Quote:
My eldest DS had a Wallaby jersey at 6 months old, and actually sat IN the Bledisloe Cup! And yes, he's still a Wallabies fanatic. The same DS is also a junior state cricket player, so we've had to arrange our yard space to suit. Even thinking about a cricket net. Sad, isn't it?!
Heck no!
I never made any of the school teams (not that skilled!), but I still love getting out and having a whack. We spend every second Christmas with family in Brisbane--fourteen of us gathering for the festive season. That's usually enough for a fielding team, two batsmen, and someone to carry the drinks.
Although now my brother, myself and my cousin are married, that's three girls to add--and my wife can catch.
Does your DS have the picture of himself in the Cup on his wall?
--Mike
Unfortunately, no. And it was David Campese that put him in the cup! I really wished I'd gone and bought a throw-away camera to take photos, but I didn't think about it at the time. Oh well, he knows about it and still has the signed jersey. He's gotten the current jersey out to wear to watch the Wallabies/France game in the morning. I shall have a sleep-in instead.
Judie
Hi everyone--there have been a couple of blog updates in the last two weeks that haven't made it to the forums here, so
check that out for a more complete update.
Anyone who lives in Melbourne will know it was absolutely bucketing with rain most of Saturday. Despite the rain, we grabbed out provisions and made our way out to Dirt Patch on Sunday morning, wanting to see if anything else had been done after our working week. Our friends
Thuy & Alan have been saying for weeks that we'd be excited the day we turned up and found a portaloo on our block. I just don't think they were quite prepared for the
fashion in which we found a portaloo on our block...
Damn that was funny. We're fairly sure there can't possibly have been any serious damage to the slab from the impact (the part it hit is the portico outside the front door), but we'll follow up on it.
Anyway, the sharp-eyed amongst you may have noticed that yes, we have a slab!
The whole thing is complete. Pretty good going--and again, a few days ahead of schedule! Nothing like pleasant surprises to make us happy campers.
I do feel a little sad that we missed them pouring the concrete, but really, we can't be there for everything so we'll take what we can get.
You may also notice that despite the serious drainage at our site, there's still a lot of water pooled around where the garage is going:
We'll have a chat to our CSC about that later on in the week--about whether we should be concerned that with only 40mm of rain (which is well below a record fall for a single day), the drainage appears to not be coping so well. The real problem will be if the water gets in underneath the slab. Don't particularly want the house floating off on us now...
As for the ever-popular water meter update:
You'll have to trust me, but I'm pretty sure from memory that it says 1,406. And I wasn't going to get over into the sticky clay mud just to make sure, thank you very much. I had a party to go to that afternoon.
From a broader perspective, check out all the activity on our section of the estate now:
Houses everywhere! And it's only been around two months since settlement. Not bad going--although from what I hear the bricking part is always the slow one. There are only a few days' work in bricking a house, but getting a brickie is apparently rather tough.
Well, time for me to go to bed now. Tomorrow I'll be in touch with our CSC to see what's what with the next stage--I expect she'll want us to pay some money for our lovely flat piece of concrete at some point soon.
--Mike
Hey everyone.
Went by the house on the weekend to find that the frame hadn't been finished (a more recent conversation suggested that it would be finished on Friday), but that the tradies
had got most of the work done despite two days of nearly 40ºC this week.
It was surreal to see this all happening right in front of us. Around three quarters of the walls are finished, and apparently by next weekend the roof should be done too. Fingers crossed!
Photos...
From the front.
From the back.
We think this pipe is in between the laundry and bathroom. Not sure why it's in the middle of the wall--perhaps it's going up through the wall?
They appear to be building the whole lot on site rather than having it pre-built and then delivered. Apparently this is unusual!
And here's our bedroom. Nifty!
Looking forward to next weekend. With the roof frame on, it may look like a real house! : D
woohoo Mike!!
You must be stoked to see progress after the Xmas break. Still waiting our start date so will be living through your build vicariously until ours starts.
Yeah, it's nice to see things happening, to see stuff
on the slab. The slab itself was cool, but seeing what will one day be walls is another thing again. Looking forward to the frame inspection!
--Mike
We went out to the block last Monday to check what was going on, and sure enough, the frame--including the roof--was completed! It was a little surreal seeing all the roof lines, realising that this is going to be our home.
So this is what the place looked like with the frame all finished last week:
Nice roof line on that house! : )
So, by this stage all the windows are supposed to be in, and all of them are:
...except for our timber windows, which should be on the front of the house, where the big holes are in the frame in the following photo:
When the invoice for frame stage hit our inboxes on Friday, we decided to go check the house out before paying, to satisfy ourselves the work had been done. So when we saw that there were no timber windows, we had questions.
Emails and phone calls got us nowhere all week, so Ngoc finally rang Accounts and said "guess what? I'm not paying this until you tell me what's happened to our timber windows." We had an answer within a couple of hours, but unfortunately that answer was that someone had stolen the windows from our site, and we were facing a 3-6 week wait for new ones. However, the frame invoice had been put together because the majority of the work had been completed, so we were happy to pay it now that we knew what had happened to our windows! And at least the tradies on site can keep going with what they're doing without the windows.
Now we're just waiting on M3tricon to tell us when we can go out for our customer frame inspection. We've been waiting on a date from them for nearly two weeks now. I hope we'll get a better response when it comes time to have our independent inspector check the place out at pre-plaster!
So this week, we were informed that the fascia and gutter should be done, and that tiling of the roof should start next week and be finished by Friday. Seems to me like stuff is going pretty quick so far! And what did we find? Gutter and fascia and more besides!
The gutter and fascia have been affixed, and the guard rails are up in preparation for the roof being tiled next week.
Frankly, we were surprised that anything got done this week after we had three days in excess of 43º. But that wasn't all:
We also have a pile of sand--I'm guessing for the bricks, although bricks aren't due to start for quite some time yet.
But wait...there was more!
The water pipes are also in. These ones are in the ensuite.
This is where the hot water system will be going.
So, now's about when I can start introducing you to some of our colour selections.
Fascia: Colorbond "Dune"
Gutter: Barge profile, Colorbond "Woodland Grey"
On many websites (including the Colorbond site), "Dune" looks disturbingly grey--which wasn't the colour of our colour chip at all. Our colour chip was a dusty cream/beige colour. Thankfully, the chip and the fascia match up.
Roof tiles: Boral "Gunmetal", Macquarie profile
We looked at a bunch of different tile profiles, but in the end settled on what is essentially the standard one from Boral. I can't say I've ever really been a fan of the flat shingle-type tiles, but these ones suited me fine. One of the only things we managed to select that was in the base cost category!
And, of course, the water meter:
We're really very happy with the house (and M3tricon) so far (we even noticed that a couple of things we spotted last week, like a split stud and some loose bracing had been remedied). I just want to get that frame inspection done! If Australia would just start winning some cricket matches, I'd be pretty happy with the summer, heatwave or no!
--Mike