Building with Wisdom - Manhattan 42 (now 51)

Lazy boy

2011-03-12T18:12:00.002+11:00

Sorry all! I have been so busy that I have forgotten all about updating the blog!!! Landscaping, pool & driveway are completed now. I will update with pictures in the next week....I promise :)

Some Internal Photos :)

2010-08-30T17:04:00.016+10:00

Here are some internal photos. Please ignore the mess - as we are still unpacking and putting everything away! The photo quality is poor...I think it is time for a new camera. The outside landscaping is underway - and I will post more photos of that soon.

Our nice new kitchen!

Worlds biggest pantry:

Home Theatre room....100inch screen:

Rumpus room...will have the table tennis there a.s.a.p.

Living Room:

Laundry:

Study (still unpacking):

Staircase...for some reason the tiles look green here. But they are actually more of a grey colour:

Downstairs loo:

Living room (again...tiles look more brown than grey in this photo):

Photo of dining room. You can see the start of our pool and alfresco:

Looking towards front of house from dining/living area:

Upstairs Lounge (aka Kids room)

Master bedroom balcony...soon to be home Gym (with TV and all):

Main bedroom media alcove...still to buy a TV for here:

Main bedroom:

Walk in Robe...the Wife side:

Walk in Robe...the Husband side:

Main bedroom Ensuite (With Rainforest shower head as well as the nomral one):

Main bedroom Ensuite (cant wait to use the spa!)

Main bedroom Ensuite (his and hers basins):

Bedroom 2 ensuite....all the bedrooms have similar ensuites:

Double doors to front balcony:

View from from upstairs front balcony..looking towards rear of house. All the linen cupboards and laundy chute are on the right:

That is about it for now. More outside pictures soon.....

Handover last week :)

2010-08-27T15:50:00.002+10:00

Hi all,

Sorry for the lack of updates. We actually had handover last week (17th August) - which was pretty much right on schedule.

We moved in last weekend. Let me say...moving sucks. We have so much furniture...it took the removalists 12hrs to get everything across...and that is only going 5km and with a 10 tonne truck!

We only just got our Internet connected last night - but for some reason it is painfully slow. I am waiting on Optus/Telstra to fix the problem - and I will then update blog with photos galore.

Regards,
hills_builder

Kitchen, Tiling, Painting etc etc etc

2010-07-18T18:14:00.010+10:00

What a busy 4 weeks it has been!! There has been contractors at the house nearly every day.....we could count on one hand the days that nobody was working.

Where to start?? Well, the kitchen went in about 3-4 weeks ago. It has turned out nice. The cupboards are gloss polyurethane - in a charcoal type colour. The 40mm caesarstone benchtops also have gone in and look real snazzy. Some pictures of the kitchen below (they have covered all the benches and cupboards in bubble wrap now for protection - so the best picture was before the benches went in).

The bathroom tiling is now completed. We eneded up getting tiling to the ceiling. We are both very happy with how they have turned out. The electrical and plumbing fitout has been done - and the first coat of paint applied. The tilers were also back yesterday (yes - on a Saturday) starting the main floor tiling.

Our Site Supervisor will let us know this week what the PCI and Handover dates are likely to be. Fingers crossed we will be in around mid-late August.....

Kitchen....Charcoal Gloss Poly

Downstairs Living Room

Downstairs Rumpus Room

Home Theatre

Hall (looking from back of house)

Hall (looking from front of house)

Powder Room Shower

Powder Room Toilet

Powder Room Vanity

Main Bedroom TV Alcove (will have caesarstone top)

Main Bedroom Feature Wall

Main Bedroom Ensuite Spa Bath (14 jets with hot pump!)

Main Bedroom Ensuire His/Her Vanity

Main Bedroom Rainforest Shower (there will be a 2nd normal shower head added also)

Upstairs Lounge Feature Wall (play room)

Bedroom 2 Ensuite Shower (all other bedroom have similar ensuites)

Laundry

Plastered.......oh yeah!

2010-06-20T23:34:00.008+10:00

We got plastered this week. No it was not the alcoholic type - but of the gyprocking kind :)

There was a few weeks delays finishing the lower roof due to all the rain Sydney had in the beginning of June. But the guys bolted down and got the roof completed a couple of weeks ago. We also finally had our electricity connected...which Wisdom were patiently waiting for me to organise. We wanted three phase power - but unlucky for us we have underground power - and our power was connected about 50m around the corner. I had to get a level 2 electrician to dig a trench and run extra cables. This alone cost a small fortune - but we are just happy it is now done.

