Rebar and waffle pod footing material in place.

In the most dramatic development to date, I decided to drop by the block on the way home from work early in the morning only to be greeted by the wonderful sight of the waffle pod in place and most of the rebar completed ready for the slab to be poured Wednesday.

I bring Dawn back to the site later in the morning and the concretors are slaving away in the sensational late winter weather we are now experiencing to finish the slab framework. This finally gives us a visual representation of the finished floor height and gives us a real exciting feeling that this is going to be a truly beautiful house for us. 

Internal drainage appears and council inspection

A quick trip to site reveals that the plumbers have been and gone leaving behind them the internal drainage required for our slab to be poured. 

Things are progressing with military precision so far. We can only hope that this pattern continues for at least a few weeks to get us out of the ground and seriously underway.

Piers poured.

Today our piers were bored out and the first site of concrete on our block brings an even bigger smile to our faces! 

With the first of the wooden boards going in to display the outline of the slab we can finally see what is going to be our first ever family home coming together.

An excavator on site!!! Imagine the excitement!

So another Monday comes and goes with no movement, we are starting to get a little down but considering the rain that Sydney and the Central Coast has received over the last week we really can’t be surprised. The last thing would would want is to see the excavator bogged up to the tracks!

Tuesday arrives and mid morning I head out to the block to see how the drying out is progressing. To my absolute pleasure I see the excavator not only on site but being packed up having already completed the site scrape or cut and fill! I cannot believe how much happiness we get from just seeing a beautiful green bare block turned into a brown bare block! It has finally started!

Construction Commences, well almost!

So I may have rushed through the earlier stages to get to this point but, believe me, it has only been a rush in cyber world and has definitely felt like every bit of the 6 months it has taken to get to this point.

Firstly our retaining wall has been completed and we are extremely happy with the result. Anyone who needs a retaining wall on the Central Coast don't hesitate to contact Robert Cook landscapes!

So we received a phone call from our site supervisor on Friday 15^th July to advise us that construction was scheduled to commence with the site scrape on either the Monday or Tuesday of the following week. You can imagine our excitement at this news after the long period of seemingly endless e-mails, phone calls, meetings and late nights spent lying awake thinking about out decisions.

So....

Monday – A portaloo arrives on site!

Tuesday – Fencing arrives on site, a quick phone call to our friendly site supervisor reassures us that the excavator should be on site Wednesday to get underway.

Wednesday – The heavens open! Not only do they open but they continue for Thursday, Friday, Saturday and into Sunday in what becomes the wettest July since 1950 with over 200mm rain in that period.

Another week gone but at least we can hope that two severe rain events in one year is enough and we won’t have to put up with another. Fingers crossed!

Out of council!

Well, after a few phone calls to prompt movement and action our plans came out of council on 1^st June. 

This has been a relatively painless and quick (4 weeks exactly) procedure for us. Having reviewed other people’s applications which didn’t have such a smooth and relatively speedy transit through council I can only put this down to the professional application for DA prepared by Metricon and the detailed landscape plan prepared by Nathan Cassidy.

Unfortunately now comes the council imposed variations (and unfortunately further price increases) to the plan.

Bushfire construction requirements

- No pivot timber door, changed to more expensive hinged door.

- 5,000 litre rainwater tank changed to 7,500 litre tank.

- Gutter guarding to entire house to meet flammability index of not greater then 5

- Stainless steel weepers

- Screens for laundry doors and opening windows.

- Door sill to roller doors on garage to prevent ember intrusion.

Unfortunately another little Metricon trick was also revealed when council mandated that sarking be necessary to the inside of the colourbond roof. We had already allowed for this in our contract, or so we thought, but Metricon then informs us that the basic sarking cost doesn’t cover ‘seal all gaps’ to roof/wall junctions and therefore the cost of the sarking has increased! Surely any sarking installation should automatically include the sealing of all gaps? Just another trick for first timers and another thing we can warn people about.

Anyway, out of council we come and into the construction certificate phase! Unfortunately this is another long period of waiting throughout which there is very little that the owners can do to progress this issue. We were informed by our customer support officer at Metricon that this normally takes around 2 weeks and ours took approx 20 days. This seems like an agonisingly long time when we are just waiting for it to progress to the next stage but in the grand scheme of things this wasn’t too bad.

In between the council approval and the construction certificate being received we had made progress on a few other parts of our project.

Dawn and I headed to the Tuggerah showroom of Carpet Call to make our selections for our upstairs and downstairs carpets. This was another relatively painless procedure because we had a general picture in our head of the feel we wanted in the finished product. I think if we had our time again though we would make the drive down to Sydney to the Seven Hills showroom where apparently it is much more clearly defined what are the level 1, 2, 3 etc inclusions as per the contract.

Our landscaper started construction of the retaining wall that we wanted built across the back of our property to really frame the block and give us a more defined view down into the grassed asset protection zone behind our block. Unfortunately some of the heaviest rain in years arrived on the Central coast during this period and delayed this somewhat. Some of you may remember the June long weekend in 2007 when the heavens truly opened, well, the June long weekend of 2011 really gave it a run for its money! 

Studio M Internals and Electrical selections

23^rd May was Studio M d-day for Dawn and I. We headed out to Baulkham Hills nice and early with a good idea (so we thought) of all the choices we would need to make. From the second we started we were blown away with the minute details we were going to have to make decisions about, from the kick board colours to the angle of the trim in the skirting boards.

Fortunately we had our wonderful consultant Selma with us to guide us through every single step and keep us focused on the bigger pictures. Her patience with us throughout the morning was amazing and very much appreciated. Following the advice given to us when we did our external selections we went in with a long wish list in our heads. 

Throughout the morning we had to give some ground on some things to keep the cost in check but overall we are very happy with the outcome. Dawn even got the spa bath she wanted and I got the second rain style showerhead in the ensuite so overall a good outcome. 

Unbelievable however was the price of putting in the under mount sink that we had in mind for the kitchen. However we looked at it, we just couldn’t justify the extra cost and therefore the sink became a victim of the give and take system but we think it will look great nonetheless.

Electrical selections were the order of the afternoon and once we got the hang of it this seemed to be a relatively painless, if not cheap, procedure. We decided to avoid the extra cost of having Metricon install our down lights throughout the house and instead opted for the much cheaper bayonet fittings which we will arrange to be changed out before we move in. This will save us many thousands of dollars based on the Metricon down light price.

We also upgraded our air-conditioning after examining the square footage allowance of the base model and discovering that it would be tested to its limits especially during the hot summer days. We also decided that it was much easier to deal with this extra cost now then to discover that we needed to upgrade the system after handover.

We left feeling satisfied with our efforts and a new positive outlook towards the next phase of the project. We were starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel now.