Bricks and MortarIts all about our new home!

I feel that cornices are really important when considering the style and feel of a room or your home in general.

In our case, we wanted the feeling of a modern open home with high ceilings and quite minimalistic. To achieve this, we knew that we would need to have a floating ceiling effect which didn’t look too busy.

We tossed up between a very plain floating ceiling which you normally see in apartment blocks, or the CSR ShadowSet. We ended up choosing the CSR ShadowSet because it gave a more finished touched, yet still achieved the floating ceiling appearance.

But then, for the enclosed rooms (i.e. with doors), bedrooms and bathrooms, the idea was to create a more homely feeling. We ended up choosing the CSR Jazz, rather than the more traditional CSR Cove or Tempo, as used in the standard Sapphire display home. This made the ceiling feel a little lower and therefore more enclosed and warmer.

We loved the look, even in their unpainted state!

To our surprise, it appears the same choices were made in Roselea Home’s upcoming Diamond home. I’m sure its just pure coincidence – but it’s good to know we were onto something good

Project Schedule – July/August 2010 is when we officially started building. Knocking down the old home took a few weeks, and add allowance for SydneyFlooring and wet-weather conditions. We’ve been estimating completion for May/June 2011, but possibly looking to be July/August. This doesn’t mean we get to move in though! We still need to sand and polish the floors, add carpet and we also want to decorate some of the rooms with new colours etc.

At the end of the day, we want the work done properly, but on-time, because we are currently paying about $450 per week in rent! and the construction loan is almost fully drawn. A quick walkaround the other day, and there are some areas that will need to be touched up. This is normal, as my parents built about a decade ago and had similar problems. It’s a bonus if the builders contractors get things right 100% of the time! One can dream.

Overall, our building progress has been going relatively well. With most of the work on the inside of the house now, it has been difficult to see progress in ‘large’ changes. Instead, it is all the detail that’s happening now.

When you think about it, we spent a good 4-5 months in the early stages  designing the floor plans and facade  before finally submitting the plans to council. This was tiring but fun and rewarding process.

We also spent what felt like months again doing things like, staircase design, electrical power and light points, window styles and placement, interior colours (there were alot!), bathroom, kitchen, pantry and laundry cabinets, sliding doors, benches etc. etc. etc.

So naturally, a lot of work happening on the inside at the moment. More pictures and updates on this soon.

Facade – A few months ago, we paid a visit to the display home at Homequest Bella Vista Display Village where we first discovered Roselea Homes. To my surprise, our new home’s facade features as one of the facade options you can choose from!

My goodness!

Initially, and only just for a short while – it was a feeling of being a little gipped because we thought we were going to have a ‘one-of-a-kind’, nor were we asked out of courtesy.

But then, we already knew that all work you do with the Builder is subject to copyright to them, we just hadn’t thought of this! As a home builder, they are in a fantastic position. I’m sure we’re not the only customer which they’ve leveraged ideas from, but I guess you can can benefit from it now.

Our facade came about from a number of inspirations. These were, in no particular order, some of the homes by Eden Brae, Buildcraft Constructions, Roselea Home team of course and ourselves.

On the plus side, there was a feeling of recognition and assurance that our facade that we designed was appealing by others, important because we do care about the resale value of our home, not that we plan on moving anytime soon.

So, a small lesson to be learned if you are serious about the uniqueness of your home. Of course, there is nothing from stopping anyone from driving past and copying the facade.

If you end up building with Roselea Homes using our facade or as a base for something else, or are building with someone else and were inspired by this work, then I’d love to hear from you. Write a comment or send me an email (bricksandmortar at jimsy dot com).

-jim.

Here are some photos of our spotted gum – australiana grade solid timber flooring. We sourced them from SydneyFlooring, a recommendation from Roselea Homes. They are going to be polished and sealed near or after handover, and I’ve been told they need about 10 days, if not more (winter conditions) to dry properly.

We chose spotted gum because we didn’t like the idea of having the ‘odd’ timber plank a different shade from the rest. If were going to have a consistent shade of timber, then it needed to be just that, consistent! Unfortunately, they couldn’t guarantee that we didn’t get an ‘odd’ timber plank.

So, we went with spotted gum, because every plank is different! It definitely creates a very interesting look, and I’m starting to really love it. It matches perfectly with the walnut stained staircase and front door that we have planned.

The kitchen, staircase and skirtings will be installed above the timber floors, which gives it a much nicer finish. Of course, there was an extra free to pay the builder because of the extra timber to secure the skirting at a higher position. My goodness, the costs just kept racking up!

