January

We came back from a family holiday in the second week in January to find the hydronic heating guys roughing in the pipes for the radiator panels.  We were also excited to see the electricians had been to finalise the rough-in of the power and that the plaster had been delivered ready for installation over the insulation which also happened in our absence.  All in all there was quite a lot done in a week or two.

We met with our site supervisor to discuss any last details before the plaster went on.  His advice was that if we were thinking of any more electrical or plumbing inclusions now was the time to speak up as it would be cheaper and easier to install than it would be after plaster. 

As it happened we did have a couple of things.  We wanted an extra extraction fan in the kitchen, over our second oven is not close to the range hood and has a pyrolytic cleaning system which tend to smoke up.  The second inclusion was the insulating of our downstairs living room to dampen any sound transfer.  We asked for insulation in the interior walls and ceiling and sound resistant plaster to line the walls.  Both inclusions were accommodated quickly and with little trouble to us. 

Internal frame looking from the front door to the back of the house.  We can really start to see how big our house is.

Looking at our kitchen and dining room insullated and  with the plaster already delivered.

Front of house with roof finished an half of the rendering complete.

A pre plaster inspection was then carried out by our home inspectors which again found a relatively small number of faults which were attended to before the plaster was put on.

Lock up- December

We hear from the site supervisor that he is aiming to be at lock up before Christmas, this feels like it might not be possible.  The Hebel has been installed on the top level but the roof for the lower back half of the house is not yet built, never mind tiled.  There are some missing windows and the external doors aren't fixed in place.

Then towards the middle of December there is a flurry of work.  There are fixing carpenters installing doors and robes inside the house.  There is more rendering, electrical and air conditioning works .  Finally as the last week before Christmas closes in, exterior scaffolding comes down and roof scaffolding installed.  The roof frame goes up and within days of Christmas the tiles are on.  WE GOT TO LOCK UP!! 

Top and bottom with Hebel installed but back section without a roof.

With roof trusses on the back section.

With roof tiles in time for Christmas!

...And from the front.

Sure we are without a proper front door but we can still call it lock up.

We meet with our site supervisor who tells us that we will have workers back on site the week after New Years Day.  He also gives us an approximate completion date of late March.  Will we be in before Easter??? Stay tuned!

Playing Catch-Up: November

Ok... I am a bad, bad blogger.  From what I know of blogging the key to a well followed and good blog is the frequency of posts... on this point I clearly failed. In my defence I can only offer the following:  late last year got busy not least because- in the midst of building a house and running a business and trying to do Christmas some kind of justice in our temporary digs- I got pregnant.  So.. In the interest of completeness I offer the following catch up posts:

November

I last left you promising  a post showing our roof tiles and waiting for our frame inspection.  A previous post explained our philosophy on hiring an independent building inspector so I won't go into it again. 

The report came back with a relatively small list of defects and fixes.  The thing we were most relieved about was there were no mention of any defects with the slab.  The defects were mostly with the frame and after notifying  our site supervisor the carpenters were back on site pretty quickly to  deal with the issues.

Plumbers and heating and cooling guys make an appearance and rough in the air conditioning  and the  plumbing for upstairs and the walls.  The roof is readied for the solar hot water system too. Also the green wrapping so familiar to those of you who, like us, have followed other CG building blogs now covers the external frame.

Green wrapping in preparation fo the Hebel

After that it's not long before we see the Hebel on site.  I had expected big trucks and cranes but in reality the Hebel is light enough for one guy with a small fork lift to take the bundles of Hebel panels of the truck by himself.  It occurs to us as we watch the Hebel being put on that it should probably be thought of a bit like a concrete cladding.  This comes as a surprise realisation to us (who knows why it hasn't occurred to us before) as we watch the guys install four horizontal rails on the lower exterior frame and then bolt in each Hebel panel to the rails.  I suppose if we had really thought about it we would have worked out though Hebel is concrete and therefore hard like brick, the prefabricated nature of the material makes it's installation much more like aluminium cladding.  A small but interesting realisation for us only because until now I haven't really heard it described as cladding at all.

