at $740 each plus the cost of installation and the cost for power - we've since realised you can do it for around half the price after handover.

Re wardrobes, still deciding in our WIR whether we'll get any shelving as we are most likely going to fit it out ourselves afterwards.  

Kitchen - I've come back to edit this a few weeks later now that we have our quote.  We've gone back & forth a few times with the kitchen people but in total we're spending around $6,200.  This includes:

• over head cupboards (with light boxes for downlights) above 'cook run' (back bench with oven)
• bulk heads above cupboards
• 3 large pot drawers on either side of oven (instead of cupboards)
• 900mm wide island
• rear opening cupboards on island behind sink and corner space which otherwise would be dead spaces 
• wider cuttlery drawers 600mm instead of 450mm
• Bin drawer with 2 bins in it (this was just over $600 alone! cough cough)

The $6,200 does not include the cost for oven, sink or tap upgrade.  Nor does it include a dishwasher.  I didn't want the crapola one they offer (for a cost of course).  I actually want one that cleans dishes, so we'll put one in after handover.

What we had to miss out on due to the extortionate costs from Kitchen Company - Essastone bench tops & soft close cupboards & drawers (total of these 2 things were $10,000 and while soft close mechanisms can't be retrofitted, we know Essastone would be a LOT cheaper to do ourselves....one day!)  Oh and forget the polyurathane cupboards unless you feel like spending an additional $6000 or so!!!!