Thanks

It's gorgeous Ace!

You've got lovely sea views

Thanks T, we thought the view would be pretty good when we bought the land but we were spun out when we saw it from the second floor windows.

i Everyone,
I hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year.

We had a great Christmas, New Year wasn't so great. To cut a long story short, we took the boat down to lake Navarino to do a bit of biscuiting, it is only about an hour south east of where we live but we decided it would be fun to camp over night. We had a great day on the water and a lovely barbecue under the stars. Unfortunately my airbed went down in the night which left me with a bit of a sore back. Anyway we got up the next the day had brekkie, cleared up and packed the tent away and just as we were about to the boat into the water I pulled up the hand break on the ute and suffered a grade one tear across my QL muscle which is the large muscle attached to the lumber vertebrea, the lower ribs and the pelvis it is responsible for supporting to top half of the body. Needless to say it was excruciatingly painful and I spent New Years Eve laying on an icepack watching the sunset on my own. I couldn't walk or sit for any length of time so I have not been able to do an update.

Luckily a friend of mine (who is also our family doctor) is married to a physiotherapist and he saw me on New Years day. I have had some excellent treatment and I am up and about now but still in pain. Anyway these pics are some front and side elevation pics which were taken on Christmas Eve. The guys have been back at work for a week now and we will be going to the house this afternoon to take some more.

ACE

We went up to the house yesterday but I didn't take any pictures as it doesn't look that different to the last lot. They have done some more painting and plastering inside and the smart wire guys have installed the wiring for the intercom, vibration sensors and light sensors outside as well as the security computer panel points.

We went up to the block yesterday and discovered that the scaffolding had bee removed. There is still some painting to do on the balcony and the protruding band so I don't know what will happen there, perhaps they will have to put it up again. The coving has also been installed to all the rooms, the balconies and the kitchen bulk head.

We enjoyed our first sunset from the front balcony with our friend over from the UK, thought you might like to share it with us.

This should have been with the previous post.

Lovely!!!

What a gorgeous view....I'm sooo jealous You'll never get tired of that

Regarding the scaffolding, they may have a very long ladder Are you just leaving the bottom half brick? I thought that would have been rendered and painted too?

It was quite a cloudy evening and that made this a particularly beautiful sunset.

Yes the whole house will be rendered and painted. You might be right perhaps they will use long ladders or cherry pickers to finish off I know that the scaffolding costs a lot to hire so maybe they are trying to save some money while it is not being fully utilised.

Hi Folks,
Well I haven't been around for a while. Two reasons the first is that the first couple of weeks at school are always very hectic and tiring especially as my eldest started high school at my school. The other is that things have been a bit uneventful at the house. Small things have happened but there have been a lot of down days too. However, we had a major upset with the air con, basically what happened was that they messed up and failed to follow the plans. I have pasted part of a letter that I sent to In Vogue's head office.

With reference to the air con: Company x seem to be doing a less than adequate job. Prior to engaging them we spent a substantial amount of time working on a plan for our system. On the occasion of their first visit to our house Company x informed us that they were going to be on site so Mr ACE went to meet them. On arrival he noticed that they had ignored the plan and they were in the process of installing the ducting to the inverter in the wrong part of the house. We had designed a wider wall area to the rear of the garage on the south side of the house to accommodate the inverter and they were going to put it towards the front of the house on the north side. On their advice (and as documented on Company x's plan) we paid to have a number of dropped ceilings in our home only to discover that they had again ignored the plan and forced our ducting through the trusses. We pointed this out to them and they assured us that this would be put right. However, we went to inspect our house last weekend and yet again they have not followed the plan and have knocked a number of holes through our walls below the dropped ceilings which would have effectively lowered the ceilings to 25 courses instead of the documented 28. Thankfully your carpenter and supervisor did not deviate from our plan and installed the dropped ceilings at the correct height. We now have missing brickwork which could negatively impact on the structural integrity of our walls. This could have been avoided if Company x had bothered to follow their plan:curse:.

We have had a couple of week fretting about this and wondering how the hell they were going to fix the problem. Anyway, Mr ACE arranged a meeting earlier in the week with the air con company and our supervisor. The air con company boss came down with the guy that did the work and was very apologetic and reassuring. As you can imagine the supervisor was not pleased with them and they both came up with some ideas as to how it could be put right. Our biggest problem was that the AC company's ideas involved dropping bulk heads and dropped ceilings which if In Vogue agreed to do this they could have charged us for labour and also a $500 fee for post construction alterations:curse:. Our supervisor assured us that his job was to build a house that we would be happy with and that we would be comfortable living in and he felt that if the AC didn't work or was not properly fitted we would not be happy. Anyway he suggested putting in some extra bulk heads and cutting through some of the beams and he was happy to do this without going through the head office and at no extra charge. We both felt a lot better about the situation after that and went to the house this afternoon. Well we were pleasantly surprised, true to his word our supervisor had carried out the work as promised.

Things are moving again now the roof is completely finished, the ground floor rendering is complete and the lower floor electrics have been installed. The tiles we selected turned out to be discontinued stock so i had to spend another 5 hours reselecting 3 of the bathrooms and the kitchen. This caused a bit of a problem because the new tiles did not match the benchtop so after a scary moment (where I was told that I would have to pay to change the benchtops to match the tiles that they forced me to change) it all came good as the cabinet maker had not yet made up the bathroom furniture. The tiler will be coming to do the bathrooms in 3 weeks so we have to go out this week and select the balcony tiles and the doors will be arriving in he next couple of weeks. Our supervisor has advised us that house will most likely be finished by May.
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More pics

Pleased you got it all sorted in the end. We had similar issues with our house. I think it's all down to communication a lot of the time.

It's looking gorgeous now. May isn't far away really, but take it with a pinch of salt, as they very rarely stick to their time.

Not long now though :

Thanks T we are very pleased with it. We have taken our supervisors comments about finishing in May with a bucket load of salt but he has been spot on with his time frame estimates so far. May is too soon really as the lease on our rental runs until October.