Monday 19 September 2011

Shelves, shelves and more shelves

... and now it looks like I've spelt shelves wrong even though I know I haven't!


The 300mm deep pantry shelves:

The 450mm deep pantry shelves:

The linen cupboard shelves:

And Brad's BIR shelf:

Whatever shall I do with all this storage space? ;-)

Thursday 15 September 2011

Windows and doors and shelves... oh my!

Well, technically the windows were in the last post and the shelves aren't in yet but we have doors!


My favouritest ('tis so a word!) internal door is pictured below:

It's my favouritest because it will keep the funky odours of 'big-boy-toilet-smell' away from my towel in the ensuite!


If you squint and peer closely at the screen, you should be able to see where some of the multitude of pantry shelves are going to go:

Whatever will I do with all that storage space?

Friday 9 September 2011

Windows and doors are in and we're (almost) locked out

We went out to check out the local spring fair and found windows and doors as well! Luckily they hadn't locked all the doors so we were able to get in and have a look at all the pretty new cornices and painted ceilings (there aren't any photos of the inside 'cos the camera battery died).


The front of the house:

Down the alfresco side from the back of the garage:

The games room and family room's sliding doors:Woohoo! Getting closer and closer to being finished!

Thursday 8 September 2011

Is it just me or does this look really stupid?

The ceiling is up in the alfresco area and due to having to have different material for the eaves than the ceiling, there is a bit of an issue. I know that the cornices are made of the same sort of stuff as the ceiling sheeting and need to be protected from the weather (hence stopping at the edge of the ceiling sheeting) but this just looks plain stupid.


Especially this:


Why put a piddly little amount of cornice on one corner of a post? Looks like someone forgot to chip extra plaster off the pillar.



Maybe stupid isn't the right word. This just looks wrong ... unfinished ... tacky ... crappy ... unprofessional ... I could keep going but I think you get the message.



Off to make another call to the customer liaison ...

Tuesday 6 September 2011

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Oh wait, it's just the ceilings...

Yep, the ceilings are finally in. Most of them don't have cornices yet but what a difference it makes. Now I can actually see how much more area of wall I'm going to have to paint because I thought raised ceilings were a good idea.

Seriously though, the ceilings look great and I'm so glad we raised the height of them in the family/kitchen/dining ... it makes the whole area look bigger and seems to let more light in (even though the windows are exactly the same size as they would have been if the ceilings were lower .. go figure!)

Here's the kitchen:

(with Drew photobombing again! He popped up from behind the wall just as I took the photo)

From the back alfresco corner:

Looking in the front door:

Totally plastered!

...in the wall kind of way (although the home theatre 'saga' could yet drive me to drink!)

All the rooms have now been floated and it's looking great. They've done a really good job (for the most part) which should make it nice and easy to paint once we get to it.

The boys' bedroom hallway:

The laundry:

The kitchen:

Ceilings should be in next week then lock up soon after...

Monday 5 September 2011

Communication is not their strong point...

I mentioned in the previous post that Peter and I checked all the power/data points to make sure they were all in the right places and it turned out one of them wasn't (in the right place, that is) and one was missing all together. In the Home Theatre, the electricians had managed to get one of the power points and one of the conduits for surround sound swapped around. The missing one (in the study) was quickly rectified and does not form part of the epic to follow.

Now, we noticed this on Sunday when the offices are, of course, closed. So first thing Monday morning, I rang head office to let them know so they could fix it before it was rendered and plastered. Peter drove out to the house specifically to catch up with the plasterers and to let them know not to render that wall.
The plasterers' response?

"No-one's told us anything so we're just going to keep going."

Fair enough I thought. Besides, they weren't anywhere near doing those two walls at that point, so I figured it would be okay.

Head office's response?

"No, they're in the right spots. You're just reading the plan wrong."

Um, hello? Isn't this my house that we have placed items where 'we' wanted them? And I have written evidence in the form of an email addressing the query we raised immediately after we received the final plans. As well as the fact that two different people at your firm, one in pre-start and one in sales, have looked at the plan and confirmed that it would be done the way we requested even though they wouldn't be changing the plans just to make the arrows clearer. Well obviously they should have changed the plan as the two points were installed incorrectly.

So, after a bit of discussion, phone calls over several days and my adamant refusal to accept a draw-wire run down the cavity wall as a solution (we paid for a conduit for my Peter's surround sound and dammit all, we're getting a conduit in the internal wall; not in the north-facing external wall!), they agreed that it would be fixed.

Fast forward to Friday: I popped past the house on my way back from stealing borrowing some parts from another plant, to find that the plasterers were doing the final plaster float in the home theatre. I noticed that the wires still hadn't been corrected so I asked them to not float that particular wall until it was fixed. Their response was, once again, that no-one had told them anything so they were going to finish it all. If it needed fixing after that, the builders would have to get the plasterers to come back and re-float the little section involved (which is exactly what I was trying to avoid).

After attempting to kill them all via telepathy/telekinesis and failing miserably, I hightailed it back to my office and phoned the 'customer liaison officer'. Told her that it still hadn't been fixed and that the plasterers were preparing, probably at that very moment, to plaster over the whole area (wah, wah, wah etc.)

She made some phone calls and got back to me to let me know that the electricians had been very busy and were in fact on their way there 'right now' to fix the problem. Okay, I thought. Hopefully they'll make it in time so I don't have a stupid little section of uneven plaster that will drive me nuts every time I walk into the room for the next 15 years.

Buh-booowww!

This is what greeted me when I went to check over the weekend: Not.Happy.Jan! It's too shallow, meaning that the render/plaster has nothing but PVC pipe to stick to, has been gouged out of the freshly floated plaster and is going to annoy the daylights out of me forevermore!

Monday morning: back on the phone to head office to complain nicely request a meeting with the site supervisor to 'discuss' this issue (as well as others that we found: power points completed covered by render/plaster, tops of other conduits filled in with render/plaster, conduits not accessible from ceiling space due to be placed behind ceiling beams).

After being told that she 'found it very difficult to believe that the plasterers would have done that' and that the new site supervisor was unavailable for the rest of the week, I asked to go further up the management chain and miracle of miracles, the site supervisor was suddenly available that afternoon.



I went out to the house to meet with him and this is what we found:I started focusing my mental powers on ensuring that the smarmy little plasterers would never be able to father children or enjoy sex ever again, but I don't think my ball-shrivelling powers extend beyond my line of sight ... bugger!


The site supervisor, Ken, agreed with me that it was totally unacceptable and assured me that it would be fixed properly this time so I left it a few days and checked again. This is the third version:

Slightly better but apparently they won't be re-floating that whole section; just the channel. Hmmm, we'll see about that ...