PC Aye Aye

Hi All,

Just a quick update on developments over the last week.

Last Friday morning Tyrrells performed a final inspection report on our house, which arrived by email on Saturday morning. In all there were 40 external observations and just over 100 internal observations! Thankfully, the majority of these were superficial - pertaining to painting and plastering quality issues, scuff marks, and miscellaneous fixups. Others, like "missing sink to main bathroom" and "ensuite shower wall ungrouted" we had not expected this late in the piece, particularly with PCI scheduled for Monday.

The PCI walkthrough with our SS went for over two hours, not surprisingly with so many items on the inspection report to review. Some of the more obvious items, including the two above, had been resolved by the time we arrived, which was a good sign. We also found plenty more examples of paint quality issues that neither Tyrrells nor the SS had noticed. You may recall that the sole painter assigned to our job took 6+ weeks - allegedly for a superior result - though even consistently clean lines between wall and ceiling were hard to come by. Some items our SS did not agree to, like conspicuous chipping on many of the Brampton bricks in visible areas (e.g. near front and rear entrances) - that were apparently within the "acceptable threshold" for this type of brick (future buildees take note!)

The good news was that we received assurances that the rectifications would continue over the coming days and that the council inspection would be booked. If that happens as planned, then next week should see bank inspection and final internal and external cleans. Fingers crossed for a handover in the next fortnight!

Wishing you all a very relaxing and safe Easter! :)

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:

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: