Breaking and Entering

Well there is not much to report or update from our last visit as we've just settled our bills with Di Lorenzo earlier this week.

I have let our SS know about this and he said he will organise the tiler to start working on them as soon as the order comes through.

We did, however, from our recent visit found that the back door was unlocked!  It appears to be inviting and beckoning to be broken into... (of course you wouldn't want this happen when the house is finished and ready to be lived in :)).

So this is a golden opportunity for me to take pictures of the interior of the house, including the kitchen!!

Kitchen reloaded!

Same kitchen with different angle :)

Above the fridge wine rack

I have had few people asking us about the location of this wine rack.  Refrigerator being the electrical nature as it is produces heat from the mechanical motor installed at the back of the fridge.  Some wine apparently can't be exposed to this sort of heat and will damage the content of the wine.

Obviously we didn't know about this as we rarely drink alcohol and all of our collection of wines are either gifts from friends or we actually bought them from the duty free shop at the airport because they are so cheap!  So despite the fact that we rarely drink alcohol, we still buy them just for the sheer decoration value out of it.

Moving on with the rest of the pictures...

Laundry up close and personal

President bathtub - Ensuite

Shower - Ensuite

Main Bathroom

Staircases

Entry to the main bedroom with the translucent glass door

I've also taken some picture of other things that happens around our place.

The wind has been quite strong this week that it blew the porta-loo outside out of it's place.

The bridge behind our place is also nearing it's completion.

We're in the news!

Well, not us personally anyway, but The Ponds as one of the newest suburb is.  Here is an article from SMH that compares Sydney: Old vs. New.  There is another mention also in this article.

It's great to see that The Ponds as a new suburb has been getting a lot of mention in the public news and even more so when comparing The Ponds and all the newest suburb around the city with the oldest suburb in the history of Sydney, The Rocks.  The article mention that The Ponds has a lot of places and lots of green grass out and about but The Rocks is just kilometers of paved and concrete all the way with not much grass on it's footpath.  Maybe trees but even comparing The Rocks to a residential suburb, there is not much competition in that department also.

The Ponds is a new suburb with a new living concept.  We were handed a guideline by the developer at the time of purchase and we have to adhere guideline in order to have our house build.  It's a great concept and I don't mind it at all.  I think it's great to have a uniformed design with the other houses in the area. I guess one of the reason is to keep the value of the area at a certain level, which is not a bad thing really.

It will be a massive change of lifestyle for us as a family having to move from where we were living before in the inner west, all the way to the north west.  I can already imagine some of the sentence that I will say when we move in: "It used to take us around 15 - 20 minutes plus 5 minutes walking distance from home to the station.  Now it takes us around an hour to get to work!"  or something to that effect.

I've already mentioned this very same reasoning in one of my early post.  Reading that article made me think and asked myself "Why are we moving to The Ponds?" and at this point I forgot that I've posted the answer before.  I'm glad that the very same reason was still my answer if we were asked that question again.

I guess in addition to that reasoning is the appeal of the community that draws people to the suburb and to the lifestyle that we are longing for.  It's true that I've already met and know our neighbors even before we move in!

My office is situated within 5 steps to The Rocks literally and some of my photography work has also include The Rock as one of my favorite location.   I don't think it's necessary to compare The Rocks and The Ponds or the other new suburb.

The Rocks has it's own historical value also that I quite like it the way it is.  It's true that some of the redevelopment maybe has destroy some of the lifestyle value there.  Something that exist in 1973 (even before I was born!) may not be there anymore.  Having said that some are still there, like the convenience store around the corner near the Australian Hotel.  Or the connecting alley along George St at The Rocks.  I hope the local council can still maintain and keep it's historic value for time to come.

Help!! We're locked out!!

We are now officially locked out from our own home.  At least the lock up stage can now be verified with having the locked door at the front and back...

It was quite a late visit on Saturday night as we waited for the kids to be fresh before we can do any activities during the day. When we get to our house it was already quite dark making taking pictures very difficult. I had my big flash with me but not sure if it's going to be enough. But I took some pictures anyway just to see how it turns out.

We noticed that we now have front entry door!! Well let's just say that we now have doors all around the entrance to the house. The doors were locked and obviously, it's not possible for us to go inside now unless we find a way to sneak in! But we didn't. We checked all around the house and all doors are locked securely including the bi-folds door is now covered with some panels.