Last week we had the insulation team come through. They were a lovely elderly couple (certainly not your typical tradesmen!). They installed all the bradford R2.0 wall and R3.5 ceiling batts. I also went through afterwards and installed some sound proofing batts in the ceiling between the home theatre and one of the upstairs bedrooms.

On Tuesday the plaster/gyprock team started. What a hard working bunch of guys. They were there at first light and worked like maniacs until it was dark. They got it all done in three days - which I thought was very impressive - considering it is a 51 square house. Then on Friday last week the stairs were installed - and we are very happy with how they have turned out.

I spoke with our SS on Friday arvo - and he reports the chippies are coming in on Tuesday to installt he doors so we can get to lock up. The Kitchen is then scheduled to go in on Wednesday!

Some pictures below....enjoy!

The house from the front with scaffolding down and roof completed:

The view from the front door:

Our lovely new staircase. It is not quite finished here. The under stairs door and plaster still need to be done:

The front entrance niches:

Entrance to home theatre:

Looking down the hall from the upstairs front balcony:

Living room and rumpus:

Kitchen & dining:

Roofity roof roof

2010-05-13T22:09:00.004+10:00

Gday gday gday (I must be happy - i keep saying each word three times in my head!)

We finally had our colourbond Roof completed last week. Were there some issues? Yes there were....but we accept most of the blame for that. It all goes back almost 12 months when we did out orignal colour selections. We had decided on 'Evening Haze' colour for the roof, gutter, fascia, downpipes & garage. However - before we made out final colour sign off we had another meeting with Wisdom and asked to change all of the external coloubond colours from 'Evening Haze' to 'Dune'. Unlucky for us, every item on the list was changed...except somehow the roof colour was missed. Even though we checked a gazzillion times we still signed off on the colour sheet. So you can imagine our surprise when all the roof panels were delivered in Evening Haze colour (and gutter were already installed as Dune). Anyways - to cut a long story short - we had to live with our stuff up - as it was going to cost circa $5k to reorder the roof panels in Dune. Luckily, our SS allowed us to change our Garage door to 'Evening Haze' to match the roof - so in the end it is only the gutters that do not mactch. We have come to like it anyway - as the colours are so similar it kind of makes the roof stand out more anyway. Then the roofers miscalculated the amount of panels somehow - so we had a week delay whislt waiting for the rest to be delivered. They finally finished last week. Earlier this week the eaves were installed and painted...they look very nice.

Moving on inside - our SS also allowed us to make some small cosmetic changes to the positioning of the media alcove in the main bedroom - which now looks much better. We are also getting the prep work done for a laundry chute - which is pretty cool. All the A/C ducts were installed yesterday - and it now looks like some kind of alien invasion with all the metallic duct work. We are having a 23kw system with 8 zones, 2 master controllers and 6 individual zone controllers :). So every room can more or less set its own temperature with its own controller....pretty neat if you ask me. The electrians are coming tomorrow to do the rough-in....and our Home Theatre guys are coming around to run all the HDMI and speaker cables in preperation for the 100inch HD projector and surround sound :). On the weekend all our Networking cables will be installed (24 cat6 cables terminated under the stairs).

Next week should be the lower roof and insulation. The plastering should start the week after!

A picture from the front is below. I will add more internal pictures on the weekend.

Take care.

Bricking finished...now for the roof!

2010-04-14T19:06:00.008+10:00

As of Monday our brickwork was 99% completed. There is just the second storey window sills to go. In total there was over 20,700 bricks used! The guys worked hard and seem to have done a good job. There are a couple of cracked/chipped bricks in some places - but I am sure they will be replaced when I mention it to the site supervisor. They still need to be cleaned - but you can already see the nice mixture of browns (even some tinged with blue) coming through.

Today they installed the upstairs guttering - which is in 'Dune' colour. The SS tells me that the roofing should be delivered tomorrow with the roof to be installed next week! We cannot wait to see what the house looks like with a hat on :)

Fingers crossed for an August move in.

Some pictures attached:

Front of the house:

Close shot of garage:

Garage side wall (you can see the brick colour best here):

Front Portico:

Alfresco and pool area:

Bring on those bricks!

2010-03-16T20:35:00.016+11:00

Gday all,

We got back from our Thailand trip last week and as soon as we were off the plane we headed to Austral. You see, we got a surprise email from Wisdom informing is that Austral had a delay in the brick we had selected (chosen over 12 months ago!). Anyway, to cut a long story short, Wisdom/Austral kindly offered us a free upgrade to the Austral Bowral full clay dry pressed bricks. In the end, we did not end up with the exact colour we wanted - but we are still happy. The new brick is 'Gertrudis Brown'. Sure, the name is not as flashy as our previous 'Earth' coloured ones - but we remain hopeful that the end result will still be what we were aiming for.

