Contract Finished, House Not

Well today is the contract finish date but of course we are not finished. From tomorrow PD have to start paying us penalties. This certainly does not make things hurry up. We are supposed to be given a handover date next week but as we are having Kevin do another inspection I am sure it will not be achieved.

The temp fencing and portaloo have been removed so the house looks a lot nicer from the front. The stain on the windows and portico have gone quite dark which is nice but it has made our garage door look even more orange so we might have to change them one day.
The tiling has now been grouted so it looks nicer now. It is hard to get a pic of the feature strip because it always looks wonky from the angle.
Some of our taps have been put in. It will be nice when the spa gets cleaned up.
Our shower heads have been put in. This is the one in the ensuite, it has holes in the tiles on the side. Does this mean it has to be re-done?

The water tank is now in. It is annoying that the concrete slab is so much bigger than the tank as it is taking up more of our precious back area than it needs to!
Since I took these photos on Friday the internal door handles have been installed so that must have been done on Saturday.

Tiling Almost Finished

The tiling is almost finished. There is just a few more tiles to do today and then grouting on Monday. The tiler seems very good and cares about his work, he really seems to make the effort to get everything perfect (not that I would know the difference between good tiling and bad tiling). He even called us in on his first day and gave us a few different options about the placement of the tiles in the shower so make sure we got the cut tiles where we liked them best.

This is the ensuite shower. I think the feature tile would have been better with two across instead of three but it is hard to tell without the grout and the shower screen on.

The only thing he has done that I am not a great fan of is this shape in the shower base, I would have preferred them straight squares. David likes it this way.

Main bathroom looks great.
Spa hob
Laundry
Here is a pic of our new splash back. I turned the lights on to see how it looks. I was expecting that these lights would be in the cupboard shining down like in the display homes not on the outside underneath. I think the splash back looks ok now.
For some reason the step down to our garage is really big so PD said they would have to put in an extra step. I don't know why this is because it is not on the plan and surely the height of the garage floor compared to the main house is a standard thing with their houses? Anyway the step is nearly finished but I found in fact it is two steps, grrrrrrrr. This is taking up a nice chunk of our garage!

More progress

The glass splashback went in today. We chose white with starfire glass which is a bit boring. We have white ceilings and a different shade of white skirtings and sort of white perspex inserts in our cupboards and a sort of white bench. The splashback adds yet another different shade of white, I think it would have been better to get the wall colour or something exciting like red! I will reserve judgement on this til I look at it again. I will post pics tomorrow.

The electrical work continued, lots of the downlights are in now and wires are hanging out where powerpoints will be. Our rangehood and toliet/shower exhaust fans and in too. For some reason the man hole has been put in the walk in robe instead of the hall which is not a bad thing but it makes it hard to put a light in the middle of the walk in because that is where the man hole is! We will try to get them to put a light either side of the man hole otherwise we will have a dark end of the robe.

The water tank has been delivered and is now in the garage, it is not as big as I was worried it would be.

The tiler called to ask to meet us at the house tomorrow so we can tell him where we want the feature tiles so that is great that he is going to start. I am very surprised at the pace things are going at now.

Electrical Started

I can't believe I am posting again already! I went today to check if the tiler had started but alas he was not there. The painters were still finishing off their work. I was most surprised to find the electrical work had started. All the aircon and heating vents are in and they have started making holes for some power points and lights.

This is the back wall of our master bedroom. We included a light switch so that we don't have to walk all the way to the door to turn the lights off. We thought the switch would be with the power points down low but it is our stuff up not to have clarified this. Now we have a white light switch slap in the middle of our brown feature wall. Oh well can't do much about that one, serves us right for being lazy!

Feature walls

How exciting, some of our feature walls were finished on Friday. This one is in the rumpus room. The colour is Cafe Noir.
This is Hayley's room. It is called Pink Love and has come out great. We did not get a sample pot for this one so we did not really know if it would be nice but we are very happy with it. We wanted it to be reasonably bright because the other walls in the room are white. Hayley seems to like to too and she said the word "pink" which we have never heard her say before.

5 days work in a row!

Well things are looking up, the painters have worked five days in a row! Things are finally moving along again. All the woodwork on the front facade has now been stained, we are really happy with how well it matches the garage door.
Front door has just been stained. The mark on the glass is a sticker. As much as clear glass looks best we decided on translucent glass for the door and sidelights so people can't see in at us.
This picture shows the skirting colour contrasting the wall colour. Ensuite
The tiler was supposed to start this week but the painters said no way to that so now he is supposed to start on Monday. Our SS says we are three days behind the estimate he gave us of "mid October" but he says he should be able to make it up but it is still at least two weeks over the contract period.

Now we are going backwards!

Yes we have been waiting for ages for the painters to turn up but as you can see from the pictures the wrong sort of "painters" did. We have this lovely black spray paint over lots of walls now. It seems we had a visit last Friday night from those who got in through the rumpus room window. This window was probably left open by the useless unreliable painters who never show up (but that's just our assumption). At least before we had one layer of paint on the walls now we are back to square one!

We are so fed up now with Porter Davis and their promises. What a load of crap their guaranteed 20 week build is! We have had one days rain delay and no delays on materials so our build going over contract time is due totally to incompetent project management on their behalf. Again we were promised that the painters would definitely be there on Tuesday, so far I have driven past every day this week and of course NOTHING and no word from anyone as to why this is. We were promised this week would be heaps of activity but so far only the carpenter and plaster have turned up to finish the fix which as far as I was aware was finished (and paid for) 25 July. I think they also fixed some cornices etc that were pulled out while fixing the leak in the roof (not that we have actually been told it has been fixed or what the problem was). So it is now SEPTEMBER and painting started 31st JULY grrrrrrrrr.

On the brighter side, some time during the last few weeks of inactivity our Quantum Quartz kitchen benches have been installed and they look good. It has a covering on the top so it is hard to see it properly.

Anyway we are so angry at the moment it looks like it never going to be finished. Maybe we wont even be in by Christmas? The tiler is supposed to come on Monday to start the tiling even though the painting is not done so it will be interesting to see if he turns up.

Also the step down from the hall way into the garage is so big that it would not get a certificate of occupancy so now they have to build us a step. They are suggesting they use left over bricks with concrete on top to build this. Would this look ok? Or should it just be concrete with no bricks?