Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Jan 11, 2009 8:18 pm I am building my new house with Clarendon in the Ponds, Kellyville Ridge Sydney. The construction is so slow. The kitchen has been put in. But we are waiting for the Caesarstone and tiling to be done. The kitchen is polyutherane which looks great. One problem is that the kitchen has not been covered.
The painting is nearly finished but as the tradesmen come in and out and move things around and take out and reattaced doors. The kitchen has now got a lot of damages especially there is a big damage on the frame around the fridge space. A lof of the door corners are chipped. I hope the doors and the frame for the fridge to be replaced and do not want the problems to be patched up. We have asked for the kitchne door handle to be horizontal. All handles have been ok except that the installer has put horizontal hanldes for our panty doors. I reckon he did not think about this and it looked very odd with such a large pantry door. We will request Clarendon to fix this. I am very frustrated because the tradesmen are not very caring and professional. For example, the roof is supposed is to be finished and we have made payment. But we found broken roof tiles, ridge caps broken and chipped and not cemented properly. That means the roof tilers have to come back and this will delay the completion. More problems with the bricks as there are a lot of chipped bricks and crakcs etc. I don't think I will recommend anyone to build with Clarendon until they fix all these problems before the house is handed over. I have high expectation as Clarendon has been in the industry for a long time. Any comments. Re: Many problems with Clarendon 3Jan 12, 2009 7:48 am that's terrible news behw. Are you using an independent inspector?
Since it's going so slow - what is your liquidated damages amount in your contract? After 4 years - we're in! Re: Many problems with Clarendon 4Jan 12, 2009 9:12 pm Hi behw!. I am also building with Clarendon.
Whilst it has taken us a while..(read hideously long..) to get to the stage we are at...nearly finished, I haven't had a problem with careless tradies. Our kitchen was covered after it was installed, with plastic and the stone tops covered in this kind of foam stuff to protect it. It is something i would take up with your ss but that being said, you can choose not to accept the house if the damage is apparent. The advise i have for you is simple.......keep following them up!!!. Yes, its not your job to do it but for piece of mind it is well worth keeping your ss on speed dial. I can hear my poor ss groaning before he even picks up a call from me but if that what it takes then so be it!. The sooner they realise there is a problem the sooner they will fix it iykwim?. Anyway....chin up! and don't accept the poor excuses these people can come up with...STAND YOUR GROUND!!!!!!. Good Luck!! p.s Can you tell i am on a slow decent into madness due to our build? p.p.s Stonecutter, I am pretty sure all C people get the princely sum of $15 a day liquidated damages........ Re: Many problems with Clarendon 5Jan 13, 2009 8:10 am Hi behw!
From someone who has just had handover (from Cl@rend0n), I agree with flissfloss about the tradies - ours too have been excellent and really looked after our place. Our SS was great too in making sure our house was always kept in a good manner after certain trades had been through. My biggest 'grip' is and has been the length of time to build (and to bet to that point) and also poor customer service from Head Office! We are VERY happy with the finish of our home, we have yet to move in, but are only days away. Good luck. Re: Many problems with Clarendon 6Jan 13, 2009 8:16 am I've heard that repeatedly fom C customers - they take forever
Clarity - how exciting, you're almost in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Congrats!!!! Solidarity, not solidity.......The Lexicon of Life Re: Many problems with Clarendon 7Jan 13, 2009 9:21 am Hi behw,
I to am building with Clarendon at Kellyville Ridge (right outside the ponds) and have experienced similar problems to you. We had some chipped bricks and asked that they fix them. They have replaced the really bad ones and have assured us that at the end they will do a final clean up and fix anything that needs replacing. I understand why they do a final clean up as accidents arise throughout the process, such as when a guy was putting in our staircase he dropped something on our wall and put a big hole it the wall. Our SS assured us that it will be fixed at the end as they don't want to fix it now and then have something similar happen again and have to patch it up a second time. Like mentioned by Flissfloss, i've found the HO customer service POOR and the length of build time is huge compared to other builders who guarantee to have your house finished within half the time. For us this isn't a major issue as we are with our parents so aren't paying rent or in any urgency to move in. I hope everything works out with your build. Re: Many problems with Clarendon 10Mar 28, 2009 9:59 pm Hi friends, Our house is so close to settlement. we had our last inspection yesterday. There have been many areas with poor brickwork and mortar finish and we have asked the SS to fix. One probelm area is the mortar for the corner of the bay window in the meal area. I have attached the photos. You can see from the photos that the gap is quite large and ugly. The SS said that he can pull the wall down and rebuild and he rang BORAl to order the bricks. However BORAL said that they no long make that particular colour as they have been unsuccessful to consistently reproduce the colour. The sales rep said that there are approximately 600 to 700 bricks left and he will bring a sample to see if the colour match with the batch used for our house. Our concern: 1. even if the colour match, the quantity left does not allow for any contingencies. 