Facade update

External painting started on Valentines Day and the scaffolding came down today, giving us our first good look at the facade. There is still additional painting to be done, with the rendered ground floor to be painted the same colour as the cladding and all mouldings around windows to match the eaves i.e. Colorbond Surfmist.

Scaffolding was left around the portico for the installation of the roof frame, which will sit inside the brickwork with the roof invisible from the street.

First delay before cladding

We have had our first real delay on site since commencement – 8 working days without any activity on site. Not a big delay at all really, but as the days go by without any work on site it does begin to get frustrating.

By the time brickwork is finished, most building contracts stipulate that approx 70% of the project cost will be invoiced. It is a very big incentive to those project home builders to get that part of the project finished as fast as possible. It creates strong cash flow for them and from that point they can back off especially if they have plenty of time left to complete the build under the contract period. It allows them to allocate resources to other homes in the early stages of construction and keep that money coming in. Maybe that's overly cynical but from a business perspective it makes total sense.

The cladding started today and it will probably only take another day – if that – to finish it. Really looking forward to seeing how it looks once it is painted and the scaffolding comes down. At that point we will have a really good idea of what our new home is going to look like.

Click here to read about our external colour scheme selection.

Details, details

In amongst all the significant external construction work – roofing, brickwork etc – is the installation of the external wall moulding. This architectural feature divides the brickwork and the first floor cladding and is a minor but important detail on our "hampton" facade. It wraps around the entire external facade.

Melbourne and furniture

What happens when you make a trip to Melbourne for the Aus Open Tennis? You look at furniture.

Heading to Brunswick Street in Fitzroy for lunch, we came across a strip of furniture and homeware shops. Only natural to check a few out right?

Not sure what the budget will be for a new lounge but what is clear is that there might be some differences of opinion on style, comfort, materials etc. One of the places we visited was Sofas Direct and we were impressed with what we saw. They manufacture in Melbourne and can even make custom adjustments to their range eg. back height, arm width etc. Don't know much about them, but will definately do some more research.

Here are a few pics.

Brickwork

The roof was completed on December 11 and following a meeting between our site supervisor and the bricklayer, the decision was made to commence brickwork prior to christmas. Brickwork started on December 15 and some incredibly hot days followed over the week leading up to Christmas. The brickies worked very hard and we tried to look after them with morning iceblocks and a case of beer before they knocked-off for the holiday season. They worked on Saturday December 23 and were back again on January 4 for the last two days of work.

The only incident was that they made a decision to lower the splashback window in the kitchen from 960mm to 920 above the slab thinking the framers had made an error. If they would have checked with either Troy or site supervisor or us, they would have been told that we require a 40mm allowance for strip hardwood flooring – hence the extra height of the window as per the construction drawings. To say they were disappointed in their mistake is an understatement – plenty of colourful language. As a result, they will need to return to fix it in the weeks ahead.

We have a large number of bricks left over (both commons and face brick) which we are looking at using in our landscaping.