And we are in!

Against all reasonable expectations we have handed over the rest of the cash and the builder has handed over the keys. It's not quite finished -- rather it is at 'practical completion'. This reminds me that software usually spends most of its life at the 95% finished stage. Anyway, we have decided to give Coneheads the benefit of the doubt (that they will in fact come back to complete the few outstanding matters) and handover. The biggest single thing that is not complete is the meter box upgrade. They will have to disconnect the meter, remove the old meter box and put in the new meters. That's about $700 worth, according to the variation they sent me. Maybe I shouldn't have paid them the full amount, but then they probably wouldn't have settled. Only time will tell if we made the right decision there.

As you can see the arched moulding above the bay window has been done now -- but not painted. It was due to be painted yesterday but, unbelievably for Adelaide at this time of year, it bucketed with rain yesterday (turning the parched soil into sticky mud) so they delayed painting. Last night we got takeaway Pizza and had a sleepover in the new house while Mrs Rewind and I tried to clean up a bit more (swept and mopped and wiped out cupboards). The kids were excited and didn't sleep very well, it rained on and off all night, and we all got muddy shoes and cold feet. It was a lot like camping.

The shower screens are in, robes are in (hate the colour -- bad choice there), and kitchen appliances are in and the bench fixed up, a bit.

One thing I wanted to do was make a list of the 'variations' that Coneheads have charged us for, the most recent of which was $1556 for "additional cost incurred by our electrical contractor. Specialised machinery and equipment was required to bore under concrete stormwater drain in order to access the power pole connection". They discovered a 1m x 1m stormwater drain buried just beneath the footpath and running the length of the street that they needed to dig under. They also happened to dig to the wrong pole the first time, and I wonder if that's what they are really charging me for.
I'll post the entire list of variations later.

Next Friday

That's what Mr Sandwich says now. That's more realistic than Tuesday. It's still ambitious, but it is possible. I thought I'd better do another update anyway or else the house will be finished and I'll have nothing left to talk about (yeah right).

This is the painted, rendered front of the house. Since I took this photo they have done the ridge capping over the bay window. There is supposed to be an arched moulding above the windows, but apparently they made it the wrong size so that is going to fixed up.

They have put in the kitchen benchtops, and (since this photo) patched the gyprock behind, but both of these still have problems. The joins in the bench are dodgy (broken/not straight) and need fixing, and in one place the gyprock is not flat either -- must have a screw head or something behind it.

The bathrooms are looking pretty good, now they have been painted, so I thought I would show a picture of one of them -- this is the ensuite.

I am running around trying to get tiles and carpet installed so we can start moving in by January. Looking promising so far. I guess I just didn't believe Mr Sandwich would have got it done so fast.

This is the list of everything that still needs to be done (or that I have issues with) before handover:

• meterbox replaced
• watertank installed
• spa pump installed
• garage doors
• arched mouldings
• shower screens
• garage fluoros
• R3.5 in ceiling
• Kitchen bench joins fixed straight
• Hot water + controller
• Covers for posts between sliding doors (and gap above)
• Laundry security door
• BI wardrobes
• Towel rails + bog roll holders
• Beading on glazed door
• Water meter moved
• Kitchen gyprock flat
• Vanity mirrors

I dare say some more issues will arise, but Mr Sandwich plans to address all of these next week.

The end is nigh...

Certain people have reminded me that I haven't updated the blog for a while. A few things have happened since the last update, and not all of them good. The meter box is finally going to be sorted out -- at least I've arranged to pay for it to be fixed, which means it will happen. They have rendered the front of the house now. This picture shows it partly rendered.

They have also finished the tiling, but with one teensy problem... the kitchen walls were meant to be 100 mm white tiles, laid diagonally. Instead they were laid square. Oops. That means they've had to cut out part of the blueboard which will need to be patched before they can retile. The picture below shows half of it removed. It was still like this last time I saw it, so I'm not sure when they're going to fix it. Presumably before the benchtops go in?

If you open this picture up you can also see the comedy that has been wrought by the electrician on the kitchen ceiling. There are meant to be three downlights under the overhead cupboards. He has seen these drawn on the plan and decided to cutout holes for them in the ceiling! Genius. He also cut out the holes for four of the lights in the family room in the wrong place, even though I have dimensioned them. And since they're going to have to patch all of them I've decided to reposition the two lights that should be in the kitchen ceiling, since they were decidedly off-centre. So in all there are nine holes out of eleven cut in this room that need to be patched.

They have also put up the picture rail. I made a mistake there -- I should have specified their height by measuring ours in our current house. Instead we just marked it on the wall and it isn't quite high enough. The problem is when it passes over a window or doorway -- it just looks too close. This is especially noticeable above the sliding doors in the family room (not pictured). I finally realised why on the weekend -- it is actually 30mm lower back there. It looks particularly bad because it isn't parallel to the architrave over the long expanse of door and window. Anyway, they are going to move the picture rail up 30mm in this room on Thursday.

In the meantime they have been painting. They will probably be finished painting before Thursday, but they will need to come back after the picture rail has been shifted and a few other things (like patching all the holes in the ceiling).