Thursday 30 August 2012

We have tradies onsite!!

So I assume the piers are complete, went down just before 12pm to do the measure and had my fingers crossed we would be under 80lm...... Had a laugh with the concreter's and then down to business, 59 holes in at 74.6lm so a minor bit of cash back but better than going over.

They told me that they did a job at Harrington Park last week that on the first pier hole was 0.9m but ended in a total of 161lm with some major depth before they hit solid ground.

Pics below, might get some of concrete over the weekend. They said the slab would be poured maybe Tuesday arvo but if not would be done on Wednesday.

Fence up



View from the Garage

View from Alfresco

Concreter ready to measure

Alfresco Pier


Wednesday 29 August 2012

Movement at the station!!

Got a letter advising we have moved to the Construction Group, gave them a call and was told we have been scrapped ::celeb::

Then got told to hold and was being transferred to the Slab Supervisor, he told me that piering is scheduled for Thursday and to be onsite around 12pm tomorrow if I want to verify the depth

I went past in the dark to take a look, not a decent pic on the phone, will post up more after my visit tomorrow...

I had Monday off work and actually complained to the Sales guy they better do something this week or I'll not be happy

Friday 24 August 2012

Tile Shopping

Took a trip to the Tile Shop today to check out some ideas before we set out at choosing our final tiles and designs..... Wow a heap to choose from which I was surprised about in the Std Builder selections below are some of the tiles we like

Selection 1

Selection 2

Floor Selections


Sunday 12 August 2012

Site visit, anything happening??

Well decided to take a trip out to see if anything has been going on out at the block........ nothing new, last time I went to the block there were some pegs (about 3-4 weeks back) that I had no idea about (One lot on the boundry and one lot not) but as I took my Dad out he explained they looked like the pegs that the builder would put in place for the tradies to measure of for the cut and fill and then the peiring and slab pour

Measured out the front of the block and looks like the developers tree will be either on or next to where my driveway will be so have requested it is moved 2m East




:)

Monday 6 August 2012

Letter of Commencement - 20 Days till they have to start!!

Well the Letter giving the Green Light to begin by my Lender arrived in my inbox at 4:25pm so emailed it my CSO at the builder. Gave her a call to advise I had emailed it through and told me they will now begin within the next 20 days....... YAY

Happy to be at the point we are not long away from something happening at the block :D

Friday 3 August 2012

The Decision.....

Well I call up Monday and spoke to the GM again and questioned a couple of other things that were on the last variation letter that I thought should have been previously costed into the build of the house. He agreed and organised for those to be removed.

We decided on Sunday that we would move forward how it is, take the compensation, and get everything happening. We are pretty much over the whole paperwork side of it and really did not want to deal with anymore head against the brick wall moments.

They allowed my to go into the Office on Monday go through it to find out where we had to sign and initial and then take it home to my wife to do the same that evening. The only issue was that I didn't know that the signature had to be witnessed so with no JP available after 6pm at such short noticed meant either a trip to the Courthouse or the local Display Home the next day.

When I got home we went through the Colour selections booklet as the CSO had just put a post-it on the front to tell us to initial and date each page. As we went through it we noticed that there was a post-it on the page for the Laundry Benchtop saying we had to change the finish of it as that finish was not offered in that Brand ::angry:: Really not happy that we were not contacted about this earlier as it meant that on Tuesday my wife was at the display home deciding on either changing the finish or the brand/colour with me on the phone looking at the colours she wanted help with online (not ideal)

She had to leave the Contract's there and they were delivered to Head Office 9am today.

Around 10:30am I walked down to the office and grabbed my copy and headed back to work to scan everything to send to the lender. Got to the Contract page and no copy of our signatures, thought this was strange, called up to ask for a copy that we had signed and told no that will be fine for your lender....

Called the lender, nope need FULLY SIGNED and Witnessed contact (could be a photocopy or scan). Called back Allworth and was told that they had "Gone out of their way to help me get them signed" and that "If you had come into the office with my wife then I would have full signatures". This pretty much got me very upset due to the fact we had not come in on the Friday due to an issue we had not been told about. Rather than go NUTS down the phone I was a little short and ended the conversation.

After having a vent to a work mate I decided it was time to call the GM again to try to get exactly what I needed, I didn't want the full 40 pages all I needed was 1 page........ Spoke to him on the phone, explained that I needed that one or I was going to have to stuff around getting signatures certified etc and basically waste time. He told me he would sort it out and within 20 minutes I had an email with the scanned page I was after.

In that conversation he told me that he had noticed that I was an active member on the HomeOne forum, which I had a bit of a chuckle about as I have been pretty straight about everything I have posted there and on this blog and knew what he has viewed and could view in the future. He did agree with me that the worst part of the journey is usually the Office stage.

I personally hope they ALL builders read Blogs, Forums and very Product Review sites and use them to improve the aspects of the business that customers complain about.

Personally I think there would more than likely only be 2-3 small things that could have been done through the Head Office paper work stage that would have kept me happy and no venting required.

I have my fingers crossed that as soon as we start down the construction phase of the build we will have mostly happy things to report. I know that my 3 year old son is looking forward to seeing Concrete Trucks and "Diggers" at our site, so am hoping we can all have fun from here on in :)

Soory about all the text, should have some pics to post up in a few weeks ::cool::