Progress Snapshots

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Welcome! Let me show you around!

Fancy having you knock on our door on this fine sunny afternoon! Well, why don't I show you around while your here hey?

To your immediate left is our main bedroom (With walkin and ensuite)....



Back out to the hall way and up a bit on your left, our theatre room...

Coming out of the theatre room is the kitchen / living / dining open plan room....

Don't mind our puppy, she's just enjoying her bone in one of her favourite places.


Now down into the hallway to the remaining bedrooms and to you left, our 2nd bedroom...
Leaving that, heading up the hallway and on your right, the main bathroom...



Backing out of there and back up the hallway and to your left, the study (complete with the man running the show)...





And finally back out of that man cave and into the last bedroom at the end of the hall (still a work in progress)...

And that my friend is about the extent of it. Landscaping is currently in progress and will be shown here once completed and we still need to install some light about the place, downlights in the living area and in the entry, exterior lights, and some feature lights in a couple of the rooms.

I hope you all had a great christmas...
And have a fantastic new year! I'll be sure to have a nice cold beer here waiting for you next time you come!
Thanks for comin!

Friday, December 2, 2011

Open says me!

WELL, what a day, what a week! It was certainly a push to get to this point, but lets start at the beginning shall we? Start of the week consisted of getting the builder to actually confirm a walkthrough date and time so we could get time off work from our bosses. A struggle in itself of course. This wasn't set in stone until wednesday afternoon. In the mean time, bugging the builder for the final progress payment invoice to be able to give to the bank to get them moving. Again, this didn't get to me until wednesday, after many emails and phone calls requesting it and sorting out loose ends with the builder. Then dealing with the bank to sort out all the paperwork that they needed, going through all the checklists for them to be able to release the funds. Told that this probably wont happen until early next week.

BUT of course this didn't fly with me. With walkthrough on Friday (today), I was determined to also settle on the same day, so I got to work. Talking with the builder to make sure all was good on the house on walk through day to have it to a standard that would allow us to handover also on the same day could be described as interesting, however, that description just doesn't cut it. With the seed in their minds set that we were going to hand over today, I got to work on the bank. Pushing the point that I wanted handover today, The bank needed to organise the valuer to value the property to give the go ahead to release the documents, the task of giving all the documentation the bank needed from us to do so, certificate of currency, authorisation from us to release funds as well as additional credits to specific accounts, and council approvals. Wouldn't say that this was a walk in the park the day before handover.

Friday morning, 9am, outside our house that was about to become our home. Checklist for the day:
  1. Walk through and pick the crap out of it. Check.
  2. Confirm with bank that I successfully pushed and a bank cheque would be waiting at the bank. Check.
  3. Go to bank and pickup the cheque. Check but this was not without problems in itself. It just had to be the day that they had a problem with their system and that it wouldn't let them print the cheque out, when it was only 30 minutes until our appointment with the builder for settlement... which was 40 minutes away.
  4. Arrive at Beechwood head office, 15 minutes late, 20 minutes before office lockdown with supervisor meeting. Nail biting finish. Check
  5. Exchange tiny cheque with big value on it for some shiny new keys.... CHECK.
SUCCESS. Walk through and handover in a day. Took many hours on the phone this week and some grovelling and wind being blown up many asses, but it all paid off in the end.

And now begins the very fun task of moving in. Yet another scrammble took place after this to find a truck at 3pm on friday afternoon for saturday pickup... SCORE! Got lucky on the 4th call. Landscaper startes next week. SCORE. By end of next week it should be like we've been there for weeks and HOPEFULLY by christmas we should have the construction site turned into a very good looking property!