Jay & Vicki's 2nd Build

There's no doubt we are behind, let's compare with a few sites we've been tracking. One in Rochedale (contract signed after us) The other locally (demolished two days before us)

Now the signs are starting to show things are happening. Temporary fencing has been put up. I feel a bit restricted seeing it up.

Well, I guess things will start to begin soon since, there is a porta-loo on site. It sure has taken its time to come.

Almost got a nasty surprise the other day. The builder advised that they had to perform surveying works on site. Due to construction on an old site, there is a requirement to perform proper boundary survey. I guess this is to confirm that boundary are set properly and to lay out the position of the house relative to the boundary. The builder advised us that as a gesture of good will (probably admitting they had done wrong by us) they will waive the costs of the surveying. I work as a project manager, and to me this has been overlooked, this should have been factored in, since this builder is not foreign to building in old areas before, and to have this done this late into the build smells funny. Well, at least their ears and pricked and now we can move forward with the build. All the paper work has been approved, and forwarded through. Shouldn't need to be hassling them anymore. They should be on top of the building process. Hopefully calling in solid favours from favourite contra...

Since I said some words of disappointment to my builder last week, I didn't expect much would happen on site. After all no approval have been given by council. We requested start dates, and a tentative completion date. But after a week and a half, still no dates. Several people who are looking over the build have been away, and I expect the delays to get worse. There has been repeated correspondence about agreeing to plans and selections, but the builder can't get the details right. I don't blame them since it has been several months from the time we had the selection meetings. We keep a good record of all our dealings. Probably better than them. Lots of request for changes and clarification on this and that. It doesn't happen fast, it seems to take days to get an answer or response back. But things seem to be looking better. We have a temporary power pole. I'm sure they are going to need this to have power tools working when construction happens. Next is to have wa...

Was thinking the other day... we signed the building contract in January, here we are in May, and we don't have a start date. On the weekend, I drafted up an email, with my perspective on things. I never remember things taking this long last time we built. Halfway through May and we've witnessed a friends house go up. We've also found a construction happening locally, which began demolition only 2 days before ours. Look at their progress. Our friend is building with Plantation Homes, and the local build is building with Clarendon. Both builders that we had approached when negotiating on builders. This is starting to get out of hand. Weeks of thinking and being confident that our building is on top of things. To find out we didn't even have building approval yet. What the??? Because nothing has happened since the site cut, I thought I would show you how things are going on other sites  A friends build in Rochedale (early to mid May) A local build (from ...

So after I complained about the wall heights the builder sent the excavators back for another go. This time it looks a lot better. I sure hope he's not going to charge us for the mistake.