JG King Hartwell - Melbourne western suburbs

Waterproofing was completed last week.

I'm hoping tiles will begin soon.

Melbourne's weather has been just awful but we have had some progress with the bricklaying





And our floor tiles have started (glued but not groutee)

If you have been reading through my thread, you will know that our build has been awful.

Construction handover in late Feb
4 different construction managers
2 month delay for slab
4-5 month delay for bricks
A long way off in late Oct

The construction period stipulated in our contract expires in early November, and I don't think we will be in before Christmas

There are another 5 or 6 current JG King builds in my estate. They all started approximately 2 or 3 months ago (so about 5 or 6 months after us).

2 of these builds are "reverse lockups" like ours. They were probably the first to start out of the 5 or 6 and while they have plaster, they haven't been bricked.

So imagine my surprise when I walked past another JG King build in my estate (that I believe started after the first two) that is getting bricks. No plaster in sight!

I don't know the full circumstances, but I am quite distressed. Chances are that they left my house waiting for bricks for 4-5 months while they bricked others that hadn't been waiting nearly as long.

I just don't understand why JG King have treated our build with such contempt when it is clear that other builds are being looked after quite well.

Jaslee, have they been claiming any delays so far?

Some of the claims we received were farcical and a reflection of their own poor management rather than any legitimate reason.
Also, we were lumbered with weeks of delays, months after the period claimed.
Certainly not consistent with the contract provisions, but only a VCAT action would remedy that.

They made a claim for missing pegs which weren't missing at all! They were just too lazy and/or too incompetent to look for them.

They also made three rain delay claims, which were made during our bricklayer wait. We requested evidence of scheduled works which wasn't provided.

We sent an email to JG King last week stating that our liquidated damages were to commence shortly (with outright rejection of their claims). Unsurprisingly, we haven't received much of a response!

I had a quick discussion with our site supervisor - we are both hoping for a mid-december handover.

Hopefully it goes that way and you can move in a enjoy your house and the build can become a distant nightmare

More bricks today - it's even starting to reach the roof line in some places!

I'm guessing they are probably half way through. I'm about to start pleading the weather gods to keep the rain away!

Rain, rain go away, come again some other day!

Woohoo hope it keeps progressing well.

Hahaha im singing with you jaslee!!! Surely we have had enough rain this year bring on sunshine and tradies that actually turn up on time
Great to hear your bricks are nearly half way done. Bring on christmas in your new home

Thanks Julia!

More progress today - bricks are more than half way done and wall tiles have been laid.

It looks like the tiler has heard my OCD plea for aligned tiles!

Looking great!!

Tiles are looking great!

The bricks are probably 75% complete. So we are getting there - albeit slower than I would like.

Also, bathroom, ensuite and laundry tiles have been grouted. This is our ensuite shower:

Wow thats huge! The tiles have come up great! I agree with time it takes the brickies ours took a month i was shocked

I suspect we only have one guy working on ours. Some of the builds here have 3-4 guys and they are finished in about a week.

Well I was wrong. I had the day off, so naturally, I kept an eye on the build (stalked is probably more correct). It turns out that we had at least three guys working on the bricks today!

I think they are about 90% done now.

Hopefully their lack of speed means they are doing a good job

Bricklayers were at work again today and they locked me out!

I'm supposed to have the blinds company measure tomorrow not sure whether I should cancel or just hope the bricklayers can let us in tomorrow?