Even more frame!

We went down to the block again and saw we now have a wrapped ground floor, and quite a lot of roof frame. No garage though. I have managed to get truss layout from the builder and am chasing a frame layout as well.



The front left corner of the house, where the garage will be.



The back left corner of the house, looking into the outdoor room.



Our rear door sitting in the back yard, endangered by the fence that keeps falling over.



Gisele certifies the building site to be free of wild pokemon.



Meanwhile, Charlotte inspects all the empty tuna cans, making sure they are safe for handling.

More frame!

We now have a second storey! And so far things look to be in the right places. Luckily it was much less muddy this time we visited, so we didn't end up with huge, heavy mud-boots like last time.



Front left - garage will be between the camera and the house.



Front, slightly to the left.



Front right.



Second floor, looking towards the back. That mess of wood will turn into bedrooms later.



We caught this spy snooping around on the site.

Frame!

We visited the site the other day and found the beginnings of a frame. We've since been told the entire first floor frame is done, and that the second floor will be started today, weather permitting.



Some frame building materials.



Our independent inspector surveys the work done so far.



The wall frames were lying on their side on the slab when we visited (Saturday 17th April)

Slab!

We now have a slab! Much sooner than expected. Things look to be more or less in the right place, though we have yet to go out there with a tape measure. The slab was completed on Saturday 28th March.



Diggers digging on our block.



Pipes on our block - this is the right hand side of the block in the slab pictures, where the kitchen is.



This is actually another block nearby having the slab laid. But we are guessing that ours looked something like this.



And here is our slab! This is taken from the front corner of the garage.



And another picture of the slab, taken from the front of the house. Garage is on the left, and a pile of dirt at the back.

Site start scheduled

Site start has been scheduled for Monday 15th March!

Not much else to report apart from that. At least we will be back in Melbourne by the time the interesting stuff is happening (not that what's under the house isn't interesting, but we'll be around to watch things like bricks being laid).

The spa bath

Ok, it's time to put this episode on the record. When we chose our house we signed up for a promotion giving us a choice of the following four spa baths:

* 1915mm Ovelle Deluxe oval spa bath with tiled hob, hot pump, (6No) chrome plated recessed jets, (4No) mini adjustable jets and headrests.
* 1675mm Stylus Newbury rectangular island spa bath with tiled hob, hot pump and 6 white jets.
* 1800mm Stylus Newbury rectangular island spa bath (1800i) with tiled hob, hot pump and 6 white jets.
* 1850mm Tuscany rectangular spa bath with tiled hob, hot pump and coloured jets.'

We were told that we could have any of these, and naturally we chose the Ovelle, having the most features and also a nice oval shape. This selection was done in August 2009.

Just a few weeks ago we received an email "informing" us that we could not have the Ovelle as it was too large, and that we would be given the Newbury 1675 instead. That is quite a downgrade, and I replied (all correspondence was by email) that we are not happy with the change. Much to my surprise, the reply was that there was nothing we could do about it, and that we would get no compensation because it was a promotional item. I suggested other options like choosing a non-promotional spa bath with us paying for it, or even leaving the bath out altogether and installing one ourselves, but in every case the consultant tried to bludgeon us into accepting what was presented as our only option.

Email exchanges continued throughout the week with both us and the Metricon consultant getting more and more annoyed at each other until on Thursday I arranged a phone call for the following Friday morning to sort things out.

And that phone call was quite a surprise! Metricon said that they would offer us the Newbury 1800I, which is more spacious than the 1675 originally offered, and it also has the "I", which means that instead of 3 jets only on either side it has 12 jets plus 8 additional smaller jets. It's even better than the original one we were expecting to have. The consultant explained that the Ovelle really couldn't fit in our bathroom, and apologized for having told us originally that we could have it (this was the same person who did our colour consultation, including choice of spa bath).

So in the end everything turned out ok. We were even offered a free upgrade to chrome jets, which were included with the Ovelle but usually cost extra on the Newbury. But we learnt an important lesson - if something doesn't seem right, keep asking until you're satisfied. If we had given up we would have gotten the basic Newbury 1675.

Settlement Timeline

I decided to post this, both for my own memories and for general amusement.

30th November 2009 - Statement of Compliance has been given to Land Titles Office. Solicitor says settlement is expected in week beginning 14th December.

15th December 2009 - Metricon's conveyancers say plan of subdivision has been registered, and request settlement no later than 29th December, for which they will give us a $3000 discount. Solicitor requests exact settlement amount required from ANZ. Settlement booked with vendor for Wednesday 23rd December at 11 am. Booking with Perpetual LMS (acting for ANZ bank) not made as they are not returning calls!

21st December 2009 (Monday) - Amount required for settlement is finalized, and I transfer the money via internet banking. Everyone is ready now except Perpetual LMS.

22nd December 2009 (Tuesday) - We receive a copy of a strongly worded fax from our solicitor to Perpetual LMS, saying we will be asking for $3000 plus costs if they don't turn up tomorrow. Apparently they still have not confirmed that they will attend settlement.

23rd December 2009 (Wednesday) 9 am - Perpetual LMS says that ANZ has "not completed the verification process" to allow them to settle. Our mortgage agent chases it up and finds that there has indeed been a mixup at ANZ and Perpetual have not received some necessary instructions from ANZ. ANZ is going to fix things, encouraged no doubt by the possibility of $3000 plus costs if they don't.

1 pm - Settlement is scheduled for 3 pm

4:30 pm - Settlement completed at 4 pm! Everyone goes home and gets ready for Christmas.

5th January 2010 - Metricon CSC requests confirmation that settlement has occurred. I email solicitor asking if we should have gotten a letter confirming settlement.

13th January 2010 - Our solicitor comes back from holiday, and points out that it was Metricon's conveyancers who handled the transaction, and asks why they are asking us for confirmation of a transaction they handled. I pass this on to Metricon

22nd January 2010 - Looks like things will be moving slowly.. It's 1 month since settlement and Metricon has only today confirmed that settlement is completed. I am busy now training our new Metricon CSC (this one handles construction, the old one was pre-construction) to confirm receipt of emails, as we had problems with them going missing in the past.