Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Building Lexington 240 101Apr 16, 2017 8:48 pm Our hot water footing is described as: "600mm SQ. x 120mm DEEP HWS FOOTING POURED INTEGRAL TO SLAB AT 86mm BELOW FFL" Re: Building Lexington 240 102Apr 16, 2017 9:19 pm Nico Unfortunately we overlooked the splashback returns. They are included in the standard plans. It were deleted at some point but we are not sure when or why. Probably deleted in the colour consult when we upgraded from standard glass to starfire glass and so they didn't make it into the contract plans. We will just have to do all the messy cooking on the island bench. Might ask the area manger about it. Do you have them? They are on our plans, time will tell if they try and get away with not including them. With the butlers tap, we had a note without a price in our spec for along time saying that it was to be the same as the kitchen. Our sales guy agreed with us that the inclusions weren't clear so he slipped it through for free. We got away with it for ages but right near the end someone picked it up and charged us to upgrade to the new standard taps, when I pointed out that it needed to say milli glance to match the kitchen they changed the note but not the price, so we had half a win! Re: Building Lexington 240 103Apr 17, 2017 9:56 am Nico Thanks Doc what is it about chromagen units that your plumbers didn't like? One of them said some of the units use a glycol solution which can add considerable to the complexity of any handling. Another who used to be a service agent, wouldn't touch them now. Too fragile and cheap components. Think he'd also been burnt by the company not honouring warranty costs, or just very slow to pay. Can't remember the exact details though, so don't quote me. We have had some problems with ours already - panel pipes leaking, and wrong relief valve installed - continuously leaked. Re: Building Lexington 240 104Apr 17, 2017 9:57 am Nico Our hot water footing is described as: "600mm SQ. x 120mm DEEP HWS FOOTING POURED INTEGRAL TO SLAB AT 86mm BELOW FFL" That is an improvement over our inclusion which was just a 'paving slab'. Re: Building Lexington 240 105Apr 17, 2017 10:11 am Thanks Doc. Had never heard of chromagen before coming across them with Kings. I have now read some online reviews and they seem pretty grim. The frost vales and leaking is a common complaint. Just hope it's one of those cases where all reviews happen to be bad because nobody bothers to post a positive review when it's working as expected. Will definitely keep an eye on it. Re: Building Lexington 240 106Apr 17, 2017 10:23 am bank With the butlers tap, we had a note without a price in our spec for along time saying that it was to be the same as the kitchen. Our sales guy agreed with us that the inclusions weren't clear so he slipped it through for free. We got away with it for ages but right near the end someone picked it up and charged us to upgrade to the new standard taps, when I pointed out that it needed to say milli glance to match the kitchen they changed the note but not the price, so we had half a win! Did you change the sinks or leave them as standard? Ours are the standard which should be butlers as an overmount single franke and the kitchen as an undermount double franke (which was then changed to a euromodo). Never understood why JG King do it like that and didn't realise until too late as like we have talked about before, these standard details are often not clear in the standard inclusion documents and the documents tend to change regularly or be non specific or even contradict each other. Even the Allure display that we saw had this overmount/undermount combo and the colour consultant couldn't say why a cook would need or prefer that setup. If I had my time again I'd make sure the butlers was also undermount and have the butlers tap presenting through the essastone, not attached to the sink corner. Re: Building Lexington 240 107Apr 17, 2017 12:35 pm Nico bank With the butlers tap, we had a note without a price in our spec for along time saying that it was to be the same as the kitchen. Our sales guy agreed with us that the inclusions weren't clear so he slipped it through for free. We got away with it for ages but right near the end someone picked it up and charged us to upgrade to the new standard taps, when I pointed out that it needed to say milli glance to match the kitchen they changed the note but not the price, so we had half a win! Did you change the sinks or leave them as standard? Ours are the standard which should be butlers as an overmount single franke and the kitchen as an undermount double franke (which was then changed to a euromodo). Never understood why JG King do it like that and didn't realise until too late as like we have talked about before, these standard details are often not clear in the standard inclusion documents and the documents tend to change regularly or be non specific or even contradict each other. Even the Allure display that we saw had this overmount/undermount combo and the colour consultant couldn't say why a cook would need or prefer that setup. If I had my time again I'd make sure the butlers was also undermount and have the butlers tap presenting through the essastone, not attached to the sink corner. We upgraded to AXA Exact in both, undermount in the kitchen, over in the butlers. I probably should have gone under in the butlers, I agonised over it. The standard at the time for us was an overmount in the butlers that reminded me of a laundry sink, and I think something different in the kitchen, the documentation I have says they're both Franke but I don't remember the kitchen one being a Franke. Relative to the double bowl in the kitchen the butlers upgrade cost us a lot because the included was cheap and the upgrade not a 'standard' upgrade option (this is stupid when the offer it as a standard option in the kitchen), which probably why I held back on the undermount. I won't be upset if they stuff up and we end up with both undermount. Re: Building Lexington 240 108Apr 20, 2017 12:25 pm CFO and independent inspector booked for tomorrow. Hoping to get answers tomorrow afternoon. Final paint planned for next Wednesday. JGK have fixed a few of defects and have and got plans for most others. Fingers crossed 🤞 Re: Building Lexington 240 109Apr 22, 2017 8:20 am CFO inspection has passed. Hooray . Council just need a see an installers certificate for the gas or plumbing and we are good to go. (Apparently JGK arrange some certificates after inspection and then the council certificate gets issued). Final paint is booked for next Wednesday and house clean for Thursday. Thus we are currently planning a site visit with the JGK area manager for next Friday and if our ducks all line up this may also be final cheque, keys and handover otherwise if there is something substantial outstanding it will probably be the week after. Currently 1-2 months overdue but feeling like the end is insight. Off to IKEA to buy paper blinds today. Re: Building Lexington 240 110Apr 22, 2017 2:12 pm Nico CFO inspection has passed. Hooray . Council just need a see an installers certificate for the gas or plumbing and we are good to go. (Apparently JGK arrange some certificates after inspection and then the council certificate gets issued). Final paint is booked for next Wednesday and house clean for Thursday. Thus we are currently planning a site visit with the JGK area manager for next Friday and if our ducks all line up this may also be final cheque, keys and handover otherwise if there is something substantial outstanding it will probably be the week after. Currently 1-2 months overdue but feeling like the end is insight. Off to IKEA to buy paper blinds today. Congrats that's certainly a step in the right direction. 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 112Apr 24, 2017 9:14 am julia1301 Thats fantastic news, how exciting for you! I hope the final inspection goes well. P.s im intrigued by paper blinds, what are they? Thanks Julia we are officially counting sleeps now. The paper blinds are called schottis at IKEA. They are a very simple paper/polyester temporary window blind that sticks to the window frame until you get real blinds ordered and installed. A cut above hanging bedsheets over windows in a way. Surprisingly cheap at $5 each and you just cut them to size with scissors. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Re: Building Lexington 240 113Apr 26, 2017 3:00 pm We have our occupancy certificate! JGK are just doing the final paint and clean but in true JGK style they just need another day. As such, handover is pushed to Monday and the removalist is booked for Tuesday. Re: Building Lexington 240 115Apr 26, 2017 3:11 pm Nico We have our occupancy certificate! JGK are just doing the final paint and clean but in true JGK style they just need another day. As such, handover is pushed to Monday and the removalist is booked for Tuesday. Congrats!! Fantastic news, must be a big relief. We got ours on Monday, had keys that Friday. Not long now. 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 110550 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 11033 |