Hebel being installed on the blindside of the house where the hot water service, airconditioning and heating units will be.

Hebel finished on the bottom

From the front of the driveway, you can see the roof trusses ready for installation to the left of the house.

Frame and Windows- Things we love this week

After a week delay whilst we waited for our joists and roof trusses the site has kicked back into life with the frame going up and the windows being delivered and some even being installed.  We have started to get a real appreciation for the size of the rooms and are most impressed with the loftiness of our upgraded ceiling heights.

From the front.

The best part has been hanging out at the folks place and watching all the work going on next door.  Our vantage point has allowed us to see how the framers  have put together each wall on the ground before standing them all up.  Kind of fascinating for construction-geeks like us.  

The neighbours balcony proves an excellent place to watch it all come together.

The roof tiles are going on next (actually now- there will be another post soon) and it's all fingers crossed for the hebel to go on at the end of next week.  

We hired an independent building inspector and they did the Frame Stage inspection yesterday.  I will keep you posted on the report which we should have by the weekend.

Slab down, frame up.

We are moving along at a cracking pace! Last week the site was leveled, the drains and various other conduits were put in place and the form work for the slab (including the mesh and waffle) was ready to go.  This week the slab was poured and the framers have started.  I expect that by the end of the day our ground floor will be done.  A small delay in the availability of the joists means the site will be quiet for a week or so.  Having said that we have been pleasantly surprised at the rate at which the project is moving so far. In fact we went away leaving only uneven ground and when we came back a couple of days later they were pouring the slab.  (That's also why I don't have any pictures of the work in between sorry about that).

From the front you can see the slab and half the ground floor framing.

A shot from the neighbours balcony. Fortunately the neighbours are also my parents so they have an excellent vantage point to watch all the action on the site.

It is wonderful to see the rooms, windows, doors and corridors take shape.  What has been left in most part to our imaginations is taking form and becoming  reality before our eyes.  It's very satisfying indeed.

We engaged New Home Inspections (NHI) this week who will come in to report on the quality of the build at the completion of various stages during  the project.  It seems as though they were already engaged by CG to do our house inspections. NHI will be taking us on as the client instead which means we will pay NHI directly.  More about this in the learnings.

This week I will go through all the post contract changes we have made (again) to make sure we have a matching building variation on file.

This weeks learnings:

When we started this process we read the blogs of those who built before us and were determined to engage a building inspector.  We realised that we were not qualified to necessarily know a defect when we saw one and wanted the peace of mind of knowing that we had hired someone who did. It is fair to say we allowed for an inspector in both our budget and our thinking processes.

Despite all of this when it came to booking the inspector and informing CG there was a bit of a psychological hurdle: the issue of trust in our builder.  How do you tell your builder you want an independent inspection without implying that you don't trust them to complete the work properly and according to standard? For us the answer was to change the way we thought about the independent inspections and in a nutshell this is what it comes down to:

We trust the independent inspection reports will come back with a big tick and hardly any defects. If there are defects we trust they will be resolved.  For us hiring an inspector is not about a lack of trust in Carter Grange; it's all about having another pair of expert eyes on the job so potential and real problems can be resolved quickly and with minimal effort. And whether you are a builder or an owner a quick resolution is always a good thing.

The build starts.

There is movement at the site this week as the earthworks have finally started.  When we last posted we had expected the demolishers any day but due to illness  and mechanical failure it took a good couple of weeks before the old house was totally demolished.  The house came down eventually and are pleased to show you a clear site.

Our empty site looking from the front to the back of the block.

....And looking from the back corner of the block to the front.

The electrical pit is also in and we have a new water meter due to our old leaking meter finally giving up after it's protective front fence came down.