So the bricks, sand and cement have all been delivered - with the brickies due to start first thing in the morning! Good thing as the weather in Sydney is meant to be almost perfect for the next week.

Onto some pictures.

This is the current view of the house from across the street:

This was taken from where the kitchen is - looking out towards the living/dining/rumpus rooms:

The view from the dining out over the Alfresco (which will be decked) and across to the very full pool. The pool will be surrounded by travertine pavers.

Here is a picture of our gorgeous little son (almost 8 months old).

This is the view from our master bedroom looking out towards the blacony and the raised section of the backyard:

The view of the pool from our balcony. Thanks the the delguge we got at the end of January it is completely full of dirty rainwater. I plan on pumping it all out tomorrow.

The upstairs lounge:

The view from our master bedroom looking down the hallway towards the front of the house. The entire left side of the hallway will be linen cupboards:

The master walk-in robes. 'Hers' is on the left - 'His' is on the right.

The view from the front balcony looking towards the street:

The study downstairs:

This is taken from the front door - looking through the ground level:

Thats about it for now. Next update should be next week some time :)

We've been framed!

2010-03-02T20:37:00.004+11:00

Bit of a late post. We are actually overseas in Thailand for a 3 week holiday at the moment - so it is difficult to keep an eye on the progress :P

A friend of ours sent us some pictures of the Frame which was completed on Monday 22nd Feb. Some pictures below. I will update the blog with more details when we get back at the end of next week.

We have a Slab!

2010-01-24T20:03:00.003+11:00

We were not expecting our slab to be poured to the end of next week. Wisdom surprised us by getting in poured on Saturday. We were a little concerned as the temperature got to around 42 degrees on Saturday. The concreting team started early at around 7am - when the temperature was a nice 25 degrees. By 12pm they had they had the slab poured and were in the process of finishing - the temp was around 36 degrees at this time - but luckily it was somewhat cloudy and did not receive the full punishment of direct sunlight. They had completed by around 2:30pm - and at this time the temp hit 42 degrees and the sun came out. We were very worried that our slab would dry out way to quick - but luckily, a big southerly came through at 4:30pm along with some very light showers. The temperature has remained a fairly constant 22-27 degrees since this time which is almost ideal for the curing process. Our Site Supervisor (F) has informed us that drainage is scheduled for the 2nd February and framing is due to start on the 4th! Some pictures of the slab below.

Piers and Pipes

2010-01-19T19:58:00.004+11:00

Gday all. I hope everyone had an enjoyable Christmas and New Year.

Wisdom decided they would get cracking early - starting back on 14th Jan. By Friday the 15th we had our piers drilled and filled (from last count over 75 of them). They found the level had to be 80mm less - so the concretors didn't fill them quite to the top surface. Then on the Monday, the excavators came back and scraped down another 80mm. Some pictures of the Piers are below.

Then today we found that the pipes had been installed for the slab and some steel has been delivered. We are hoping that the waffle pods will be done this week for a slab pour sometime next week.

Thats all for now...hopefully the next post will be next week after the slab is completed!

Cut & Fill (after some minor complications)

2010-01-01T17:46:00.005+11:00

Ladies and Gentlemen we have a successful site start.....after one false one.

Wisdom's contracted excavator went out on Friday 4/12 and started to cut and fill to the correct RL. However, half way through the job they figured that their was more fill to remove then they were contracted to export. This was in fact correct - as the demo team spread some soil (approx 150tonne) from the original pool overburden around the block. I am not sure why the contractor did half of the cut & fill before realising there was more soil...but they did...and then stopped work. Afer some communications with the construction manager at Wisdom - I was told the only way to move forward was if we got our own contractor back in to get the site slope back to the original RL. This is easier said then done - as their was quite a complicated slope on our block - and Wisdom contractor had already excavated and shifed hundreds of tonnes of soil. Anyway, as we wanted things to move, I organised my own excavator to reverse what Wisdom excavator had done - and then remove all the excess soil. We finally got this all completed on the 15th December and handed the site back to Wisdom.

