A year on.....

Still loving the house :)

We have had major issues throughout the year with windows leaking, but that finally seems to be sorted.
I can't commend South Coast on their customer service and their ability to help us out with the problems at hand.

I had to constantly call them to get things fixed, even threatening  withdrawal of our house from the awards they had entered it into...which amazingly got their arses moving a bit quicker.
It would be nice if companies could respond right away and you not have to constantly chase them up to get things done, what ever happened to good customer service?

Our house, as mentioned above, was entered in two awards.
The Master Builders awards, in which we won nothing, but that may have been due to the fact that one of the judges took me aside and asked me was I happy with the builders and had we had any issues.

At that stage the windows were terrible (think huge pools of water, at one stage we mopped up 10 litres from the floor one morning) and we were being ignored by the builders despite constant phones calls and emails (which pictures attached).  We had also directly email the owner of the company, and to this day have never heard a peep out of him.
So any way, I told this judge that no I wasn't happy with the builder at the moment due to an ongoing issue with the windows which was being totally ignored.....so she must have taken my comments into consideration when handing out the awards?

The second awards the builder entered us into were the HIA awards. (Housing Industry Australia) .
The judges didn't ask either of us our thoughts etc on the house, they walked around, oohed and aahed at the design, were very excited by it (which we are too of course!) and then left just before a huge thunderstorm hit. Damn shame that storm didn't hit whilst they were here as the windows leaked!!!

Months later and the HIA awards were announced and our house won!
We (and I say we as it is our house not theirs LOL) won the -
HIA Excellence in a Custom Built Home $300,00 - $500,000

We are pretty spesh, but alas no one sent us mllions of dollars, in fact we got nothing.  Not even a thank you for the builders for our house winning an award for them........sigh.

So here are the professional shots that were entered and got us the winning ticket :)

We are in and loving it!

We moved in on the 21st of December, but have only just now had time to update the blog.
It is FANTASTIC living here.  I love it, the kids love it.
There is so much room, it is full of light and our home works exactly as planned :)

 

 

  

More photos to come!

More updates....and guess what?

As at writing this, we have be promised hand over on the 16th of December!

Now, this is the THIRD time we have been promised hand over, so I am not getting my hopes up too high.  To be honest though, they have to hand it over other wise no hand over = no floors done = not in before Christmas and having to wait until the end of January...and this little duck ain't waiting until then!

Enjoy the latest updates.......the house is looking DIVINE and we can't wait to get in there and make it ours.  Cook a couple of meals, get the smell of curries floating around and make the place smell like home :)

We had the house gove LIVE in the last week,  Friday we went out there and turned on the lights and played with them all...this picture was taken the other side of the dam.

The house is SO pretty at night, it also refects in the dam which is quite spekky!

Orr swish tap for the kitchen.   This is for rinsing dishes off before popping them into the dishwasher. Dishwasher will go on the left there.  The splash back is great, and when standing at the sink you can actually see heaps behind you are there is a really good reflection.

The main bathroom shower rose and wall spout.  I am HANGING to have a shower to see how good they work, here's hoping they are good!

These are the niches in the shower.  The top one is for shampoo/body wash etc.  The bottom one is for your foot when you want to wash legs, the boys etc...

The main bathroom sink with all taps and soap dispenser installed.

The towel rails in the main bathroom.  The switch above that is for the fan, so you can turn off the fan

from the shower...no more walking across the room to turn off the fan and dripping water everywhere!

More updates :)

Corain Bench tops are in in main kitchen and pantry and bathrooms :)

 This sink is huge.  We are having a commercial squirty type tap too which goes in the centre for rinsing dishes before they are popped in the dishwasher, which goes on the left.

 

 This bench space is for the toaster, cups etc so that we have a prep area out of

the main kitchen for those types of things :)

bathrooms next...

Sinks are under-mounted and taps wall mounted so there is ease of cleaning and wiping down.  The gap in the middle is where a laundry basket goes.

Laundry... I LOVE IT!!!!!

So much space and so much storage.  I can't wait to start washing....oh perhaps I can LOL

Hallway

Lights in Hallway and Main Living Area.  These are fluro and send the light up on to the ceiling, which then makes it drop back down into the room.  Can't wait to see them in action!

This is the area where we are working this weekend building the shed/garage which joins to the house.

The car garage is 8m x 8m, has two remote roller doors at the eastern end and a door out to breezeway at the western end.  Here we will have a ramp running down to the pavers and you access the house here too.

The beginning of the shed that will house the water pump for house and fire pump.

The ten pallets of pavers for the side and back of house.  Another job we have to do is lay them!!!

More stuff!

First of all we have Hay and doesn't it look gorgeous

Kitchen with range hood almost finished, just needs to be wired up and the stainless steel covers put in place.

Dining room cupboard/storage.

                                              

Pantry now with shelves!

Deep pot drawer in the kitchen.  Base extends down into kick-board area so there is

heaps of rooms for large pots.

Utensil drawer, there are three of these and each is around 100cm wide.

Laundry now with bench tops (very dusty bench tops!)

Laundry cupboard, no handles as it has touch catches.

The pile of tiles for wet areas.

Shower drain chanel have been cut out.  We are having those long grate type drains instead of just

a little round hole.

The spa was installed today up on a cement block.  Now the tiler has to come in and do his magic which will take around 3 weeks.

 

The desk has been installed in the study too.