 After demolition CG needed a second site survey before they could deliver a more definitive site cost and final plans.  When the final plans came there were a couple of things for us to query.  The most important being the excavation cut and fill line which seemed to have moved to a more cut and less fill option.  We were surprised when we realised this change had been made as we had voiced our preference for a less cut/more fill option from the beginning. In fact our tender and contract agreements had made provision for more piers along with other concrete works that allowed for the less cut/more fill scenario yet no one had mentioned the change from contract to final plans.

After a relatively quick disccussion with the CG team we sorted it out and have our cut/fill line where we want and a variation that includes some additional earthworks.  We were told that we would not have to re-engineer the slab (we feared we would) which leads us to believe the line was moved by mistake on the drawing and the post-demo building variation  had assumed there would be and excavation with less cut/more fill all along.  In any case it was all sorted before the CG team came on site. I mention it here to illustrate the value of looking over everything carefully and many times before you start construction.

Hopefully earthworks and set-out will be complete by the end of the week with drains and concreting next week.

This week's lessons:

• If you are starting a new house and have never been the kind of person to keep organised paper work now is the time to change your ways.  The process of signing off final plans and checking building variations has required quite a bit of back and forth on older and newer versions of the same document.  You need to have some kind of system to keep it in-line.  Ours is just a simple lever arch file with the contract, specifications and plans all separated out but even our simple system has made the process of checking off documents easier.

• Check the plans, check the plans and then check them again.  Have a look at the whole plan then have a look at each part.  Read the side notes and the notes at the bottom and figure out what every symbol means.  Read the building variations and compare it to the original tender and contract documents.  And when you think you have checked it all... check one more time tomorrow to be sure.  
  
  Here is part of the list of things that were discovered by both CG and us in the time between the contract signing and final plan signing:  a window that should have been double glazed marked as only single glazed; not enough room in the kitchen joinery to accommodate the depth of a large fridge (we added it in); provision for only one external water tap (we added another 2); not enough kitchen cabinet handles allowed for; the water tank we chose was discontinued and replaced with a smaller one (we found out when we double checked the size on the drawing); our preferred meter box location was out of regulation; our final cut and fill line was further down our slope than we had agreed on in our contract...etc, etc.  You get the picture.  CG do their best to  marry contract with tender and then again with final plans but you can't assume they will catch everything. 
  
  And if you get sick of checking have a think about how much it will cost you to make changes once you're in the middle of building.... 

    

And so it begins...

We live in a suburb east of Melbourne and we had a problem. We need more space and a bathroom that was built this millennium. There were too many "pro's" for staying exactly where we were and so many "con's" for trying to renovate our single story 60's house. We tried (we really did) but it took us 18 months of designing and redesigning before we threw our hands up and turned to looking seriously at new builds. Enter the Carter Grange Radisson 35. Click here to see the standard Radisson 35.

There are couple of key differences in the standard Radisson design and our house. Firstly we cut out the garage and added another bedroom and walk-in-linen downstairs.  Secondly we have turned the kitchen bench into an island bench that runs the length rather than the width of the open-plan family/dining room.  I don't want to go too far into the details of our house design on this post. I mention the differences only to demonstrate one of the key reasons we went with Carter Grange: we wanted enough flexibility in the design to have a house that suited our lifestyle BUT we didn't have the budget (or time) to go the complete custom build.  This is exactly what the Carter Grange marketing tell us they are: a custom volume builder. 

Cut to today.... the deposit has been paid, the contract has been signed.  All we need to do now is have the old house demolished and the electrical pit put in and (fingers crossed) we will be able to start.  

Everyone keeps saying how it exciting it is but honestly all I can see is the work that needs to be done before we can move into our new house. On the bright side every little bit brings us closer to that moment.

This week's learnings

• Double check your application and contract contact details- we missed a single character in our email address on the electrical pit application and now the standard 20 days for work completion doesn't start until this week even though we made the initial application more than a month ago.