On the 23/12 - Wisdom excavator went back out and then completed the cut and fill to the correct benching for the slab. This altered the look of the site heaps! We now have a 1.2m high 'filled' area where the front left section of the slab will go. This will ultimately be contained by the dropped edge beam. They also had to cut around 1m at the back. Some pictures:

We also got a call from 'F' at Wisdom on the 23rd - who is likely going to be our Site Supervisor. He told us that the concretor is booked in for the 13th Jan to start work on our peiring and slab. We should have a slab by the end of January.

Our house from space.....

2009-12-02T21:31:00.005+11:00

Gday all,

I just stumbled across this cool aussie website that shows aerial view Sydney (and other capitcal cities in Australia). It is actually updated monthly - unlike google earth - so this picture was only taken around 4 weeks ago.

We thought it was about time we start thinking of landscaping. We have always had a fairly good idea of what we want to achieve. As the funds will be very limited - we will only be able to do the necessities to begin with - and then add other things over the years. To start off, we will have to have lots of retaining walls (rendered in "Dune" - the same colour as our roof). We are also going to have travertine pavers around the pool and alfresco area. The rest is more or less just grass. We will have a frameless glass fence in between the alfresco and pool area - with normal pool fencing alongside the top right grassed section. I am no artist - but here is my best rough sketch - which more or less shows all the above:

I also got an email from Wisdom today - they are planning on doing the excavation for our site starting this Friday....yay! At this point we are in two minds whether we want our slab before Christmas. Is some ways it would be a nice present - but then again - our next payment is due when the slab goes down. With the 4 week builders holiday - we could save a heap of interest if we can delay it....

Now that is one big hole!

2009-11-23T21:28:00.006+11:00

How time does fly. I cannot believe it has been so long since the last post! So much has happened.....

The house was demolished without too much fuss. It only took 4 days from start to finish. Here is a picture taken after the block was cleared:

After the house was demolished we had to get some extra excavation done for the 'overburden'. Our block is on the high side of the street and consequently slopes towards the street. As our house is having a cut of about 1m at the rear, we had to get rid of around 400 tonnes of soil in order to get the pool down to the same level as the back of the house. Take a look at our big hole:

The pool builder started the pool around the beginning of November. The steel and formwork was completed last week and today they finally finished the concreting:

We signed off with Wisdom last Friday - and we should have a site start within the next 2-3 weeks. We were hoping to have a Slab by Christmas - but then again we have to pay over $120k once this is done - so in some ways we would rather this done after the builders 4 week holiday period.

More posts to come soon!

Ready to rumble!!!

2009-10-20T23:04:00.005+11:00

Wow - has it been over 5 weeks since my last post?

Lots of good news - and a little bit of bad to report.

First with the good news. Our pool DA got approved on the 6th October - which was our final approval needed before we could commence. Our friends who were living in the house moved out about 3 weeks ago - and we then had a demolition sale! We managed to sell the kitchen, bathrooms, some windows and all the air cons. Some crazy dude even ended up buying the old screen doors and toilets. Yes, that is right the TOILETS! This all thankfully boosted our fast dwindling fund reserves!

Now with the bad news :(
The demolition company had a look under the brick work and found a whole heap of asbestos. Apparently it must have been an old asbestos house that someone had bricked over in the 70's. This of course led to a big decline in our fund reserves (yes, much more than what our demo sale boosted them by).

Moving on now. The demolition started last Friday. I have attached a couple of blurry iPhone pictures of the progress so far. The demolition should finish up on Thursday - with the bulk excavation done on Friday. Our pool team will be coming next week or the week after to do the actual pool excavation and concrete formwork. Hopefully after this Wisdom can start with the actual house...yippee!

Till next time....

DA Approved

2009-09-13T23:06:00.003+10:00

We finally got our house DA approval on the 2nd September. Very exciting! We had to make a few slight changes to the plans in order to comply. First we have to install a privacy screen on the balcony - no big deal. Second we had to move the house back an extra 2.5m to bring it inline with the neighbours. Lucikly Wisdom had new plans drawn up in less than 10 days - and thus the reason the DA was approved so quickly.

Our current problems is that our Pool DA only went to council last week. We are planning on getting the demolition company to knock down the house as well as clear the trees where the pool is going to go - so we need to wait until that is approved before we can proceed with the demolition.

Our current tenants are moving out of the house at the end of the month - and we have then booked the demolition company for the 14th October (fingers crossed the pool DA is approved by then). This should also give us enough time for Wisdom to obtain the construction certificate.

We are hopeful that we will have at least a slab, frame and part of the brick work done before Christmas. At this stage we very much want to move in by the beginning of June next year.

I will post the 'new' plans on the blog this week. It is going to be a busy few weeks - as we have to make many of our final selections and sign off on everything before building can commence.

