Cladding....a bit of a hiccup

Our cladding went up super fast as did our eaves. They were also very quick to paint it.... unfortunately so quick they had finished before I could point out it was the wrong colour... OOPS... No big deal.. Quick phone call to Clarendon and it was repainted first thing the next day. 

Cladding unpainted

We also had a bit of a design issue here.. The wall where the brick suddenly stops and the cladding begins was suppose to be all bricked according to our plans. I put in a request to have it fixed and although they were happy to change it back to brick it would have meant pulling apart the wall and roof to put supports in for bricks. They would have done it if I had pushed for it, but to be honest it doesn't bother us enough to warrant the delay in the build.. So it stays :)

Painting finished... wrong colour :( They painted it Taubmans Stonebridge instead of Taubmans Dune)

Since the cladding colour was to match our garage door I really needed it changed. The incorrect colour looked white from a distance and much too bright.

During the repainting.. much better

New colour.. this was taken at around sunset so it has made the cladding a little yellowish.. Its actually a lovely light brown colour. Much happier with it. 

CABINETS and STONE!

Super exciting day this was. Was nervous about my choices but we love them all. We got a lovely free upgrade to high gloss (createc) due to the sheen being unavailable in the colour we had chosen. Gotta love a freebie.

 Cabinets arrive

 Island bench installed

 Laundry (love my hang rail for school uniforms)

 Powder room vanity... Loving the round sinks...

 Main bathroom vanity

 Ensuite vanity

Kitchen (light makes the colour funny... 

the back cupboards are the same grey as the bar back)

More inside action

Lots of work continued on the inside of the house while our brickies were busy on the outside. Within a week we had our cornices and skirtings and architraves installed and our doors hung. Who would have thought these would make such a huge difference to the look of the house. I didn't really notice how unfinished the walls looked until these were done. We also had our waterproofing done to the wet areas. 

Door delivery (includes wardrobe doors)

Our lovely front door (will be varnished) 

Our fancy big handle

 Upstairs playroom looking towards R and H's bedrooms

 Ensuite shower waterproofing

 Main bathroom waterproofing

Powder room shower waterproofing

OOPS...bit crooked guys.. don't think the tiler would be too pleased...

All fixed

The long awaited delivery....BRICKS!!!

I think I have said this about each delivery...but this was truly one we have been waiting on the most. Was so nervous to see our bricks go up and finally get a glimpse of what our house is going to look like. Was really happy with the result.

Stairway to Heaven

Was super excited to see our stairs go in.... great to see what they looked like but better yet no more hiking up and down that ladder.

Really happy with how they have turned out. Love the silver poles. The hand rail will be varnished and the stairs will be carpeted.

Gyprock

I have A LOT to catch up on. Crazy amount of progress has happened in the last few weeks... Firstly we had our gyprock installed. This was really exciting for us as it really allowed you to get a sense of the size of the rooms and what the house was going to look like when finished. We had a couple of little issues that were fixed pretty quickly such as a wrong size window in the master bedroom, incorrect recesses in the hall downstairs and a very very off centred shower niche. 

 Kids play room

 Ensuite shower

 Entry to his and her walk in robes

 Bathroom

Upstairs hallway

Lots of progress

Its been a few weeks since I have made an update. Lots has been going on in that time but I was waiting for some good pics before adding it all to the blog. Ok so last post we just had our upper roof going on.. since then we have had a lot of work done on the inside of the house. Firstly, the roof scaffolding was lowered so that our lower roof could be put on. We have also had our electrical, plumbing and air-conditioning rough in completed. We have had our lower and upper external walls wrapped. Windows and external doors and cavities for sliders have been installed and today we had wall insulation put it. Tomorrow they will be gyprocking the house.... so exciting. Bricks will start the week after next and I think thats what i'm excited about the most. Its really starting to look like a house now.

We had a little hiccup with the downstairs hall niches.. they have been framed up to be the size of doors....oops.. drafting error. Have been assured this will be fixed before gyprocking tomorrow. Here is some photo spam for you all....

Roofed!

Today we met our Site Supervisor (SS) on site for the very first time in our build. We got a little insight into what was to come with the build and what we can roughly expect to happen when. Was happy to find out they are trialling a new way of building where they waterproof wrap the entire house so that they can build the inside at the same time as the outside which drastically cuts down build time. Its referred to as reverse building on single storey homes but not normally done on double storey homes. This means however we better get moving with handling our current home and working out if we will rent it or sell it as the time till our build finishes just got a lot smaller.

