Our KDR - Gemmill. Ceilings and lockup! FINALLY

Very funky ottoman Darcy27!

well - it's business as usual here, so I haven't posted for a bit. By which I mean - nothing has happened!

Husband met the SS on site on tuesday - our 4th for this build. And teh brickies were back, after being MIA for a week. The lintels had arrived, missing footings had been poured, and he said they would be there daily now, and should be finished hopefully by Friday.

They did a fair bit on Tuesday and Wednesday, and haven't been back since. No-one yesterday. No-one today. Maybe he meant next Friday?

And no contact, no phone call - business as usual.

On the plus side, we can actually see the room sizes and get a feel for the house now, which is great. I'm kind of regretting the wide hallway - it is huge! Would have been better using that space as living area rather than just hallway - ahh well, too late now. And although the kids rooms are almost the same size on paper, one looks heaps bigger than the other. and the wardrobe location is a little awkward, and the bulkhead means my son probably won't be able to have the loft bed he wants, unless we cut it down a bit.

All pretty minor in the scheme of things.

And I think I've decided on tiles - grey, concrete looking, 600x600. Maybe Lapato? (I'd never heard of them until Wednesday - anyone got them or seen them?)

More tiles - this is the type of look I'm after........

Any opinions?

Love your choice, they are so pretty! we have similar colour in our house now but much smaller/cheaper per sqm I love the colour, ours aren't rectified though which I would highly recommend but they cost more to lay. I guess with the larger tile you have pictured here you would already be spending the laying money anyway whats a bit more for rectified?

I Like those tiles a lot as well. Why don't you put your son in the other bedroom then he can have his loft bed.

Unfortunately both kids want a loft bed.........

We thought we'd give the slightly larger one with the bigger wardrobe to our daughter - she spends a lot more time in there with her friends than our son does- he tends to hang outside, or where the computer or playstation are.

Off to check Speedwaychick's thread to look for pics of your tiles - are there any there????? I remember that I loved your house, but can't remember why!

And on the actual build - no builders on site again today!!! No -one there since last Tuesday. It will NEVER be finished at this rate!

ETA: Speedway chick - it was your design I remembered I loved. And that we are in a race to see who gets a roof first! (I think you will win that one!)

DP.

Sorry that the brickies are taking so long, maybe they are working on two houses at once or something. Hope they come back to you soon!

Love those floor tiles!! They are just gorgeous!

I don't share your confidence Darcy!!
We have a few things to achieve before bricks get delivered yet I think, we need a power box, soak wells delivered installed and windows and doors delivered, a bin....a storage shed! Your still way ahead Darcy I don't see it changing, and I look forward to seeing your roof first!
Edited to add the tiles I was talking about are in our current house, not the new one, sorry

Ahh, thanks anyway - don't spose you've got any pictures? Considering 450x450 tiles to safe money- but all the trendy houzz pictures are big and bigger.

The more I save on floors, the more I have left over to buy a lounge and dining table *sigh*

We have grey concrete 600x600 rectified tiles being laid in our ensuite - tiler due to start screening tomorrow I will post pics when he begins

apologise in advance for the terrible pics but these are our el cheapos

How are you progressing Darcy? Any action?

Ditto

I have posted 2 replies in the past couple of days, and neither have made it to my thread - no idea why..... Anyway.......

We got to plate height! Yay. Had our building inspection done, and they picked up a few issues. Some bricks didn't have enough mortar, and the open ends of some bricks need the holes filled in.

As a bonus, "my" storeroom is 300mm bigger, and "husbands" storeroom is 300mm smaller. His was bigger to start with, so I'm not complaining about my extra 3cm!!!!

And the roof carpentry, wiring, fascias and gutters are all done too!!! Since the bricks finished nearly 2 weeks ago, it has been "all systems go". I think there has been builders on site every day, which is a far cry from the brickies, who never seemed to work more than 3 days straight without a week break inbetween. One day the roof guys were there from before 7am (when I left for work) until after 5pm (when I came home). Very impressive.

Husband met with the SS on wednesday. (So far we are on our 4th SS, and about our 6th CLO. ) Actually, the guy he met isn't actually the SS, but the supervisor of the SS's..... I think we are going back to SS#2 or #3, or something. Anyway, the one we met last time is no longer, and we have one of the previous ones who we never got to speak to anyway. Who would know.

The good news out of all that though, is that this guy (the boss of all bosses) seems to think that we will be at lock-up in 3-4 weeks, and handover about 6 weeks after that. So he didn't think the initial date of mid-November was out of reach! (Of course, he said he can't guarantee it, we can't hold him to it, yada, yada, yada).

So, excitement again!

Next milestone - COLOURBOND!

Oh, and thanks Speedwaychick for the pics. That is the look I'm hoping for, I think. In the 600x600.

I did find some I like at a shop in Osborne Park, and they were half price! Of course, they only had 110m, and we need 130m...... but we are hoping that they will get a new shipment in, and will sell them to us at the discount. fingers crossed, otherwise I'm back to scouring the shops.

If anyone sees any nice grey concrete look floor tiles in Perth, PLEASE let me know..... unless they are really expensive. I've seen lovely ones out of our price range! *sigh*

Sounds like us and our bazillion contacts haha. Have you had Jason yet? Or Abi? They're still the best

Have you thought of just polishing your grey concrete? That's what we're doing for $100 sqm. We paid a bit extra to have a higher strength concrete but that's not necessary.

An update - after not having been here for a while…. It's been a long and frustrating couple of months.

We now have another new CLO and Site Manager….. I've lost count now. 7th CLO?? Gemmill seem to be an absolute mess behind the scenes.

And their policy of clients not being able to even talk to the Site Supervisor is a joke. We've had a couple who would bend the rules and put in the odd phone call to discuss an issue, but in general, I am absolutely OVER the miscommunication, time delays and broken promises. When the slab went down, we were supposed to be at hand-over by mid November….. no chance of being in for Christmas now.

In my last post, we were excited that lock up was 4 weeks away….. it has taken 8 weeks, and days of no-one on site, to get to lockup yesterday.

Unfortunately it is locked up with the wrong front doors. Will be interesting to see how long it takes to sort that out, or if there is a fight over it. I have just sent through a copy of the pre start variation which clearly shows we wanted PMAD101, not 104….. Hopefully it is not an issue.

On the positive side, all our friends who "know building" say that it is a great job, very neat, well finished off etc. So hopefully it will still eventually be a nice house. Maybe by Easter?

I'll post some pics tonight.

The building industry really needs a shake up over communication to clients, if we behaved that way here at work there'd be hell to pay!