We’ll have carpet in the theatre, study and upstairs, and tiles in all the wet areas.

Let me know what you think, and if you have timber floors – any tips to keep them in good condition. We want to go for the full gloss finish for the wow factor, but with kids and furniture — and real people living in there — don’t know how long that wow factor will last!

jim

If you have any recommendations for Sydney companies that do driveways, fencing or retaining walls, please let me know. To ensure you’re legitimate, please let me what job you got done, how much it cost you and if possible a photo of the result!

Send me an email (bricksandmortar at jimsy.com) or reply below.

In the last 12 weeks, we’ve seen the external finish slowly revealed to us as they took the scaffolding down. The parapets haven’t been painted yet, so they look a little strange. We received permission from the site manager to install additional wiring into the house for the theatre and other audio points. More about this soon.

The site manager also took us around inside and showed us a few things he wanted clarification on. Apparently, it’ll be 10-12 weeks after lock-up before we receive the keys to the house. Better start organising the driveway and carpet!

Gyprock is also in too! Photos soon.

And we’ve had the solid timber flooring installed (not finished yet), by SydneyFlooring. I’ll let you know how this goes.

Check out the photos! And let us know what you think!

It’s been a whole 2 months! And what a way to finish 2010 with our house fully coming into shape and almost at lockup stage. Granted, we had a couple small hiccups along the way, but they were resolved quickly and with the upmost professionalism from the builder, and no extra costs to us.

So, since my last post in October, we’ve seen;

• Timber Frame complete
• Bricks delivered and complete
• Roof tiles on first level complete and started on ground level
• Some brick cleaning on the first level complete
• Cement rendering started on the front facade, yay!

We have our appointment booked with Adorn Tiles to select our colours for the tiles in the bathrooms, kitchen, laundry and pantry.

Hopefully lockup will occur this month. I’ll be arranging time with the project manager to take photos of all the electrical and plumbing from within the house. I’m sure this will save many hours of headaches later once the gyprock/plasterboard is up.

Click the photos for a much better view!

Happy new year to all the readers….

Wow! This is a massive update! I’ve been so busy with work that I haven’t had a chance to update you all.

We now have a slab It rained a little when the slab was drying, which is apparently a good thing so that we don’t get any cracks forming.

We also have our own private pole for running electricity to our property. I can’t see any reason why I would need to put a ladder near that pole. A good thing eh.

We have timber delivered, firstly for the ground floor. The carpenter has been hard at work putting it all together. Once the ground floor was complete, the first floor timber was delivered and work continued, including the installation of the steel beams. It is a shame we have a vertical steel beam in the garage. It is in a relatively out-of-the-way position, but my suspicion was that it may have been a cost saving exercise to have a longer beam over to the other side of the garage… maybe… either-way, not too fussed.

We also have windows!

Seeing the slab and the frame come together is truly starting to inspiring. All the design changes, room layouts, parapets, window frame colours and more… its all there now! I’m now keeping my fingers crossed that everything works out with regards to the colours.

Enough talk, see the pics.

a cold breeze has struck. what is this we have here? timber? and waffle pods… and er glad wrap?

It looks like we’ve had a bad case of 20 or 30 rabbits digging burrows at our property. So many holes!

Say hello to our piering. Evenly spaced, and some massive holes for the parapets that make up our beautiful facade.

No doubt the holes are deep and dangerous, especially with the little kids running around in the neighbourhood, so the concrete for the piers were poured immediately after they were dug out.

The Owner of Roselea Homes called me before the guys started digging, explaining that the engineers will also be out on site too, to calculate exactly how many piers and how deep they needed to be. As with the majority of building contracts in NSW, the piering is only a provisional allowance. The end result for us was a small amount above the quotes P.A. I’m reasonably happy the P.A. was almost spot on, and of course we have enough piers to stop our house from sliding away.

Some free advertising for the drillers too. Very friendly blokes

Check this! It is all gone!

Demolition complete. Trees chopped, but we saved just a few, and obviously we also have two beautiful huge gum trees and a jacaranda.

So very exciting! The builder has already delivered the extra fill (no cut), and it has been excavated/leveled nicely.

We have noticed that we have a 850mm drop near our alfresco, so we’ll probably need to put a retaining wall in for that.

Enjoy the pictures! Progress is going fast. Electrical wiring/points are being scoped out now. So much to think about!