17 March Update

Another day closer to being finished, and it still seems so far away! The Summit team seem to be pretty dead set that they will finish up this following week. It's definitely possible, but going on their work rate to date, I find it a bit hard to believe...but I'm trying to remain optimistic :)

The electrician has been in and has installed a lot of the lights we recently bought, which is exciting...it makes it feel like things are really coming together.

The entry way with our new crystally light installed.

I decided that the only way to protect the stair treads would be to wrap them up, so I used up all of our big black trash bags, and it was definitely worth it...I just hope they can stand up to the tradies walking up and down!

View of the open plan area, although it doesn't look that different from last week.

Bedroom 3...Lights installed

Bedroom 4 with the lights installed.

The "theatre room"...or Andy's billiards room.

The downstairs bathroom almost done.

Our cool eBay light fixture in the hallway.

They finally managed to cut out the doorway between our bedroom and walk-in robe...which is currently our living area, as you can see by the couch above & below.

I've also managed to make a bit of progress of my own over the past week. Since I took off the upstairs bathroom doors to paint the trims, I decided I should also sand and paint the doors themselves. Well, what I thought would be a simple 1-hr job to sand 3 doors turned into about 5 hours over the course of about 3 different days...it was a never ending job...once a bit of paint flakes off, you're screwed! You end up scraping off that entire coat of paint...oh, it was exhausting!

Two of my doors...the one standing up has all of one layer of paint scraped off and the beginning of the second layer...

Not sure if you can see the pile of massive paint flakes that came off the door laying down in this photo...uuggghh!

The other job I did this week was to paint the primer on the balcony ceiling...that was another job that was a bit bigger than I initially expected. I never realized how exhausting it would be to spend over 2 hours looking up!

But...we're making progress...inching forward! Check back next time to see what else happens! :)

14th March Update - 2 weeks past due!

It's now mid March, and the builder was supposed to be finished 2 weeks ago according to their schedule with lots of fluff...hmm...
Needless to say, we've had to severely cut short our expectations, and now we're just hoping and praying that they finish before we leave for our wedding! I CAN see the light at the end of the tunnel, though. We are slowly getting there. The beginning of this past week showed lots of promise. We had stair installation guys, electricians, plumbers, and gyprock guys in all at the same time...it was like a little beehive of activity. And then it crashed...only the closet door people came on Tuesday and the plumbers on Wednesday to install the toilet. I guess I can't complain too much, though...we are getting ever closer. And they have finished some parts enough to allow us to get our own work done. Last weekend, Andy and a friend finished laying the bamboo flooring in the upstairs living area so that the stairs and ballustrading could be installed without causing problems for us later. And I managed to get the future study painted last week as well...so we trudge slowly along...

The study is painted...only thing left is for the electrician to come and install the power points & lights.

Flooring laid in the stair landing area, and the stairs & ballustrading are installed!

Finished flooring in the open living area.

Toilet installed in the downstairs powder room. Now they just have to patch the hole in the wall and install the sink.

Tiling and plumbing in the downstairs bathroom is finished as well.

We have closet doors in bed 4!

Can you believe how much better this room looks than it did before?!?! Just wait until it's got paint and carpet!

Bed 3 has closet doors as well...getting ever closer!

Nice LED spotlights for our theatre/billiards room.

The opposite view...gotta love that peach door, eh? :)

And we've got stairs!!! They look really good...or I think so anyways :) 

The laundry room has lights now too...

Our future walk-in robe covered in preparation for knocking out the doorway to the bedroom.

The bedroom covered and prepped as well...it's going to be a massive mess!

More updates to come shortly, I hope! They say they'll be finished in about 10 days...oh boy, I can't wait! :)

Progress Update - 22nd February

I think it's safe to say that I've been slacking a bit lately! I just looked and saw that my last post was at the beginning of January...oops! Don't worry, though...you really haven't missed much. The tradies were all on Christmas break through most of January, so there wasn't really any progress until the end...and even then, it's been really slow starting. So much so that we've only recently seen some real progress worthy of taking photos.

But alas...the downstairs is beginning to make a transformation! It's looking like a real home now...no more bare brick walls with acro-props holding the ceiling up and waste pipes routed everywhere.

The gyprockers (aka drywall or sheetrock) have been in the past two weeks putting in most of the walls and ceilings in the downstairs rooms. Although it's not completely finished, it looks 90% better I would say.

The view from the back of the house. The outside rendering is complete and the gyprock in the "games" room downstairs is done.

Just a closer view of the "games" room (our main downstairs living area) with ceilings and walls.

View towards the backyard, where the bifold doors will be.

Officially, this is bedroom 3 (per the plans). It finally has a ceiling and a doorway, so there's no more acro-props to hold everything up!

Still in bed 3, looking back towards the door and the build-in closet.

This is officially the "theatre". They've gyprocked the walls and ceiling in here as well, although it's not quite complete yet.

