Rawson Balmoral 38 MK1 - Newcastle NSW

Huhness · Nov 09, 2019 9:45 am

ourrawsonbalmoral38

Looks great as is, we cant wait to have the timber panelling up to add some further contrast to the rendered pier. Thanks again to huhness for recommending to paint behind the timber black, our neighbors across the street had theirs up this week and it was white {surfmist-ghosting?} and it looks almost like white mortar from the street, definitely needs dark contrast to highlight the timber slats.

You were meant to share the news with them! :lol:

Oh well now you know just how bad it looks on a white background! The house is looking great!

Love the sne@ky message on the scaffolding too

S.n.e.a.k.y is a forbidden word on homeone...

ourrawsonbalmoral38 · Nov 11, 2019 10:16 am

Huhness

ourrawsonbalmoral38

Looks great as is, we cant wait to have the timber panelling up to add some further contrast to the rendered pier. Thanks again to huhness for recommending to paint behind the timber black, our neighbors across the street had theirs up this week and it was white {surfmist-ghosting?} and it looks almost like white mortar from the street, definitely needs dark contrast to highlight the timber slats.

You were meant to share the news with them! :lol:

Oh well now you know just how bad it looks on a white background! The house is looking great!

Love the sne@ky message on the scaffolding too

S.n.e.a.k.y is a forbidden word on homeone...

Unfortunately we haven't met the owners of the chifley to ask them what they'd specified

Ha weird sne@ky is banned, my message wasn't meant to be!? haha

ourrawsonbalmoral38 · Nov 19, 2019 9:12 am

Week 25:

We had electrical rough in booked, but they didn’t show up, and we had the front door (side door in our case) frame installed and framework started on the porch above our front door, the remainder of the metal capping on the fascade and western side of the house.

Issue #1 when looking up at the porch framework Id noticed that the renderer had missed the side return face on the bricks.

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This wont be witnessed from the ground floor as there will be the porch roof, albeit we have a big window looking directly at it from the 1st floor:

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Issue #2 when looking at the metal capping it was surf mist. Strangely they’d started 2-3 weeks ago with monument (the correct colour) and came back and finished the job off with the incorrect colour

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We had the lower ground floor roofing guttering done also

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Week 26 shall see electrical rough in, ducted A/C rough in and eave carpenters finish of porch and ground floor eaves and a few other bits and pieces.

I sent our S/S an email he was onto our issues, and will address these mistakes. Every issue raised so far has been taken on board by Rawson and rectified so I must commend them for that

ourrawsonbalmoral38 · Nov 25, 2019 8:56 am

Week 26

We had our electrical and A/C rough in completed last week, and the eave carpenters have completed most of the lower eaves.

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Having a quick squiz most of the electrical looks ok, I noticed since we're having a sliding door to the laundry it looks like the electrician is going to mount the P/P on the window sill, but noticed they'd mounted a bracket on the other side.. (I'd prefer it to be symmetrical)

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With the A/C ducting they've installed 2 ducts inside the WIR in one of the bedrooms, unfortunately this will make it a lot smaller unfortunately when gyprockers lay sheets around it

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Dedicated A/C duct still has room for one more?

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Whilst around the side of the house looking at the new meter box, I'd noticed the window sill brickwork was still uncompleted. We'd paid for brickwork a few months ago now and I'd not noticed this in the past (as scaffolding and mesh was over these windows for quite some time and there was no room to walk down this side of the house)...

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4 weeks to XMAS and the aim was from our S/S to be ready for lockup as the house will sit unattended for 4 weeks over the XMAS NY period, so we'll see!

ourrawsonbalmoral38 · Dec 03, 2019 8:52 am

Week 27 Not a great deal had occured in wk 27.

We received our independent inspection report from houspect, for pre lining and it was quite comprehensive with most of the defects raised I had already raised with my S/S.

At the time of inspection there was a heap of items on the exterior still incompleted, but the gyprock is due to go on ASAP as we have the XMAS break looming and our S/S wants to have the house ready for lockup whilst it sits over the XMAS period.

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We met with our S/S Jeff yesterday to go through the items in the report, and get an update. We're still on track to have stairs, kitchen and gyprock in over the next few weeks then there's a heap of other items which require finishing off..

In my previous post I mentioned the A/C ducting. It's really dissapointing how they put placement of ducts on the drawings then the A/C guys wack them in a totally different spot due to structual beams etc in the way. This really should be considered at the planning stage, and the building Co's need to take more ownership of this rather then yeah sorry about that we're just gonna have to do with what you've got attitude..

The ducting in our ground floor dining is in a totally substandard position currently:

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The drawing ducts in green, the red is where they've positioned it for install:

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This means for the dining room and foyer this duct near the alfresco windows would have to cover this area:

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Due to steel beams in the way the only suggestion our S/S had was to drop the roof and put a bulkhead in above the windows and install a long vent like the example below:

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Various pics of roof

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ourrawsonbalmoral38 · Dec 03, 2019 9:06 am

We'd had a design issue where our S/S proposed to install capping on top of the brickwork, instead of having recess in brickwork and sloping colorbond roof section: Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅

We didnt mind either way, and trying to help our S/S get things moving we agreed to the proposal.

The guys finished it up last week, looks OK some more time needs to be spent on finishing the edging off so both sections (dining room and lounge room) are both uniform currently they've both been finished off differently..

Before:

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After:

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Front door (side of the house) pergola

Before:

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After: (still incomplete but needs redoing from scratch)

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Thankfully I didn't have to raise it with our S/S for them to redo the roofing, he told me he wants it redone it looked pretty damn ordinary..