We were also excited to see that our roof was getting done today... 

Frame stage complete

Yesterday our roof frame was completed which marks the end of framing stage. Our gutters and facias were delivered for installation this week.. then roof tiles.. Can't wait! A little pic or 2 to mark the occasion....

I have no idea why there is a piece of wood sticking out the top of our roof... 

Colour Selection

I have been working on this post forever.. I still might not get it all done in one go.. The main reason is that I kept changing my mind a thousand times on my floor colours, tile colours, kitchen colours etc. So I will see how I go and see if I actually have accurate photos of our selections.

Since we have a house full of browns now (carpets, kitchens, vanities etc) We decided to change it up and go the full house of GREY this time. This turned out ok in the end but I was wishing I had just gone with browns again for so long.. why?? Because there is sooo much more to choose from in brown tones. Anyway I struggled through it and am very happy with my selections in the end. Couldn't have done it without my 2 good friends that I have met along my building journey.. You guys know who you are.

So here goes... Internals first....

Kitchen

This changed a million times... End result is the following...

Benchtop - 20mm Quantum Quartz - Luna White

Island cabinets, sides and back overhang cabinets - Polytec - Classic White Sheen

Bar back, back base cabinets - Polytec - Stone Grey Sheen

Overhead Cabinets - Polytec - Stone Grey Sheen no handles

Splashback - Linea Grey (Beaumont Tiles)

This is where I got my kitchen colour inspiration from...

Laundry

You have to excuse the colours in the photo... not really indicative on the real colours. My phone camera was playing up on me.

Floor tile - 400x400 Highway Charcoal (Beaumont Tiles)

Lower Cabinets - Polytec Cavia Lini Sheen - horizontally laid

Overhead Cabinets - Polytec Stone Grey Sheen no handles

Bench - Polytec - Snow Fabrini

Splashback - 300x100 Gloss White Stack bond (Beaumont Tiles)

Bathrooms

Floor Tile - 400x400 Highway Charcoal

Wall Tile - 200x400 Classic Carrara White (this has a grey marble look through it)

Feature Tile - 200x400 Euphoria Charcoal with charred ash grout

Cabinets - Cavia Lini Sheen - horizontally laid

Benchtop - Quantum Quartz - Luna White

A closer look at our cabinetry colours.. I won't bother putting up the sample picture of the Stone Grey as its not even remotely close to the actual colour.

Polytec Cavia Lini

Quantum Quartz Luna White

Carpets and Laminate

This has been one of the biggest dramas of all. We originally wanted Vinyl planks and would still be happy having that if we found some in the colours we wanted. We had originally chosen a lovely grey vinyl plank but then I decided we just had WAY too much grey. So wanted to go something more neutral. We finally settled on a lovely laminate called Parador Trendtime 6 Oak Castell Limed.  Originally we were going for a charcoal carpet also but decided to go for a lighter grey to blend better with the floorboards. We haven't 100% chosen our carpet yet but will be something similar to the following:

Paint

Taubmans Gemini Silver

p.s... this is not our toilet :)

External Colours

We would have loved to flow the greys from the outside in...but unfortunately our brick choices were extremely limited due to Clarendon dropping Austral bricks as their supplier. Therefore we could only choose from PGH. The standard bricks were limited and there was no greys. The only greys available were massive upgrades and even then not really what we were looking for.

During a few trips to Sydney for other matters I got the chance to drive around some new estates where double storey brick homes (many of the Clarendon) were everywhere. I noticed dark brown or black brick homes were extremely popular and looked very nice.  We had both a brown and a black brick available in the standard range.  We were worried the black would look a bit too dark so we opted for the lovely chocolate brown coloured brick.. PGH Breaking Dawn.

PGH Breaking Dawn (ignore the colorbond samples)

We were fortunate enough to see a Plantation Homes display home being built using exactly our bricks. 

We really like it with the white cladding.. however we had already chosen our cladding colour by this time.. which is Colorbond Dune.

This is also the colour we chose for our garage door.

Our gutters and facias are Colorbond Monument

Roof Tiles are Bristile Magnum in Traditional profile

Windows are Trend Anodic Natural Matt (basically silver)

This pretty much wraps up our colour selection.. Let me know if I have missed anything. Can't wait to see it all come together :)