Bricking Started

Bricking kicked off last week, and rapid progress has been made.

Provincial will be shutting down over the Christmas break like all the other builders, but my fantastic site supervisor has mentioned that bricks should be completed and gutters and eaves may even be finished. Roof tiles are planned to start in early January.

I did notice that the rear of the house and one wall has less articulation joints than on the plans or as is required on the construction plans and as per the building standards. to put it loosely and briefly without quoting the guidelines, you are supposed to have an articulation joint every 6 meters on a wall. I reckon that working through the storms of last week they probably forgot to put them in. I'll see what the SS says but he did mention they sometime vary where they are. I do know that a waffle pod typically moves more than a raft slab, so maybe this is why they chose to use fewer joints, but the decision should ideally lie with an engineer.

Other than that issue everything else looked really well done, the brick layers seem to be doing a quality job.

I'll have to check with my SS to see if termimesh was installed as well.

One good thing I noticed is that the stacker doors as standard have tracks to add fly screens in later, I didn't check this at tender stage but it's great to know Provincial specifies it when you add them in.

Couldn't see any articulation joints along this wall, they may not be needed.

What an articulation joint looks like, the join over the door.

No articulataion joints that I could see along this wall, but when I zoom in on the photo (finally this DSLR came in handy). I can see one at the joint where the corner is. I don't know if more are required by engineers or not. On the plus side the brickies are nice, and neat and everything looks pretty damn straight.

Framing Complete

Framing took about 2 weeks from start to finish, they finished up last Wednesday and I received the framing invoice on Thursday.

I'm querying 1 amount on it (locating the Sewer $800) which I thought was paid during the first payment, so will see what the outcome of that is hopefully soon.

Edit/ Update: The sewer survey was an error, and fixed up promptly by the team. It's always good to keep track of how much your payments should be :)

Framing was interesting to watch and it's quite cool to see the house take shape, it's all happening now. Interesting how much of a difference the 25 degree roof pitch has made, it's definitely taller than the surrounding single storey homes... well according to my eyes.

I also spoke to my site supervisor over the phone for the first time. Seems like a really nice guy, hopefully I'll put a face to the name soon. I'm trying to organize a independent inspection to give me some peace of mind to make sure everything is going according to plan/specifications. Although from what I have seen everything looks pretty good, no frame overhang or anything like that.

On with the pictures.

The Construction Process & Frames Delivered

A fellow neighbour mentioned to me that frames have been delivered, I managed to score a picture from a friend, but will venture out this weekend to check it out for myself.

I did receive an informative e mail with my Site Supervisors details, the site supervisor looks after things from frames to finish which is why I hadn't heard of his details yet.

Provincial also sent me a handy diagram which shows the construction process for those interested.

Found it pretty interesting to be honest, and it will probably save me from asking a lot of "what happens next" questions down the line.

Tile Selections

The tile supplier and installer for Provincial is Di Lorenzo.  Di Lorenzo called us to come in and pick our tiles about the time we were going to have the slab go down. You can go in and see what is included in the standard range before … which we did, but unfortunately getting pricing is a big hassle and just doesn’t happen.

Had heard a lot of bad experiences about Di Lorenzo and admittedly the time we went to look at the selection we weren’t too impressed with the ability of staff to give us a helping hand or any kind of price guidance. Our actual consultant on the day was fantastic however, she helped us with the tile choices quite a bit and suggested a good feature tile for us.

My feedback is that the wall tile selection for standard is actually pretty good with a lot of the tiles in 200x600mm size which is big enough and stylish enough. The floor tiles on the other hand are tiny they shouldn’t even be sold in this day and age, but you can upgrade to the larger tiles without any additional tile charge. You do however get charged extra to lay the tiles. For the standard Fairlight bathrooms this worked out to approx. $140 for the laundry, $120 for the main bathroom, and $250 for the ensuite. Why they couldn’t tell us this earlier is beyond me ? 

We also upgraded to the square tile look smart wastes ($38 each), and we used a feature tile on the inside wall of our niches. Total bill was roughly $900 worth of upgrades.

We were given the option of including floor to ceiling tiling at our color selection stage, but there was so much fear in us of hidden site costs popping up we didn’t opt to do it. It would have been roughly $1300 cheaper had we selected it at colors.  The quote was about $4.5k for Di Lorenzo to do floor to ceiling tiles, with part of the massive difference being $350 charged per room to reinstall cornices. We were told this was a Provincial charge, only for Provincial to tell us it was a Di Lorenzo charge. We figured we are not paying $700 to have cornices reinstalled… that’s just a downright ridiculous charge. We decided neither party would profit anymore off us from tiling and left it at standard heights.

I reckon if Provincial reviewed some of its processes, they would probably find a lot of customers spending more money on upgrades if they could provide some certainty around site and other costs. So far I think I am up for roughly $2,500 in unexpected BASIX and site costs which could have easily been foreseen, especially the BASIX. We still have the occupational certificate to get which I have heard is about $500.

Overall still happy with the crew at Provincial though.

Our Ensuite Wall Tiles

Palatino white our Matt white wall tiles

The standards tile range at Di Lorenzo

Our Ensuite Tiles.
Trio Flax Gloss Wall tiles
Greyish floor tiles

Our Main Bathroom tile selection.
Matt White Wall tiles
Greyish Floor tiles to be used in the Main, WC, and Laundry

Slabbed and Some Plumbing work done

Slab was poured last Monday the 29th.

I went out on Monday night for a sneak peek and by the time I got through an hour and 45 mins of traffic it was pitch black and I could see nothing but concrete.

Finally managed to go out again and have a look today and saw that the fence has been put up and some plumbing work has been done. To my inexperienced and untrained eye the slab work looks pretty good. The sides are all pretty straight, looks to be compacted quite well, and the surface looks smooth with no dips. The flooring guy did mention to us he has never seen a Provincial slab poorly done which seems to be true.

I managed to get some pretty good pictures with my DSLR, it doesn't look like they are complete with the plumbing work yet, and I'm sure they will level out the slab to avoid water pooling around the slab.

It did look like a mess with dirt piles everywhere. Hopefully it does all get cleaned up before they start framing, and it starts pouring.

On with the pictures.

Yeah something tells me that pipe will change over the next few weeks.

And a pictures of what our bricks should look like

More Slab Formwork done

Well shows how much I know.

I was told there would be a chance the slab would be poured yesterday, so I went for a drive after work. It was darker than I thought it would be, but no concrete work has been done.

Had a quick look and from the little i could see which wasn't much ... it looks like more work had been done and some termimesh had been wrapped around the drainage pipes, and I thought they were done with prep.

It was way to dark to be walking around a construction site but I snapped a pic from a safe spot with the DSLR but it couldn't even take a photo, the trusty Samsung S5 managed to take one.

Slab Formwork Done

Well the foundation experts mentioned that they would be setting up the form work during the week with the pour expected to happen this week sometime. I drove by on Sunday to have a look and snap alot of photos.

I compared everything to the foundation plans and it looks pretty bang on. I'm impressed with the level of care and detail displayed.

I have seen a lot of nightmare stories from other slab's when formwork was being done, hopefully everything turns out alright.