Masterton Homes - The new thread 3.0

Thanks For that PS_Sirocco7, I love your house and what you done with it, are your bricks and bathroom tiles from the standard range? also did you have to pay $600 for the niche? I got quoted $6000 to upgrade the bricks, after picking myself of the floor, I asked if that quote was to trade my standard bricks in for the upgrade, or do they plan on bricking another layer around my existing bricks. She just looked at me with a blank face. I guess when your a sales person you forget the value of money.

Hi Vatche, Thanks for that also great advise. great photos must be so exiting to be the stage your at, where did you get your bricks from?

Our bricks are Austral Bricks. Standard range. I had to pay $500 extra for the second colour/range. It turned out exactly what we were after.

I think about now you will have to choose your bricks and roof tiles etc. Best to visit each supplier M recommends and see the bricks laid as a wall, to give you better idea.

Or you could just go with the standard bricks and go for a Moroka finish, which is kind of short of a render - paint with sand in it really. It cost us $7K but I think it could be cheaper with a little negotiation. We love the look. It just depends whether you like to see bricks and mortar, or just one colour - see our blog for photos of the finish.

It's about 34 squares.....

I totally agree too dsa39 - it will be fabulous to see all the places as they are unveiled from the scaffolding!

Lucky you Vatche on the progress - the roofing has been delivered at our place but nothing has happened with it....

No probs. Our bricks are from the standard range. They are called PGH Summervilla Vanilla.
We were limited with our choice as we could only select from exposure grade bricks as we are within 1km from the ocean.
I researched these bricks and found a few houses that had been built with them and I thought they looked good and had a decent texture to them.
We went with the platinum package so we had a little bit more of a tile selection with Dons.
However I wasnt too thrilled with most of it so the only room that was chosen from the platinum range was the Ensuite.
The bathroom and Laundry are from the standard range.

The 2x Niches we have cost us $876 all up.

Hi all,

1st major hurdle hit !! Things were just going too smoothly! After our brickwork was finished on Saturday, we noticed something strange. The windows were mounted up to the level of the eaves. This is not what we had signed off on, nor the look we wanted. We realise very few homes are built like this, but we specifically asked for this in our consultation phase and almost all drawings had the windows below the eaves. Some bright spark in drafting had moved them up to the level of the eaves around redraw #3, but we quickly asked for this to go back to the initial look. Our last plans (before construction) that we signed had 2 courses of bricks above all of our windows before the eaves start.

Now we find that the last construction plan that M drew, have the windows mounted in line with the eaves. How did this happen and more importantly WHY did this happen? Been onto our SS on Saturday and they returned the call on Sunday which was great. There is no reason for this change to have happened but as our SS has mentioned, they are only building to the construction plan they have.

So much for "NO CHANGES AFTER YOU SIGN OFF YOUR FINAL PLANS" heh? Funny how M can make blantant changes to your plans AFTER you have done final sign off. We are now waiting for a site visit to discuss if we have all the windows remounted lower with a lentel added and re-bricked.

Will let the forum know how this goes.

Dear pacificisis,

The problem here is that we never get to see the constructions plans. We just sign off 'a master plan'.

Similar but not as major as yours is ours, where the air-con dropper (a corner taken off a room) we moved from a bedroom into the other side of the wall to the living room and SIGNED the plan. But this has not been reflected and now the dropper is in the bedroom. Our SS says this will be rectified before gyprock and not an issue. And few items like that.

I hope yours get's resolved and does not add delays.

For these reasons, I tend to give the site a visit every day, take photos and document. Some days are hard to see inside as there is no one there to let you in. But with digital age, the number of photos taken is so helpful to look back. Only 25% end up on my blog, rest are archived on my online drive (Google Drive), so I can refer to them any time, anywhere.

Just before gyprock, I plan to visit and take photo of each wall, so I can have a visual reference where the studs, pipes, wirings etc are, to make it easy to mount or install things in the future.

Good thoughts. I'd suggest taking photos of every wall prior to insulation being fitted. They do that *just* prior to gyprock, so you'll have to be quick

Our issues have been similar - construction plans being based off earlier unapproved plans rather than what we signed off on... Seems to be an ongoing issue for M

Good news though, good progress on our place this week, frames scheduled to be going up today

Great news Banj,

Just yesterday I saw a truck delivering frames with M's name on it Not sure if it was yours. It was heading towards Frenchs Forest, NSW.

YES!

We are now at lock up

Waterproofing has been done to the wet areas. Internal doors hung and some architraves.

Kitchen will be started on the 25th and painters 29th.

On a quick visit to the site, no activity for today.

It is evident that the upstairs flooring is suffering under rain. Even though we did not have much rain, the majority of the joints are swollen. Hope this will not cause issues in the future, of floors making squeaking noise.




More damaged studs. Hope they will be replaced soon.

Our house today.

We must be on the same timeline! We were at lock up Monday received our invoice yesterday believe the kitchen going in staircase completed, husband drove past and said the carpeter was there and the waterproofing was finished a couple of days ago can't see anything else. Our tiles for the main bathroom are out of stock so just thinking whether to duplicate the ensuite or go different hava a few days to think about it
Facade as of the weekend


Scaffolding gone




Front door to be stained dark walnut


Laundry Door


Vatche great progress dont worry theyll fix those things

Have a great day everyone

Congrats to both of you guys - how exciting!!!! So good to see things moving along.

WVatche - WOW! That's some interesting stuff - I'm sure you will be raising all that with your SS!

We are hoping to get in soon to check on how our place was affected by rain too. I like the idea of taking photos of all the plumbing and studs too so you know the location in future!!!

A bit of progress for us yesterday - they have started putting up all the roof framing on the trusses - hopefully the roof will be on today or tomorrow......

dsa39, your house is coming along nicely. It's good to finally see the front of the house

This is something I did aswell for every room and I went through and labelled each photo for easy reference.
Like vatche, I too have hundreds of photos for our reference which Im not posting online.
Its a lot easier for me to take heaps of pics as I have easy access to the house as I live on-site.


For our build, the painters made a start yesterday doing mainly prep work.
We also had our 2x dunnies and the gas hot water system delivered.
Will post pics on this thread once the first coat of top-coat is on.

The painters spent a majority of the day painting the eaves, meter box, downpipes & also the Alfresco ceiling.
Looks like they did the first coat and will probably finish up the external work with the second coat tomorrow.
The house looks so much brighter with the eaves done.

Hey guys great progress! Thanks a biggerhouse you will be done and dusted in no time. Vatche I agree I'll be interested to see what it looks like painted and with the front stairs and porch? Ps sirocco they painted some of the outside of our house ages ago the rest yet to be done I'm really liking what you have so far. We did the same thing so that in the future if we want to install something hopefully we won't electrocute ourselves or even worse flood the house so hubby got a chance to peek today while the workers were there and got some pics of the staircase will post after dinner. Yes dinner today was the day from hell ! bring on the long weekend

Loving seeing all the photos - dsa39 can't wait to see the staircase! PS Sirocco, it's just looking amazing!

Roof started going on today at our place and more stuff was delivered - assuming at this stage it's all for the roof and eaves but I've been known to be wrong before! Sorry the pic's a bit dark - the hubby and I didn't manage to get there until the light was going.....