So I guess it's going to be difficult from here on to gain entry to the house unless the tradies leave one of the door open...

Still, I've noticed that the walls have been painted and the cornices are up also. Not sure if they are finished as it was too dark to see inside the house. My guess is from the last update, they should now have started on the staircase.

Some picture for illustration entertainment:

Laundry door

Is that our translucent internal door??  Why is it doing outside??

Yay!! Our front entry Windsor 6G has been delivered and installed... We can't get in now :(

Cleaned Bricks + Scafolds + Air Conditioning + Lock Up

Wow it has been a crazy and busy times for us recently that I've neglecting to update this blog.  I'll try to update this as I go in a small chunk but at the time of this post, there may be about three weeks of back log of stuff happening to our house.

 

To summarise the update quickly, here is what has been happening:

 

• Bricks are now cleaned
• Scafolding has come down
• Air conditioning internal unit is installed
• Insulation looks like done
• Electrical wiring done
• Eaves done
• Roof done
• Cladding done
• Gyprocking is well underway
• Bi-Folding door is delivered and installed but no glass yet

About a couple of weeks ago, we finally got our SS to agree for us to come and visit for a walkthrough with him.  We told him about some contract variation that is missing and our SS efficiently fixed that for us the next day.  Wifey also pointed out a strangely shaped looking metal that looks like it's bent in the ceiling of the garage and he fixed that also.

We have also been billed for the lock up.  Metricon's definition of lock up is quite funny in my humble opionion.  Apparently their definition of a lock up is without front and rear entry doors.  (It's true, I've read the contract again and I just couldn't believe my eyes!)  So all the while we are at lock up stage, we can still roam free inside the house...

Anyway one thing that I'd like to comment on, although our SS is quite elusive with us requesting to come and visit (whilst the head office seemed to think we should be able to visit anytime we like as it is our house), he is a man of his word.

We asked him if it is possible for us to come and clean the house from the dust before the gyprock goes up.  Like Thigee, we also like to keep our house cleaned even if we don't see it and all the dust are within the walls.  But our SS assured us that he builds our house like he builds his own home and he will get the carpenter to do an entire house sweep including the insides of where the walls should be.

He kept that promise!  We came back the next week and they actually DID cleaned and sweep the entire place!  The kids also loved the place and run around nails free!  Two thumbs up to our SS.

We also saw that the gyprock has been delivered as well.

So here are some recent photos from our visit.

I haven't had time to process the gyprock photos yet so I promise that I'll do that in the next post.

Previous week after they took down the scafolding

Internal Air conditioning unit installed



Alien come and invaded our place in one night!



What a MESS!!! Kids please clean up your toys...



Feels like I'm inside the tummy of a dinosaur!  I was eaten alive!




Gyprock before it's up on the wall




See what I mean being inside the tummy?!



Bi-Folding door that would cost us around $4k to upgrade!

Cladding done and a look of our Bi-Folding door from the backyard

Geeky stuff.  Where the network switch will go.  Love the color of the bricks. I guess we didn't make the wrong choice then. :)  Don't you think so?



Our Home



Honey.... The Roof's Leaking...

It's been a while since I last posted our latest update.  We've been quite busy recently with a lot of things.  From children getting the winter season disease, work, family events, newborn niece, relatives wedding, bank drama, etc.  Hectic!  But the most important thing of all, our son has been accepted to go to the primary school close to our house.  Yay!!  We now look forward to the orientation days in November.

Still we are glad now that all of the issues are behind us and we can start again look forward to getting our home to finish.

It's not that we haven't been visiting (how can we not??) to our soon-to-be house at all.  We have been visiting every weekend but I have been failing to write about it... at least until today.

During our visits, we've met with a lot of our soon to be neighbors as well.  At least by now, we know who is going live next to and behind us.  They are all very lovely people.  We thought that the block next to us was empty and it could be a while before any construction activity can start.

The corner block next to us is drawing their own plan for their custom design house.  Apparently they have a lot of restrictions due to the conditions of a corner block.  I was told a very long while ago that you need to have two facades that face the street.  Also it would seem that you still need to comply to the setbacks guide on all sides including the ones that comes in angle.  Sounds a lot more hectic than our build!