2. Clarendon may make more errors when pulling down the wall 3. this may delay our settlement as this may take weeks Any ideas what we should do? Should we also ask Clarendon to get us the 600-700 bricks for future use in case there are any problems Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Re: Many problems with Clarendon 11Mar 28, 2009 10:09 pm behw We have asked for the kitchne door handle to be horizontal. All handles have been ok except that the installer has put horizontal hanldes for our panty doors. I reckon he did not think about this and it looked very odd with such a large pantry door. We will request Clarendon to fix this. I am not 100% sure.. but seems to me that if you asked for the handles to be horizontal, and did not specify on the pantry to be vertical.. you will have a hard time convincing them to change them for free.. Good luck with it though.. Ps as for the bricks.. if it were me, I would accept it as is.. and just think of it as a 'feature'.. if they tear it down and replace you may have an uglier 'feature' and no way to fix it.. just my opinion.. -Sha Re: Many problems with Clarendon 12Mar 28, 2009 10:31 pm I don't really think the bricks look that bad from the photos. I would prefer to live with that than risk having them torn down only to find the colour doesn't match. That would look a lot worse. Re: Many problems with Clarendon 13Mar 28, 2009 10:35 pm Remember, no one else will ever look at your house as closely as you do- I think we all tend to obsess over the little details of our builds, and notice things that no one else will ever see. As they probably can't get the same colour bricks, I'd see if they can do some kind of other freebie instead as compensation? Re: Many problems with Clarendon 16Mar 29, 2009 10:42 am Yeah me too!! I dont think the bricks look too bad. I do agree with the comment though, see if you can get some other form of compensation Living in Caloundra Thread****** Lovin my house all finished!!! Now tackling the HUGE task of the Garden- viewtopic.php?f=31&t=14782 Re: Many problems with Clarendon 17Mar 29, 2009 11:07 am If the bricks come from different batch, there are 99.9% chance the colours will be different. It is very hard to notice the difference when you only match a few bricks side by side and without mortar. But when you have the wall built and compare from a far, that's when you can see the different shades of colours (also depends on the lighting condition of the time too!). So, if you were to rebuild, make sure you rebuild the entire wall, not just part of the wall. If your walls were right-angle to each other, the difference may not be noticable. However, your walls are not at right angle, so, any small colour difference can be quite apparent. Building Clarendon Brighton - Done and moved in Sept 2009 Re: Many problems with Clarendon 18Mar 29, 2009 10:07 pm Thanks for your opinion. We do not want to re-build the wall neither. But one thing my hubby and I are puzzled is that the SS has offered to Moroka finish (acrylic paint wash) the whole hosue and this normally costs $17000. We just have a feeling that he seems to be hiding something. We turned down his offer anyway. When we inspect the balcony yesterday, he offerred to paint more area for us and said that it will match the facade better. We will decline the offer as we really love the brick look. The reason why we had the piers painted is to comply with the design guidelines of the suburb. Re: Many problems with Clarendon 19Mar 31, 2009 4:52 pm Hi behw Can you confirm if a Moroka finish is like cement render? or is it more like the bagged look? The reason I ask is that, we are experiencing similar issues to you and I am thinking they may offer us the same solutions. I want to ensure I completely understand what it will look like. Thanks Re: Many problems with Clarendon 20Mar 31, 2009 5:40 pm Hi Jacq, Moroka finish is acrylic bag wash. It is a texture finish. I have it done in paperbark. In relation to my balcony, my hubby tried to stop the painting in the balcony and think it will be too much painted area. We tried to call the SS all day yesterday but he did not take any call. But he finally called us, he told my husband that the paint in the balcony has been completed. We went to the site to have a look. To our surprise, the effect is not bad. I have attached a photo of last week. You can see the piers are painted. The SS has forgotten to paint the window sills which still needs to be done. Now the left and right internal side of the balcony have been painted with Moroka as well. Link to see the Moroka fiish at the bottom of the screen. http://www.taubmans.com.au/texture/gallery.texture.htm behw Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ the stair balustrades? There is nothing special about these and I imagine literally every stair installer will be able to do this. 1 6743 The two 15mm holes are obviously not compliant. The Dept of Fair Trading would love to see this one! Do the gutters pool water after it stops raining? Although it's… 4 7871 I would never build with Fowler homes. I built with them in 2021 and till date maintenance issues are pending. All their existing trades and businesses don't work with… 14 105589 |