Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Building Lexington 240 110Apr 22, 2017 2:12 pm Building the Metricon Fortitude 32, blogging the development at - https://fortitude32.wordpress.com/ Build thread - https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=85627 Re: Building Lexington 240 115Apr 26, 2017 3:11 pm Building the Metricon Fortitude 32, blogging the development at - https://fortitude32.wordpress.com/ Build thread - https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=85627 Re: Building Lexington 240 116Apr 26, 2017 8:23 pm Congratulations thats so exciting Our Build Thread - JG king Memphis Re: Building Lexington 240 117May 07, 2017 10:24 pm SO I was searching around how long a build will take and came across this. we are pouring the slab for our Lexington 240 tomorrow morning, having not seen an end result the pics from the display home were great and yours looks spectacular as well. even more keen for this to make to to the end now! JG King Lexington 240 Acreage build https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=87762 Building Lexington 240 118May 09, 2017 5:23 pm We got our keys last Monday at the final inspection and took possession of the house that day. Our removalists came the next day on Tuesday and we have spent most of the time since unpacking and cleaning. It has been a big week to say the least.
Overall the experience has been good and the quality is there in the build. We are happy with the home layout and our changes from the original spec. We are also really happy with the estate we picked. The people are nice and the views out to Huon Hill in the morning are great too. There is a real regional city feel which is a welcome break from where we came from. The appliances all work well, in-fact better than expected. The ovens which are the AEG standard are very good (the cook tells me) and the dishwasher, range hood and microwave are great too. I feared some of the standard appliances would be a bit ordinary but alas not. Now that the house has furniture in it, it all looks a lot more finished than when we inspected during the builds. The heating is cosy and the hot water nice and hot. The central gas heating really heats the place up quickly. It’s my first time with central gas heating and I quite like it so far. The benchtops are the 20mm standard and we are quite happy in that regard too. The bench area is large, approx. 1.5m x 3m so heaps of room for cooking. The shower shelves are stable (now) but you couldn’t operate a pump-action shampoo bottles on them. We wish we had just splurged on proper recesses but we figure we splurged on other things instead and you can’t have it all. Keys are all keyed alike – so we have 1 for lockwood doors, 1 for sliding doors and 1 for window winders. Then we have the letter box and that’s it. The garage door opens smoothly too and its great having the opener mounted inside the car and another inside the garage, very easy to open and shut stuff. I managed to get my head into the roof space and it seems generally clean and the insulation is down. I didn’t get to completely move around in there though. We had a big list of upgrades that you can see in the first page of this thread. We are happy with all of them, none of them feel like a waste in hindsight. The items we left standard are mostly OK as well, the only notable thing is that the JG King cat 1 carpet really is "builders carpet" but we didn't expect it to be great. On the flip side of the cat 1 carpet is that our silver tiles are quite nice and relatively speaking being the Beaumont’s silver range they are effectively the lowest category but we are really happy with them. We were unsure what the dressing room shelving would look like but its turned out great. We were also missing a shelf in 1 room and asked for it to be fixed – they sent out 4 new shelves so we gave the guest room and the dressing 2 extra shelves. Also really glad we did the 5th shelf in butlers and the extra high shelf in the dresser. The internet has been a big win as well. Being in a fibre-to-the-home NBN estate we signed up with Barefoot Telecom. We are on a 100/40 plan and have gotten speed tests of up to 93Mbps. All the data cabling in the house is good and the NBN enclosure in the garage which JG King provide is neat. We have 7 ports cabled to study, living and lounge. Kings supply a 10/100 Ethernet switch but I installed a gigabit Cisco switch donated by my employer. JG King have been good overall with handover as we ended up in hands of the area manager, but 3 things have remained which annoyed us. The easiest way to explain is that what JG Kings do good they do great and what they do bad is just awful. The 3 things are: First is the concrete around the house and driveway has more prints in it than first thought. We always knew there were dog prints on the side path but after spending 2 hours on the weekend hosing all the mud off (it wasn't cleaned at handover) we have found extra bird prints and dog prints and even a faint footprint. These are on alfresco and driveway. We are considering what to do here, but decking over them or really thick outdoor paints are the options for now. The second issue is around the bathroom accessories (hand-towel rings, shower shelves, toilet roll holders) these were just not screwed on tight enough and were loose. If you put a roll of toilet paper on the holder it would tilt down vertically and the roll would fall to the floor. JG King came back twice since last Monday to fix all the accessories but we have since reinstalled them all again ourselves (effectively the 4th time they have been installed) using star washers, bigger screws and Loctite and they are now secure. Not a big job but several hours work and 3 trips to Bunnings we could have done without. They also missed the noggins on 2 hand-towel rings and both shower shelves and so those are held on with hollow-wall anchors. Third is about cleaning and paint. We have been cleaning inside and outside daily since moving in, probably between 30 minutes to 4 hours a day. This includes paint on door handles, glass windows, window frames and winders. There was mud outside on concrete, bricks, eaves, window frames and external lights and general paint and dirt inside on many surfaces. The handover clean was pretty much just a mop and vacuum unfortunately and even that was a bit ordinary. But alas we are almost through it. There is a fair bit of paint on the unpainted garage floor too. Whilst I know this is common in many new homes we do want to cover this with a 2-pack epoxy at some point but will now need to thoroughly get the paint off first. Other minor stuff includes the garage manhole - they gave us a hinged aluminium hatch instead of just a regular bordered hole with a plaster board. It was better than we expected but we are having trouble closing and so it’s being replaced. A weather strip fell off on day 1 but got replaced by Kings on day 2. Overall my lessons learned would include the following: “Do your own concrete or don’t pay for concrete until you’ve seen it yourself and its been cleaned” “Insist on full inside and outside cleans before handover, including getting mud off all outside surfaces” “Cat 1 carpet is basic but Silver tiles are not bad” “Upgrades to electrical lighting is well worth it, as are upgrades to heating and cooling” “Upgrades to shower heads and screens are well worth it” “Garage sizes by default are for narrow blocks – 6x6 so expand it if you can or need to, don’t assume its enough” “Shower recesses over shelves any day of the week” “If anything that is wall mounted is loose during an inspection it’s probably just held on with wall anchors and not screwed into noggings/studs” “If you get wall to ceiling tiling, you need noggings for anything wall-mounted – wall-mounting on tiling is not great and relies on careful measurement”. “Undermount sinks mean no draining space so really think about whether you want this or not” Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Re: Building Lexington 240 119May 09, 2017 5:59 pm looks stunning congratulations JG King Lexington 240 Acreage build https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=87762 go upvc window frames ensure insulation under colorbond. not just sarking, lighter color roof also not sure if you have seen this viewtopic.php?t=5823 last couple of pages… 4 110571 Even if it's not being sub-divided and you want to keep it as Torrens title, you will still need to talk to a town planner or Council themselves, to see if they will allow… 1 11035 |