We cannot wait to start posting some progress pictures! There should be many - as we only live 5 or so minutes from the build..

Waiting for Council....

2009-07-27T22:18:00.003+10:00

Not heaps to report with the build....

BUT - our little bundle of Joy arrived to the world on Ssaturday! Baby Matthew weighed in a 2.96kg and was 50cm long. We cannot wait for the new house to be built so we can all move in :)

Our Demolition DA was approved last week - so that is good news. Also our Neighbour Notifiction for the build DA ended on the 22nd - and we are now at the evaluation stage. Hopefully not long untill it is approved. We should be submitting our pool DA next week - and we need that to get approved quickly - as there are some trees that need to be removed for the pool - and we want them to be removed at the same time as the house demolition.

Fingers crossed for a September start! We would very much like to be in our new house by April/May 2010....well before bubs first birthday!

Colour and Council

2009-07-01T17:24:00.012+10:00

On Saturday we drove all the way down to Wisdom Minto display home to select all our colours. We did not realise how far Minto is! It is down near Campbelltown!

We selected our Brick colour a long time ago. It is called 'Earth' which is part of Austral Symmetry range.

We are having off-white mortar - which we think will look nice with our chocolate colour bricks. Originally, we were going to have a light grey for the windows - but we have just changed these to white - which we hope will look good with the off-white mortar.

We have a colorbond roof. We wanted a fairly light colour which contrasted with the bricks - so we have chosen 'Evening Haze' which is kind like a soft latte colour. The garage door will also be Evening Haze. After handover, we plan on cement rendering the portico and piers and painting them the same colour.

For our interior colours, we have chosen to have all the doors, cornices, architraves & windowsills white. The actual walls will be 'Malamute' - which is a like a real light grey. It is quite a warm colour - I will see I can find a jpeg of it.

We haven't quite decided on our Kitchen yet - but we think it will be graphite type colour poly cupboards and a lighter grey caesarstone benchtop (40mm with waterfall edge). We are going to try and make a trip out to the Kitchen company to help decide.

We also found out last week that our land is classified as being bushfire prone (we are on the very outer edge of the zone). Hopefully this does not cause too many complications. We think we will have to have some aluminium mesh screens on the open-able windows.

Finally, Wisdom called today to say our application had been submitted to council. Hooray! I just checked online and there is no DA number yet....but I am sure it will not be too far away :)

House sold.....and building contract signed!

2009-06-20T01:50:00.003+10:00

It has been very busy 4 weeks....I am not even sure where to start :)

We received our building contract on 25th May. A week later we ended up moving out of our Toongabbie house (very sad) - and we settled on 3rd June. Moving house is the pits - especially when moving from a house you owned and then into a rental! On top of all this we had baby classes - Linda is 36 weeeks now. The baby room at the new rental is almost setup - just a few little touches to go.

We signed the final building contract with Wisdom on the 16th June. We now have our colour appointment booked in for 27th June - and submission to council will be a couple of days after that!

Waiting for contracts

2009-05-20T21:07:00.003+10:00

We received our updated drawings on Monday. Just had some minor adjustments. We extended the length of our Kitchen island bench by 500mm. Also added a cavity sliding door in between the main bedroom and WIR (towards ensuite). We moved some of the front windows to the left by 200mm to get a bit more symmetry. I will upload the new plans soon.

We expect to receive our contract later this week or early next week. We settle on our house in Toongabbie on 3rd June - and are hoping to have all the contracts signed before then so that we can submit to council soon after we settle.

Nothing else to report!

Drawings....

2009-05-05T22:37:00.009+10:00

Ok, here are some of the prelim drawings on the floor plan and front/side elevations. Still some minor changes need to be done (adding a sliding door from master to WIR, changing the linen press doors sizing to 3x820 rather than 4x620 and few other minor things). I hope the pictures turn out :)

The Blog Begins

2009-05-05T17:14:00.000+10:00

Gday all!!

This is my first attempt at creating a blog. I hope I am doing it right....

Anyway - DW and I are currently progressing with Wisdom to build our lovely new home at West Pennant Hills. We started off with the Manhattan 42 floor plan - but this soon expanded to be a Manhattan 51! I will upload some floor plans a.s.a.p.

We accepted our tender about 3 weeks ago. The preliminary architect drawings have been completed - and we will hopefully be signing and submitting to council in about 4 weeks (when we settle on our current house). Unfortunately, we had to sell our beloved home at Toongabbie to fund the build. Even more unfortunate is that fact that we have to rent for the next 12 months :(