Christmas Carols For The Frustrated

T'was the week before Shutdown, and over at the house
Not a tradie was stirring, just ask my spouse.
The prewires were hung in the conduits with care,
In hopes that the gyprockers soon would be there.

The brickies were nestled all snug in their beds,
And cans of tuna fish danced in their heads.
Whilst tiles that were missing, and eaves that were bare,
And god only knows when the cladding be'd there.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
And complaints from the neighbours from delivery-men chatter.
Away to the window I wiped off the Goop,
But stepped on a nail pointing up to the roof.

In spite of the rain, which made us feel sick,
I knew in a moment it was our SS Nick.
We'd finally been put at the top of his list,
He whistled, and shouted. A hell of a twist!

"Now Tilers! now, Chippies! now, Sparkies and all!
Let's work on this house, and finish the walls!
To the top of the gables! to the top of the stairs!
Now dash away! Dash away, all ye Lockup nightmares!"

On the twelfth day 'fore Shutdown
My builder gave to me
Twelve days of rain excuses,
Eleven tradies missing,
Ten accountants a-leaping,
Nine salespeople dancing,
Eight courtesy calls missing,
Seven clients more important,
Six thieves a-lurking,
FIVE GOLDEN plumbers.
Four calls to voicemail,
Three French doors,
Two weeks of nothing,
And an invoice in my 'pear tree'!


Am sure you get the jist of how we're feeling about the absolutely woeful progress made on our build during the entire month of December, and it simply can't all be blamed on the weather:

• No garage roof
• No outdoor room roof
• No cladding
• No internal carpentry fixup
• No PCA inspection of frame/slab
• No prewiring
• No a/c ducting
• No stairs
• No gyprock
• No lockup

None of these even were started unlike most other double-storey builds that commenced near the same time as us in metro areas. Still, rather than the usual "rant-post" we decided to write something funny you can all relate to. :) Hope everyone gets some final Christmas Joy in their builds over the last few days before shutdown.

Best Wishes & Merry Christmas All!

Friday update- Eaves are on

After my little rant yesterday our SS assured me that the eaves would be installed today as well as the bi-fold doors.

Eaves were supposed to be installed and painting completed by today. After the no-show yesterday, we are behind, and our SS needs to inspect the eaves linings before he can order the painter to paint the eaves.

As I see it, they were almost done this morning at 10am and if our SS was onsite, then he could have inspected it and had the painter start on the job today. Sigh.

Can't complain though as the render was done to portico and eaves lining installed, better than no work, as has been the case in the last couple of weeks.

We are happy with the way the eaves brings out the dune colour of the gutters and fascia.

Once the painting of the eaves is completed then the scaffold will be taken down and we will get a better look of how the house is taking shape.

Hope everyone's build is progressing too :)

Sunshine and no work, aarrghh

This is a picture of my youngest daughter having a tantrum in the shops this morning. Really sums up what I am feeling like doing at this moment.

All this sunshine and only half a days work all week!

So frustrating!! We've been understanding and patient and all the rest...

Right now though, just really peed off that they have wasted a week of nothing on site and next week is forecasted to rain Monday, Tues, Wed so that probably means not much next week either.

The bi fold doors were delivered almost two weeks ago and they are still waiting to be installed. Surely you don't need a dry day to do this. If so why is our site so quiet with no one on site again.

Apologies about the rant everyone... We were supposed to have the eaves in last week and so far this week nada. Just the front portico rendering on Monday, which was all done by lunchtime.

On a funnier note, they've moved on from red bull and moved onto 'Congee'??? Anyone know what this is? Is this a new hip tradie drink?

Render unto Caesar

Well peeps, after another week of virtually nada, the rendering was applied to our portico today. This needed two fully dry days prior before it could proceed. Quite happy with the workmanship, actually seems to make the front entrance look larger.

The rear outdoor room posts were also supposed to be rendered at the same time, but looks like that didn't happen today. Maybe they ran out of Red Bull and ciggies. Ah, there's always tomorrow. :)

Finally something to update..

Its been a while since we've had something to update due to this constant rain.

Our roof finally went on on Friday. They did the entire house in a day apart from the garage. Our garage is not part of the main roof line, so they have to wait till the scaffold goes down to do the roof on the garage.

We were away last week, in beautiful Palm Cove, total bliss! The house was still in our thoughts, but the choice of cocktails was more important to us during that time, he he.

Now that we are back we are on the case and chasing up our SS on updates.

He's frustrated just as we are that not much can be done, with this horrible weather.

We just need two days of sun so that the bricks can be dry enough for them to render the portico and the outdoor room posts. Come on mother nature, do your thing!

After which the cladding can be installed and eaves linings completed and scaffolding dismantled and then onto the garage roof tiling. This all needs to happen after the rendering to avoid making a mess on the other surfaces.

Whilst I was there this morning the bi fold doors were delivered. We were originally told that this would not be delivered till later on.

SS mentioned that bi fold doors would be installed tomorrow and that front door would not be installed till after the Christmas break.

Does this mean that we are almost at lock up stage? Or not till after Christmas because of the lack of a front door?

Anyone else in this situation?

Here are some more pics...

Street view of the house with a roof :)

A close up, very happy with the gun metal colour

Beautiful bi fold doors, which will be stained in dark oak

Family pic in Palm Cove

Roof Tiles Delivered

Just a quick update, that the roof tiles arrived yesterday. We were hoping for this delivery at the start of the week and to see the roof tiles on the house. This horrible and unseasonal weather just keeps coming and getting in the way of any real progress on the house. Hoping and crossing all fingers for some sunny weather for next week.