We also met with the young family next to us on the other side.  Similar to our situation they also have two kids and looking forward to go move in to The Ponds because of the community vibe.  Also another not quite so important but it kind of is, they are also building with Metricon!  They should already have signed the contract at the time of this post.  They were asking a lot of questions in relation to our building experience so far to which I just point them to my blog site where I've been sharing the news.

Really this has become a nice area to live in and although we haven't live there officially but it feels like we already are!

So what's been happening with our build?

First of all, the bricking should have been finished by now.  Well at least that's what our SS has said.  For about two to three weeks all he can say was, we are still working on the bricks and due to the wet weather this has been a slow process.

Nevertheless, I can see during one of my visit that the gutter and fascia are up.  So they have been doing some work after all.

Here are some of the pics from that visit.

A multi colored bricks for the front pilar?  I thought we suppose to be rendering this?

Bridge construction near our house

The bridge construction seems to be coming along nicely.  At this rate, I think the bridge should already finish by the time we move in.

Our SS also told us that the roof tiling has commenced and we should expect that to finish within the week depending on the kindness of mother nature with the rain of course.

Soon when the roof is up, we can do a house walk through.  Or so I've been told.

It has been raining a lot lately and getting access to the house without getting wet and mud all over the shoes can be very tricky indeed... I say where there is a will, there is always a way.  After wrapping my shoes with plastic material, off I went inside.  Although I know I'm not suppose to.

Here is our roof.  Delivered and not secured...

Has someone been cooking BBQ in my study room!?  Or is this their heater?? Our SS is going to hear about this!

Looks like this part is almost done

This part hasn't but the sarking is there?

It is so good to see at least one part is nearly complete and it starts looking like a proper house now

I came up to this scaffolding area via the main bedroom and through the en-suite window.  I happened to look at the area where it is suppose to be our shower.  I was told that the plumbing work has all been completed but I am pretty sure that they have missed an extra shower head that we requested in our contract.

I guess I will be letting our SS know about this before they close the entire wall.

So that's it for now.  Apologies for the long reading and thank you for reading up to here.

My neighbors, if you are reading this.  I hope to see you all on the weekend.

Ciao.

Tile Selection

We had our tile selection appointment at Di Lorenzo in the morning.  So off we went there to spend more money away.

Long story cut short, and as most of us would have done, we ended up upgrading the standard tile selection to something "more".  Thigee and Ben have warned us on what to expect at our appointment and it is pretty much happened exactly what Thigee had said.

Although we feel that we are getting to the point where we are about to blow our budget for the construction, we also didn't feel that we wanted to re-tile the house again in the future.  So taking all that into our consideration this is what we came up with:

Kitchen splashback

Ensuite - Bathroom - Powder room floor tiles
Size 3x6

Feature wall tiles - Mosaic - Dark Mocha

Putting it all together
There is a white wall tiles here but it's so white it is almost invisible

Tiles for balcony

After spending nearly two hours at Di Lorenzo and some more money of course, we made our way to our soon to be house to check out what has been happening.

It was quite muddy with all the rain that has been happening during the week, but I say where there's a will, there is a way!  The site like always it's locked from the front however the side fence is always left open from some reason (makes us wonder why do they even put a lock on the front fence anyway?  Beats the purpose doesn't it?), so my wife got some left over or unused block for us as a stepping stone.

When we were inside, this is what we see and finally I got some time to go upstairs too...

Wifey wanted to post in front of the house before going in

Never got this properly until this day

Sliding door to outdoor room

Sitting room

Wall opening to study room

Entry to the main bedroom

Soon to be ensuite

Hall way in the main bedroom

Leisure room

After we were satisfied with what we see, we met with our next door neighbor just as we were about to leave.  We had a good chat with them about their block of land and apparently they can only visit their land once a month as they are working in Western Australia at the moment.  They are also getting some custom design house for the build due to the shape and some restrictions on their block.  Apparently they have a lot of set backs and additional requirement due to the fact they have a corner block.

Not long after, we were joined by Phil and Bel from the Reedman home!  It was quite a busy and beautiful day really.  It is not surprising that everyone is out and about to visit to their soon to be home.  Phil and Bel are also building a custom design house.

We are really looking forward to move in to our new house now.

PS:  The time of this writing is actually two weeks late.  I started writing the post at the 18 June but never got around to complete nor publish it until today.  I feel so very slack but hopefully I can pick up once my bank drama is over!  Next post I will tell all about it...