The "not quite complete yet"...the windows still need to be finished...they look pretty back from this view I would say. Seriously, though, did the previous owner (or a previous tradie) REALLY think that the black plastic bag was the way to fix a mistake or fill a hole?!?!

This is the laundry room. The entry way is just left of the photo. You can see the massive bulkhead they had to put in to hide the plumbing waste from the upstairs bathroom...at least it's just the laundry, right? :) 

This is officially bedroom 4. You might remember this room as the one with the walls completely destroyed when we had to do the damp treatment. It finally looks like a liveable space again! I'm really happy with how this has turned out.

Another view inside bed 4, showing the built-in closet space on the left. Again, they've put a bulkhead in to hide the plumbing waste pipes and to hide the massive concrete beams in the ceiling.

They've also gyprocked in the wall by the staircase where the plumbing stack was located, so that looks a lot better. they still have to do a bit of finishing in this area, and we need to get the staircase installed.

The tiling on the balcony is also completed now. So, we're just waiting on the ballustrading to be installed, and then we can actually enjoy this area...progress!

 So...progress is being made. Hopefully, they actually finish in the next month. It seems like most of the rooms are at about the 80-90% complete mark, but absolutely NONE of the rooms are complete...oh yeah...and the finishing bits are all quite dirty, so it means that all of the cleaning & finishing work that we still need to do has to wait...not much point in cleaning just to have to clean again right after they finish their stuff!
So...hopefully they'll make good progress this next week, and we'll have more to show you soon!

Ringing in the new year - Welcome 2013!

It's hard to believe that it's 2013! You know, I still remember the Y2K New Years and what a big hoohah that was! It's hard to believe that it's been 13 years since then! But alas, I am getting old...a proper grown up with lots of responsibilities.
Anyways, enough of that...our Christmas/New Years holiday was pretty laid back with regards to celebrating. We do have really awesome friends, so we had a great Christmas day and New Years Eve celebration, but the rest of the break was pretty chilled out...well, maybe "chilled" isn't the right word. As is standard for Christmas in Perth, it was 40degC from about the 23rd all the way to the 2nd January. So, our great plans to get loads of stuff done around the house didn't actually happen because it was just too freakin' hot to do anything! It was a good break, though. We spent some time at the beach relaxing and having fun instead.
We still did manage to get some work done over the holidays, though. Although the electrician has been in and wired up the cooktop, fridge, and ovens, unfortunately, they don't do the installation of the vent hood (extraction fan). With our island cooktop, the vent hood has to be mounted to the main ceiling support beams in the roof cavity. So, one hot day, we decided that we'd take a couple of hours to get the vent hood installed before going outside to do some real work...because at least that way we get to work in the air conditioning, right? WRONG! 6 hours & 5 trips in the sweltering heat of the roof space later, we finally managed to get the vent hood installed. It looks quite nice, if I must say so myself, but geez was it hard work!

Climbing into the roof space with my head torch, safety goggles, and mask. Of course, in hindsight, pants and long sleeve probably would have been a lot smarter as well...that insulation is really itchy!

Emerging from the attic cave...

Andy mounting the main supports for the vent hood.

The finished product! Tada!

The other main bit of work we did over the holidays involved painting the eaves on the east side of the house (opposite the driveway). We went to a hiring place to get prices for hiring scaffolding to get us access to paint the eaves and wall of the house. After hearing the price, we thought...why not use all of the extra scaffolding that Summit has left at our house over the holidays? :) So, we did! We only had to hire adjustable feet for the legs to allow us to level everything out in the sand. Of course, we still didn't know how this job would actually go...it could be ok, or like a lot of the jobs we start on, it could end up being absolute hell! Well, after hiring the legs for one week starting on the Saturday morning before we decided to do the vent hood installation, we went on a wine tour on the Sunday. With Monday being New Years Eve, and New Years Day obviously being a write-off for heavy labour, we got up early New Years Eve morning and spent 4 hours in the sweltering heat putting up scaffolding. It actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and we managed to get it finished....

Scaffolding finished...ready for sanding and painting the eaves.

Andy hard at work putting up handrails...a massive sandpit isn't the easiest place to put up scaffolding!

So, we managed to get the eaves cleaned up and painted...it's amazing the difference it makes to the house just to have that much done! We also decided on a colour for painting the actual brick as well since the existing colour is just a bit to peachy for our taste. So, not only did we get the eaves painted, the walls are painted and the scaffolding has been torn down and put back where it was...Summit will never know :)

Freshly painted eaves and walls...

Most of the scaffolding removed...

So, now we just have to finish painting that wall and then wait for the rendering on the rest of the house to be completed so we can paint the rest of the house! Joy o' joy! Well, tomorrow is officially the end of the holidays, i.e. the date when Summit is open for business again and a lot of the tradies are back to work as well. Unfortunately, the rumour is that January is a pretty slow month with regards to building and progress in that area, so we'll see what happens over the next couple weeks. After all...February is supposed to be our completion "month"! :)...don't hold your breath!
Catch up soon!