Maintenance List so Far

I get a lot of questions on how happy we are with our build. Overall we are happy, but it hasn't been a flawless exercise.

Working in the house has really hi-lited how crap some of the paint finishing is, with spots that are obvious where only one coat of paint was applied. Sanding marks remain, and some doors have obviously not been painted properly with the worst one being the front door. Very poorly done.

We are getting a professional in to give it coat of paint and fix up some of the stuff. Hopefully this will be done in the next week or two. We were going to get someone in to paint the cornices and skirting boards, so we figured we may as well get the part of the house done again.

Other than paint. The list includes.

1. Roof is leaking on top of the portico with water pouring out of the facia during heavy rain.
2. Trim around the sink overflow is still missing. I think I mentioned this one about a million times.
3. Front, and Laundry door bottom dirt/air barrier is missing screws holding it down rendering it useless.
4. Front door trim around the side managed to rip off taking some of the stain off the door with it.
5. Whoever stained the door, managed to spill it on the tiles. It doesn't seem to come off. Thought this just needed a wipe during our walk through.
6. Silicone was applied by someone who I feel was blind. Cleaned up most of this ourselves.
7. Toilet seats are all scratched, with dull lids... Not sure if we will mention this one.
8. Several power points don't work.

The one that we are most concerned about is obviously the roof leak. Will raise this again and see how we get on during the first maintenance period. Hopefully we don't find anything else.

Bits & Pieces Fence is up, Garbage clean up....

Lots has been going on during the past few weeks. We should be moving in quite soon thankfully and then the task of landscaping can begin.

Our fence has gone up finally. After seeing how some of the other fencing guys did fences we chose to go with someone a neighbour recommended. Our fence isn't going anywhere anytime soon. The posts are in large diameter concrete filled holes. Extremely solidly built.

I also did a big clean-up of loose bricks leftover from the articulation joints being fixed up. As well as lots of tiler waste and a lot of crap that gets left behind by other trades.

The skirting boards were also replaced with some 92mm half splay skirting. I like the look of this skirting a lot better than the standard stuff. It currently sits on the tiles, so it adds quite a bit of height to the room. I hired a carpenter for the day who helped install it.

Also managed to find a water leak, which thankfully is Sydney waters problem. Someone didn't tighten this bolt properly. It had been soaking my future brick fence footing for a while. 

Flooring Complete

Finally our carpet was back in stock and installed last Monday.

We are very happy with our choice, and it matches the tile color quite nicely.

Despite our sales consultant constantly pointing out the carpet "was on the block..." (Like we care that the block used the same carpet as us.) we used Provincial Lane - Premier Soft carpet in the sugar cookie color. We chose a nice dense 11mm underlay to go with it. Feels very nice underfoot.

It's quite a dense/thick nylon carpet and our Dyson struggles with it, it really was a mission giving it that first vacumn. Dyson is sending us out a new vacumn cleaner head to try. How good is Dysons customer service.

Driveway Done

We got a few quotes for Driveways but ended up going with Huss from Precision Concreting 0450 919 162.

The driveway was done in plain concrete with a brushed finish, and we hi-lited it with a few parallel dummy joints. Council doesn't allow anything but plain concrete for the crossover, and we didn't want two different colors hence the plain.

The installation wasn't without it's hitches, they hit the gas line as well as a stormwater pipe during excavation, but all was repaired.

The driveway has come out very nicely.

Floor & Bathroom Tiling

There seems to be a massive abundance of tiles out there on the market, ranging from as little as $15sqm to well over 100sqm.

We spent a long time looking at tiles, and after some advice from a tiler went with a tile from RAK Ceramics. We chose the Sandust Lapporto which is a semi polished tile. The tile felt a lot better than the fully polished tiles we saw and had a lot of character, these tiles are made in the UAE. We felt the quality of the tile was also a lot better than some of the other stuff we saw.

Finding a tiler was a bit of a nightmare, quotes ranged from cheap to downright highway robbery for installation. We ended up going with Ping, who another Provincial blogger has used in the past. His work is fantastic, and we are very happy with the end result.