How long does it take for them to install the roof tiles?
What happens next?
We need some information and some updates from our SS.

In the meantime here are some pics of the Bristle Gunmetal classic profile roof tiles.

Gunmetal colour

Nice Flat profile

Squeeky Clean

Popped over to the house this evening after work (isn't daylight savings great!) and we were pleased to see that the high-pressure brick/window clean had been completed. The Whitsunday Brampton's have come up really well with the subtle differences in tone distributed quite evenly across most of the walls as you can see in this pic:

Friday morning update

Did a quick drive past this morning to check how the progress was going.. there was also something that I wanted to check with the brickies regarding a dark patch of bricks in the front of the house. Was something that I couldn't stop thinking about all night.

We checked with the head brickie, who called himself 'the bossman'. As I didn't want to ignore it incase it was something that needed attention before it was too late.

Here is a pic of what stood out to me yesterday..see the dark patch under the scaffold on the left.

He assured me that it was OK and it was just mud from the rain we had recently. I feel a little relieved still weird that its only on this patch and not anywhere else. We'll see next week after they clean the bricks and make sure its not there.

Here are a couple of pics of what we saw today...

View from kitchen/dining to outdoor room and garden
Living room feature window, to get quote for plantation shutters..
Kitchen splashback window and to the right, butlers pantry

Bricked up to the roof here..the bit above the outdoor room will be cladded.

Happy weekend everybody, hope your builds are all coming along too..:)

Bricking Almost Complete

Went to the house yesterday and was great to see 5 brickies working away.
Looks like the bricking is almost complete, the portico is almost done and bricking is ¾ of the way up the front of the house. They have also bricked ¾ of the way up the right elevation.

Called our SS to get an update, he seems to think that they will complete bricking by tomorrow...

then the bricks need 4 days to dry and allow acid levels to settle. Next, fascia will be installed, scaffolding will then be taken down to allow for the bricks to be cleaned, all starting mid next week.

Tiling of the roof will start at the end of next week or start of the week after all weather depending.

So excited by all this news... when I think about the whole building process, we sometimes forget how much they have done in such a short time. They started on the site on the 31st August and two months later we might have a roof on. I think it's the waiting at the beginning that makes all of us who are building so anxious to get things happening to be able to move into our new homes! So far, have to give Metricon a big thumbs up.

Our neighbour who is building an Eden Brae house, started about 3 weeks before us and is having to chase Eden Brae for their bricks to continue. The neighbour on the other side is an owner builder and started almost 6 weeks before us is halfway with the bricking.

Guess that's the way the building game works, one big rollercoaster.

Anyway here are some pics of my trip there yesterday....

Front and right elevation bricking

Bricks progress, and later with scaffolding

Drove past early Thursday morning before work and took some pictures of the progress of the bricks.

Whilst we were there the scaffolding was being delivered, this is great news as hopefully this means that they will be progressing the bricks to the top. Guess this is the last time we will see the exterior of the house properly till its almost complete and they remove the scaffolding...no complaints we are very happy with the progress!

Here are some pictures of the bricking and the house with scaffold on at the end of the day...

Garage bricking

Our outdoor room, looking into the kitchen and dining room

View from our outdoor room

Scaffolding being delivered

The scaffolding of the front of the house

Really looks like a building site now:)

Bricking Started

After a couple of weeks of not much to report on and very ordinary weather ... Craig gave our SS a call to check when the bricking was due to start.

They started the following day (Friday) and there was one guy on site on Saturday morning...don't think he was there for long though as it rained for the remainder of the day.

We asked to meet our SS for the first time this morning to go through the house and talk about bricking timelines and also had a couple of questions for him. 7am meet at the house was what we agreed on.

Got Craig out of bed, got the girls out of bed, still in PJ's (the girls, not Craig) :), drove to the house and ... lots of brickies, but alas, no SS.

Craig phoned him and he said he was "crook" and would not make it there today. A call would have been nice. Lucky we don't live too far or we would have been crankier.

Nevertheless at least happy to see brickies working today and hopefully working through the rest of the week.

Here are some pics we took on the weekend of about 1½ day's work:

Bricks Delivered And A Sneaky View From Upstairs

Today we dropped by the house to see if bricks had been delivered, and indeed they had. A veritable truckload of them!

The Whitsunday Brampton close up. You can see an example of how great they will look once all finished on Megan and Stefan's blog.

Our eldest Mikaela checks the frames for correct alignment.

Looks like there has been lots of activity relating to plumbing during the week. All drains piped and connected. All external taps have copper pipes bent and soldered into place. All internal tap points have their tubing runs. I figured that recycled water is purple whilst the fresh supply is black. Yellow is a mystery, could be hot water specifically but I can't be sure yet.

Now for some shots from upstairs ... I mean, up-ladder. Sandrine was extremely concerned for the safety of ... her iPhone, not so much her husband ascending the rickety ladder to take these shots.

Something that Sandrine immediately noticed was the height at which this window sits was far higher than that in the display homes. Of course on checking the elevation plans, it's exactly what we've signed-off, however it's just another one of those small details you miss in the sea of information that you're confronted with and need to rush-rush, sign-sign, commit! The 3D walkthrough that Metricon has recently started offering on tender presentation would probably have been helpful in highlighting the above to us. Ah well, such is building. :)

Ensuite showing window-over-bath and potential mountain views in the distance.

Looking across the master suite from the ensuite.

Master suite mid windows with more potential views (dependant on property behind yet to be built).

The walk-behind wardrobe area. Whoa ... I'd better not step to the left too much or I'll be airborne!

That's all for now. Have a great long weekend everyone ... those states that have one :).