PC = Practical Completion. I like the sound of being in the ‘practical completion’ phase but need to remind myself that the expected handover is mid-December with a lot to do in this phase namely: painting, tiling, electrical, plumbing, heating & cooling systems, shower screens, mirrors, shelving, window furnishings & carpets. Let’s get onto it ….
27/08/20 Looks like they’re prepping for painting. Guess we won’t be sticking my head in there for a day or two. From what they told us, they’ll first do the ceilings, cornices & skirting boards, and then do the walls. I remember at the ‘colour selection’ there were about 120 different types of ‘white’ (ok, technically it’s a shade not a colour, but you know what I mean). If you’re interested the ceilings will be in Supercover Ceiling White. Internal doors, architraves & skirting will be in Wattyl White. External front door will be Astor White. Hate to be a colour-rist but they all look the same to me.
28/06/20 By this time they were already in full swing with all the windows covered in plastic with tell-tale spray marks after a couple of coats of “white”.
01/09/20 Noticed the plastic sheets were gone so I braved a sneaky-peek inside. Looks like all the ceilings, cornices and skirting boards were done, and they had already put a coat on the walls.
Garage ceiling & cornices were done. Someone also went around & painted the meter box, façade moulding & downpipes to match the gutters.
The painting of the downpipes has somewhat reduced the change from quad to PVC pipe. Given that, and knowing the PVC pipe has a function, irks me less than when I first saw it. As we’ve said before – it better, because that’s what we got! The keen observers will potentially register that the downpipes are now plumbed to the ground, and wonder why then are still blue & pink pipes sticking out of the ground. Turns out this is a network of piping for drainage for me to connect up when we do landscaping. If you’re looking at our house from above imagine a tight circle around the house for the stormwater system that connects from the gutters. This is the ‘charged storm water system’ (hence the PVC pipes) and connects to a pit with a submersible pump at the front. Now imagine another slightly wider circle around the house that also feeds into another pit, but is not connected to the charged system, i.e. that will just gravity feed.
02/09/20 Looks like they got another coat or two on the walls so now one can see the colour a bit better. The wall colour is Dhimba. To some it looks beigy, browny but when you look closely it is actually, a light grey. As with cabinets, tiles, counters we went with the one colour for all walls, i.e. no feature walls. Just picked something that is neutral, works with the tiles & carpet, and provides enough contrast to the white of the ceilings, skirts, etc.
4/9/20 – spoke to site supervisor. The way we typically engage is, rather than calling him every 5mns, I jot down all my questions/queries/concerns, and then send them to him. He then either responds via email, or calls me. Hats off to him – he’s prompt & answers every question good or bad. Not knowing my @rse from my elbow regarding construction I typically ask in the interest of curiosity or learning, even if I suspect something is NQR. 2 topics fell into that latter category, namely 1) laundry chute, and 2) downpipe.
Laundry Chute: As you may have gathered from previous posts we knew the laundry chute was going to be tricky because the people who drew up the plan didn’t bother checking with the builder and therefore there was an I-joist running just where the void for the intended laundry chute would go. Well, it looks like they had enough of playing tetris so they asked whether they could remove the internal wall between the chute & the sink cabinet – this would allow them to better line up the chute to the laundry. No issues from our side. They’ll create a new cabinet to fill the space, and in the meantime removed the wall. A bit of pain & rework for them because they’ll have to patch up the plaster, repaint etc.
Downpipe: With all the downpipes installed & plumbed, this solitary, temporary downpipe was looking “so ronery”. Initially I thought it had to be done last because of some logistical reason but after asking the SS it turns out it’s an oversight during the gutter installation. In its current position the downpipe is too close to the window frame for the supervisor’s liking, so they’ll have to replace that bit of gutter, and have the down pipe further away from the window. I think they still want it discharging onto the garage roof (like the other one you can see in the photo below) which will make it interesting given how far the garage is recessed from the front of the house.
7/9/20 delivery of tiles, adhesive & grout
9/9/20 – waterproofing of wet areas. Laundry & Powder room they just do the edge of the rooms (left photo), the rest get the full floor
11/9/20 – getting ready for tiling of ground floor slab. To ensure the tiles are sitting on a perfectly level base, they first marked out the areas where it needed to be levelled
In the meantime, they started on the wall tiles. Downstairs, the Laundry, Powder Room & Kitchen/Galley splashback are the subway style tiles
Tools of the trade
Upstairs they made a start on the floor tiles after they installed the ‘SpeedHeat’ (in both ensuite & main bathrooms).
The floor tiles (Capri Travertini 600mm x 600mm) a beige with grey’ish veins running through it
They also started on the wall tiles upstairs (plain gloss white 600mm x 300mm)
15/09/20 Work had commenced levelling the concrete floor where marked
Whilst upstairs the tiling work continued
16/09/20 With the concrete now perfectly level, work had started on the floor tiles downstairs. Could only take photos through dirty windows & from outside doors until the glue dries.
18/9/20 We have garage doors! Widened the rear opening in case we needed to wheel stuff through. Just a simple roller door.
And tiling continued
19/09/20 Surprisingly they came in on the weekend to do the grouting. During the colour selection stage there was the option to have white grouting, which might have emphasised the tiles a bit more. We kept thinking how, in our household, we would keep it white? We wouldn’t, so we chose beige.
20/09/20 Our first chance to walk through the house in peace to see how it looked …. I think tiler did a marvellous job with great attention to detail. With the below photos I’ll close this post.