If you will recall, earlier on we wanted to do floor to ceiling tiling but thought the $350 per room to re-install cornices was a bit of highway robbery. It frustrated me even further to find that the Di Lorenzo tiler had done a cash job with the other family who built with provincial to do floor to ceiling tiles. Oh wells.

Half the tilers we got out for quotes, wouldn't even touch the bathrooms, Ping told us it wouldn't be a problem and quoted us pretty reasonably to finish it off. Luckily we knew which brand and colour grout was originally used.

To continue floor to ceiling tiling the following was done:

1. Mirrors came off, took all of 30 mins to remove two mirrors. Mirrors came off fine.
2. Electrical plugs were loosened
3. Ceiling cornices were removed. This was a messy job and took about 2 hours to do, so an hour a bathroom.
4. Lots of drop cloths were laid down.
5. Cornice guys were called out to re-install the cornices after at a total cost of $400, and that was one of the pricier quotes !!!

So how are the results, bathroom's ended up coming out pretty amazing if I must say, and the cost savings of doing it this way was about $2k.

On with the photos. We still need to give the tiles a few more cleans before they are truly photo ready. They are still covered in grout.

KEYS !!!!

We FINALLY GOT THE KEYS !!!

The whole process took about 30-40 mins, we received a whole heap of certifications, and documents, a bag of keys, along with a very special surprise.

Another great surprise was the requirements for us to get an occupancy certificate. It's a huge help having a small list, will make it much easier to get things done.

From Provincial's Head Office we went straight to the house to start getting quotes from tilers and concreter's for driveways. I'll update with how we get on.

Overall it looks like the bulk of issues we had with our house have now been sorted. Overall Provincial has done a great job, and after spending some time in the house we feel it will be pretty awesome when finished. Few niggly things that I'll get cleaned up when the quarterly maintenance comes around, but I can't thank the guys enough.

We have ordered some shutters for the front, and will be working our way through the long list of things to finish it.... I won't list it for fear of how long it will be !!!!

Will give updates and all important completion photos as we progress through. So stay tuned.

Countdown to Hand Over ..... tick tock

We have booked in handover for the coming Friday pending the bank finalizing the final payment.

I spent sometime on Saturday meeting the neighbors and cleaning up some of the trash left behind. A word of warning to anyone building. The reason builders don't allow free access to the site is because at the end of the day it is a construction site. The sheer amount of nails and scarily razor blades I picked up amazed me. They were mainly near door ways too.

It's to be expected to do some cleaning outside with building, and the majority of neighbors found the same stuff I did during there builds.

It was actually great to see that Provincial has almost got the house ready for handover. Progress has been made and I reckon fingers crossed I'll have an immaculate house at handover.

• Scratched windows have been fixed
• Remaining painting looks like it has all been done
• Cabinet doors are back in place

The only outstanding I found which I have spoken with my site supervisor about today are.

• Scratched guttering still to be replaced. Not really sure why this is so hard, the SS thought it had been fixed. I assured him it wasn't. My thinking is that if I had hired the guttering guys myself I wouldn't have accepted that level of work, so why should Provincial.
• A outdoor tap seems to be faulty and has been dripping no matter how hard it is turned off.

and finally....... BRICK CLEANING

It's a bit frustrating to be honest, randoms on the street and landscaping guys have pointed out some of the mortar stains on the bricks, especially on the front of the house. The best quote from a guy who built using the same bricks on Saturday was "They are a nice brick, it's just a shame they didn't pay attention during the clean..... will you be they be coming back to sort it out ?" I'm not to happy about it either and is probably my only remaining pet peeve left on this house.

I have requested that at least the front of the house is cleaned up properly, and my SS has said he will see what he can do.

We shall see what happens !!!!

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly - PCI round 2

Unfortunately during the building process you will come across problems, things you don't like and just down right unethical behaviour. But it all comes back to how the builder responds.

There will be good trades, there will be bad trades, and of course lazy trades. Unfortunately we experienced all three. But the outcomes has overall been positive, with caring head office staff doing all they can to make things right.

