The builders are back

After nothing for the first half of January. the builders are back and things continue to move forward.

The external plumbing has been run (our nice landscaping is a bit of a mess around the house again), the air-conditioning ducts have been cut into the plaster, and the wooden floor has been installed and the cabinetry is starting to be installed!

For a variety of reasons (mostly poor estimating by the cabinet maker – it’s complicated) we ended up with spotted gum veneer vanities in both bathrooms rather than solid spotted gum. Don’t like the look of them much although when the bathrooms are kitted out, I suspect I’ll get used to it, otherwise Mark might have to put new fronts on them! And they have ridiculously small drawers. No dimensions on the drawings that we approved, and only two drawers shown, so I guess they are per specification, but there’s just no reason for them to be so small – floating vanities don’t need that much space under them! Should have scaled the drawing, but really thought this would be pretty standard and wouldn’t need to. Oh well, when Mark replaces the drawer fronts he make bigger drawers!

Cladding

The saga with the cladding continues – the caulking folk came out for the brickwork and took a look at the steel cladding, and claimed there was no suitable black caulking – in other words no way were they going to do it.

The builder is trying to come up with flashing solutions – flashing will need to be cut around each rib – a big job, and there’s no scaffolding now. And yes, he’ll match the colour and finish. Without taking off the cladding, and starting again, the flashing will likely also have to fastened from the outside, riveted onto the ribs? Hope that doesn’t look too odd. Nightmare job. At the moment, we just want the easiest solution so that we can get in. Fingers crossed it doesn’t hold up occupancy. No argument with the builders that a solution is required, so that’s good. And they are trying to find something that will look good.

We’ve checked with the building inspector, and he’s happy with caulking or flashing, but confirms he will not pass it as it is. Still happy that he works for us, rather than the builder.

Security System

We’ve been busy too. The new lock has now been fitted to the gate (although only worked after a liberal dose of WD40 – great stuff).

We’ve installed part of the security system and its up and working – a couple of outdoor cameras and a couple indoor and a gerry rigged mobile wifi system and we’ve now got remote monitoring and know when someone turns up to site. We were keen to get it in before all the appliances and fittings turned up, and its working brilliantly.