101 Residential in Rivervale

PCI went reasonably well last week I think - most issues were already identified. And it was also hard to see it as a complete house given how much we have organised afterwards plus little things like the door handles not being on made it a bit weird. My favourite bit was checking the light switches and discovering that the fan speed dial for the alfresco turned the light switch on/off.

The building inspector was fantastic - got his report the same day and will be going through it with 101 this week, photos and descriptions of all the details. Happy to pass on the recommendation if anyone is interested.

Initially when I got the 77 page report, I was a bit stunned and thought maybe the house was falling down. But stripping it out the terms and conditions plus the repeated summary at the end, it was about 30 pages with about 1 issue per page. And a lot of them were the obvious things like painting/dents/bricks needing to be cleaned. All up still 2-3 items that I wouldn't have picked up myself so pretty good value in my opinion.

So trying to prepare for all the tasks post handover needing to be done - spent a couple of mornings out burying pipes for the reticulation which was both insanely hard to dig and stupidly hot when we were doing it, even with kicking off before 9am.

Painted front door - now if only they'd finish off that damn roofing:
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Our family outing - dad helping out with the trench for the front verge, I got my own one under the driveway:
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My trench - the worst bit being that it was digging through the crap left from various trades such as mortar/concrete from brickies, and partially compacted:
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Rear access from the garage:
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Our awesome alfresco space (fan and light working properly now):
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We have another contender for colours - the new one at the top but fortunately in person my choice of Tranquil Retreat (1/4) to the left wins out:
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One of the (very few) mistakes I think we made with our plan/layout - walk in pantry that then has additional doors to the shelves, I'm betting within a couple of months they'll annoy me enough that I'll just take the doors off the hinges:
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Living room - wide angle lens making the room space look good tho perhaps making my wifes belly look bigger than she is too (sorry boss!):
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Upstairs living space - I love it so much, we'll be tiling in front of the kitchenette but carpet the rest:
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His and her robe spaces (his first):
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Entry hall - the hall in the wall is so they could get the starlights installed for the picture recess:
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Painted front door:
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I'm interested! Feel free to PM me their details. Thanks!

It's all looking really good. Can't wait to see the final product.

Fantastic work, looks like it will be an amazing home. Even if you do have to keave the killer view you have in the current place

Thanks guys

And just got skirting booked through a retired family friend of the in-laws so another thing ticked off. I was a bit worried about what the cost was going to be since I got a quote during pre-start that was fairly expensive.

Then my wife sent me an email saying: "yeah, quote came in at $11948" - my mind immediately ruling out doing skirting before she came back with "oops, I meant $1948" which is pretty reasonable plus being able to see the quality of his finish at my mother-in-laws house. The fun of trying to juggle budgets at this stage of the build is very interesting

Getting a few of these so just going to post here: Mark @ Bestwest building. Will PM if this gets edited since not sure if it's breaking forum rules or anything

I told our Site Supervisor months ago - probably before lock-up that we'd be using an inspector. He asked why I wanted one, and I said because I don't know the standards and it provides an independent 3rd party, and he said fair enough. Didn't know who we were going to use at the time.

Booked the inspector when we knew roughly when PCI would be - he got in touch with 101 too in order to organise access - then ended up having everyone there on the same day last week. Was a breeze from my perspective, ended up leaving the inspector chatting to the SS and got the report that evening. It had like 2-3 items that weren't already on our list so going through the report tomorrow with 101 to confirm what needs to be done before final handover.

So door fittings went on this week and we realised we might have made a poor choice with our front door...

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Being new to all this, didn't really think about how things would hang together - we wanted the pattern, plus the big handles and thought it would all work out fine. Instead I think they look a bit odd with the bars up where they are - needed to have them centred (but then I think we would have changed the type of bars to have a built in lock or similar).

Peoples thoughts?

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Asides from that happy with the rest of the door fittings:

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My wife is also extremely happy with her shower - every chance we get (hangover not required):

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And currently thinking about what we can do with the backyard:

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The unstoppable couch grass might be the way to do it - survived demolition and subsequent build no troubles:

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We also went on a bit of a shopping splurge yesterday buying a heap of items from Harvey Norman, Freedom and At Home.

Highlights include our dishwasher - our first one ever and we went for a top of the range Miele mostly due to friends having one and the inclusion of a cutlery "rack" at the top:

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(yes I'm sure we all have such a perfect collection of cutlery and crockery...)

And also the TV units we went for - we are massive fans of wood and At Home had a couple of collections that we really loved, the final decision came down to one range having a 1.2m TV stand for the retreat while the other ranges didn't.

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We actually have about 3.6m for our living room TV recess so even the big unit is going to have plenty of extra space around it. So possible opportunity to add these to either side later:

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Then off to Sydney for the week so won't get a chance to monitor progress leading up to handover.

I know - I was thinking maybe just remove the bar/handles and it should be fine.

Did you ask for those bars or were you thinking of the trilock ones with the handle and lock built in?

Very fancy dishwasher! A lot of my furniture is from At Home

Missed a couple of posts:



Yeah will call 101 tomorrow morning - I think given I'm not here during the week, it might be easiest to either just get the existing ones removed and patched up, or leave them and sort it out after handover. Given it was my decision, they aren't really obliged to do anything about it but they have been pretty good for me so far.



Both... we did ask for the bars but I was thinking more the trilock ones. To be completely honest, I think it is actually a point that I mentally skipped over during pre-start, I made a decision in isolation and didn't really think through what the end outcome was going to look like - basically, I like those bars above the thicker trilock ones but I didn't think about how they'd have to be on the door. Their height at the moment would probably work better if we had a horizontal stripe pattern on the door but with our curves, I think that's the issue.

Part of me thinks "why didn't they say something at pre-start" but I'm sure they get so many decisions they might question that you just have to run with what the customer requests.

I'm beating myself up about it a bit but my wife has just said to me - "seriously, if that is the worst decision that we've made, then its a pretty good job overall".

I think I have to agree with bradster. Get rid of the pull-bars for now they're just a bit too high. If the handle wasn't there, it would probably be okay. Filling the screw holes shouldn't be a problem and then a touch-up and blend with paint will have it looking fine.

Long term, Omni trilocks (one tri-lock, one pull bar) would look superb.