The BAD

3 weeks after we did our initial PCI, we received our final invoice. Weird I thought because there was still what I consider to be some major work done. With the big one being 3 articulation joints to be installed.

I tried to call our site supervisor on the day we received our invoice, only to go through to a new site supervisor, he assured me he would get our old SS to give me a call the following day. In a bit of a panic I drove over to the house to see if anything had been done. I was in disbelief 3 weeks had passed, and not a single thing had been done. I guess the only credit I can give our SS is that at least he didn't rip off all the little tabs claiming that work had been done.

Out of frustration I complained to our original sales consultant, who assured me he would get the construction manager to call me.

Our original SS called me the next day and I made it clear I wasn't happy, he assured me he would have everything done by Tuesday blaming the door with a hole in it. He seemed to be really fixated on that one door ignoring all the other problems. 

Impossible I thought but I gave him the benefit of doubt. I spoke with the construction manager who assured me I would be happy in the end.

The UGLY

I drove by the house on Monday (public holiday) to see if anything had been fixed yet, well it looked like the articulation joints had been installed but upon closer inspection. He had gone ahead and sawed in fake articulation joints. I was in disbelief. Thoughts of lawyers, Tribunals, and fair trading flashed through my head. Needless to say I was pissed.

Firing off an e mail to the head of construction at Provincial with plenty of images attached, I made it clear I wanted to do the PCI again and start over. Thankfully our original site supervisor is out of the picture and we will no longer have to deal with him. He is no longer employed by Provincial.

The construction manager didn't call me back till late in the afternoon with an action plan in place, and promised me he was looking after everything personally. He did apologise and was pretty disappointed in the way my house was being handed over to us. He asked us for a week to sort the issues out and we could do PCI again.

The GOOD

Well the positive outcome is that the bigger issues have now been fixed with a few minor in comparison things left to do. I haven't been able to check the brickwork closer to the eaves to make sure the bricklayer actually did fix the error. 

The construction manager in 1 week managed to get the majority of our issues sorted out, he stayed in contact throughout the week to let me know what progress was being made which was fantastic. His attitude made it clear to me just how bad our original site supervisor was. Thankfully the majority of trades we had were good, as I imagine things could have been a lot worse.

PCI Round 2. The issues identified at PCI round 2 were.

• Paint touch-ups... Moreso under the bathroom doors were not painted, if unpainted they will suck up moisture and eventually stick.
• Guttering along the rear still to be replaced.
• Downpipe still to be painted
• 3 scratched glass windows still to be fixed
• Sink plugs to be replaced. The cleaners threw them out apparently
• Sink overflow beauty trim to be replaced. Cleaners again.
• Toilet bases to be siliconed.
• Shower trim to be installed so water doesn't flow out.

Hopefully these will be fixed before handover. I'm still not completely happy with the brickwork to be honest. It could have definitely been cleaned better, and from my photos I don't think the brick cleaner bothered re-cleaning any of the brickwork near the eaves. Maybe I won't notice it with time. 

Overall things are starting to look a lot better, you do tend to notice a lot of details when building, and it's the little things that start to annoy you, but I reckon once all the landscaping goes in. You probably won't notice a lot of things.

On with the photos.

Photos taken during overcast weather.

 Trim around the portico has now been installed giving it a much cleaner look. Finally looks finished.

Articulation joints corrected.

Holes in the door frame no longer obvious.

Cap on facia has now been installed.

All of our internal doors are like these.

Kitchem, appliances get installed 5 days after you request them following hand-over.

Formal Lounge or future Home Theatre.

Study Centre

Modern Alarm pad

Ensuite Bathroom

Trim along bottom of shower still to be installed

1 of the 2 walk in robes in the master.

Entrance Way

Main Bathroom

Laundry

Nice Colorbond rain water tank

Portico with lining now installed.

Surfmist B&D garage door with woodgrain finish (standard).

Window 1 scratched

Window 2 Scractched

Guttering that needs to be sorted out.

Window 3 that needs to be sorted. Almost looks like a sandpaper scratch