2 years of occupation

Firstly, apologies for slipping away quietly there.  Its been two years since we first occupied our new home.  And guess what, we only just got the final occupation certificate in February 2012!  The replacement of the footpath out front was the cause of the delay but other than that, we are still very happy with our home.  The experience has been an interesting one and if we were to build again, we would know what to expect now and how to avoid those problems (or at least get them resolved a little faster). 

We first started contacting the council about the footpath last August 2011.  And council being council, they were pretty slack getting back to us.  They eventually sent someone to check out the damage to the footpath and concluded the whole thing needed replacing.  We could choose to let council do the work or if we hired our own subcontractors, they would have to leave a $5k deposit!  The cost that the council quoted was just over $6K! At this point, we just wanted it done and let the council do it as they were the ones that would have to approve the final thing.  Even the subcontractors that the council hired were flabbergasted as to why we had to replace the whole footpath when only 2 sections were damaged.  They even rallied against the council for us but council were not to be budged. 

So finally we have a brand new stinkin footpath in the front and the final occupation certificate YAY!

but the million dollar question... would we build again???  ABSOLUTELY!

PS - where has the builder gone?

BTW, the builder is just as difficult to get a hold of! We had the 90 day check about a month ago and nothing has happened since. They have only just sent the kitchen appliance people back to fix up the rangehood piping. Its the builders who are slack in contacting their subcontractors. We are still also waiting on our kitchen window to be replaced to glazed window instead of clear to satisfy the occupation certificate. This issue was first raised in Feb! A couple of other fairly minor issues that we can live with or fix ourselves but its like they have disappeared off into the sunset since handover!

Photos!

Ok. a lot has happened to the house since now and these photos are prob 6 weeks back so not entirely up to date.
Here is the kitchen, you can see we have roller blinds now and white porcelain tiles. The downlights haven't been put in yet, you can just see the battens still.

Here is the area in front of the kitchen, the living area, we painted that feature wall ourselves and this gives a better view of the tiles. I was worried about white tiles showing up all sorts of dirt but its actually not too bad and gives me motivation to sweep and mop. I love these white tiles!

The area in front of the kitchen... oh, no blinds yet here...

The entry/hallway, you can see the living area to the left has been carpeted now a charcoal colour... we were thinking of tiling the entire bottom floor but now i'm glad we carpeted that area as it makes the hallway more like a path and provides a bit of comfort away from the tiles...

The stairwell... this photo was taken just as the carpet was laid so we hadn't vacuumed yet and carpet had bits of cuttings, the layers didn't really clean up the bits of cuttings they left!

The upstairs living area showing carpet... and feature wall to the right...

Master bedroom showing feature wall again, carpet and roller blinds. We changed our minds several times about what parts we would paint on the feature wall, ie just that framed area or just inside the framed area. In the end i think we made the best choice and painted the entire wall.

Backyard, decking still to be done (even now) but turf laid. In future if we ever build again, I think we will request access to the backyard to maintain it as it had been left for over a year and the grass had grown so thick and unmanageable and all sorts of rubbish from the builders had been left for the grass to grow over it...

We have since finished downlights now and just got the driveway and side path color concreted. The colour is bluestone with cobble type stencil and we also got the front fence bricked to match the rest of the house. Next steps is setting up the garden, deck and automatic gate for the front fence but not necessarily in that order!

its now ours! yay!

We just the got keys delivered finally with a folder of all the stuff we need and a gift basket of some bath and hand towels!

now time to start packing and organising the flooring to be done! photos to be up shortly.

Finally the final!

Final payment was made on Monday yay! now trying to organise the handover meeting with the builder. Yesterday we went to look at the state of the backyard which is now a jungle after almost a year of no maintenance. We struggled with some yardwork but I've since come to the conclusion it will be worth paying someone else to do it hehehehe. The kikuyo grass is almost waist high in some areas and the ground is not level and there are bits of rocks and pipes and mesh buried here and there. Since we want to turf, and it looks like the only want to clear it is to do it manually with a matic, then i think its worth paying someone to do the backbreaking work.

getting quotes now...

signing off...

Well, we have finally signed off that all items are complete two weeks ago. Finally! Although at the time there were outstanding items (the painter came back 3 times!), these were completed the following day. We have also received the interim occupation certificate last week, 1 month after we sent all the paperwork to the certifier so that took two weeks longer than expected. Currently the bank is now doing its valuation to check that all work has been completed before the final payment can be release. We're expecting this to be done this week provided all is satisfactory. Then we should be able to get the keys!!!

We've visited the house again, there is a lot of cleaning up work in the garden as the grass is knee high and we will have to landscape every inch of the place but I'll be happy when we can finally say it is completely ours to landscape!

another change in mgmt??

Well finally got someone to give me an update and lo and behold, we've had another change in our construction coordinator. So far we have had two construction coordinators who keep shifting their 'roles' in the office. We have swapped between the two ladies 4 times now... why??? it is mind boggling.

Anyway, our 'new' (make that previous but now current once again) coordinator has said we are waiting on two windows to be glazed as per our DA??? Where did that come from? and why wasn't it done correctly to begin with? I have also asked about what our completion date for the house is in the last 5 emails to our builder and it has been repeatedly ignored which leads me to believe they either don't know, can't tell us or don't want to tell us, either of which reason is ridiculous. Our 'new' coordinator also said she'd get back to me that day to tell me when this glazing of the windows would be done but of course, she didn't do so.

I also left another message to our site supervisor but that was just for routine as he never returns my calls. I never expected him to despite his voicemail saying he would. LIAR!

I shall be ringing them again on Monday.