I hope everyone reading this doesn't get the wrong impression, I'm quite fussy and I wish to report an honest warts and all style blog highlighting all the pitfalls and issues in the hope it may help others with their builds and what to look out for!

Norfolk · Dec 03, 2019 10:18 am

Great post and very helpful to others. Regarding frame straightening, I suggest you make sure they actually do it with a follow up check before the gyprock is fixed on. On my Metricon build they didn’t straighten the frame and they were forced by NSWDFT to remove and replace about 50% of the gyprock on the walls and ceilings due to waves and bows. It was clear their process did not include a frame straightening step and the expectation was that customers would accept this at PCI.

luxbuild · Dec 03, 2019 11:30 am

Yeah I don't understand how all these things like ductwork come up on site. They've presumably built these same designs a number of times and it should be known to them, and then if you have made a change to the standard home before construction, they should make sure it works.

I think it might be because they get other firms to design the frame and steel work and maybe never merge it together in a complete design to find things clashing, and leave it up to the site supervisor to add bulkheads to get around problems with little consideration to the owners expections of whats actually getting delivered. Or maybe they deliberately leave it to the build site as there is an extra pressure on the owner to accept a less than preferred outcome.

They give lots of warnings about redraw fees etc, but happy to add in a bulkhead onsite and then have a final version of drawings 'as built'. Makes bit of mockery of all the design choices we go through with the sales teams.

I noticed in one of your photos, a bracket that doesn't appears to have any screws to the floor joist?

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Edit: And thanks for sharing your build.
I don't think you are fussy, and I bet the build would be done differently if it was the site supervisors home getting built.

ourrawsonbalmoral38 · Dec 13, 2019 8:33 am

Norfolk

Great post and very helpful to others. Regarding frame straightening, I suggest you make sure they actually do it with a follow up check before the gyprock is fixed on. On my Metricon build they didn’t straighten the frame and they were forced by NSWDFT to remove and replace about 50% of the gyprock on the walls and ceilings due to waves and bows. It was clear their process did not include a frame straightening step and the expectation was that customers would accept this at PCI.

Im hoping my blog will help others on what to look out for and other steps as we go through our build!

As for wall straightening it was a bit difficult as it occurred the day before they put the gyprock up, and im not allowed on site without the S/S..

Our S/S assured me that they'd done it so yeah.. :-?

ourrawsonbalmoral38 · Dec 13, 2019 8:38 am

luxbuild

Yeah I don't understand how all these things like ductwork come up on site. They've presumably built these same designs a number of times and it should be known to them, and then if you have made a change to the standard home before construction, they should make sure it works.

I think it might be because they get other firms to design the frame and steel work and maybe never merge it together in a complete design to find things clashing, and leave it up to the site supervisor to add bulkheads to get around problems with little consideration to the owners expections of whats actually getting delivered. Or maybe they deliberately leave it to the build site as there is an extra pressure on the owner to accept a less than preferred outcome.

They give lots of warnings about redraw fees etc, but happy to add in a bulkhead onsite and then have a final version of drawings 'as built'. Makes bit of mockery of all the design choices we go through with the sales teams.

I noticed in one of your photos, a bracket that doesn't appears to have any screws to the floor joist?

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Edit: And thanks for sharing your build.
I don't think you are fussy, and I bet the build would be done differently if it was the site supervisors home getting built.

yes I agree 100% with you, its so annoying when they've made a mistake its no big deal and they run things by you and its done verbally no problems.. but if you ask for something its the end of the world and fees apply etc...

I think it would be fair if you had say 1-3 opportunities to change thing then its a redraw fee or something along those lines?

I'm guessing they don't really have all the details for A/C ducts and things like plumbing etc can get in the way but for as you say it puts you in a squeeze as its already done and normally gyprock is going up the next week so you dont have much time also to think of a plan B.

Well spotted the bracket had 1 screw in it!

ourrawsonbalmoral38 · Dec 13, 2019 8:58 am

Week 28: We had some of our scaffolding come down, and they finally done a site cleanup (literally walking on/over bricks and crap everywhere).

Wall and ceiling insulation was put in all ready for gyprock next week

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We also had an issue where the metal capping we specified in monument was half done in monument then they came back to finish it off they'd put up surf mist... They came back and redone it in monument to finish it off (still had a bit left remaining on the brickwork to finish off)

Before:

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After:

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Week 29 & week 30 are the two last weeks pretty much left before the xmas shutdown. Our S/S plans to have the house ready for lockup so it seems that rather than 1-2 days per week on the build there will be 5 days a week being spent on it to get it to that stage (its been a very slow 3 months prior to this) so that will be pleasing to see.

Week 29:

Gyprock will be put up
Stair install

Week 30:

Kitchen to go in
Fixing materials delivered and fixing carpenter

Littlegem · Dec 13, 2019 7:07 pm

ourrawsonbalmoral38

Week 28: We had some of our scaffolding come down, and they finally done a site cleanup (literally walking on/over bricks and crap everywhere).

Wall and ceiling insulation was put in all ready for gyprock next week

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We also had an issue where the metal capping we specified in monument was half done in monument then they came back to finish it off they'd put up surf mist... They came back and redone it in monument to finish it off (still had a bit left remaining on the brickwork to finish off)

Before:

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After:

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Week 29 & week 30 are the two last weeks pretty much left before the xmas shutdown. Our S/S plans to have the house ready for lockup so it seems that rather than 1-2 days per week on the build there will be 5 days a week being spent on it to get it to that stage (its been a very slow 3 months prior to this) so that will be pleasing to see.

Week 29:

Gyprock will be put up
Stair install

Week 30:

Kitchen to go in
Fixing materials delivered and fixing carpenter

Looks beautiful but man, it’s a slow build!