I will ask our SS, but does anyone know why they wouldn't have wrapped a small part of the garage? the rest of the house has been re-wrapped, but for some reason this section of the garage hasn't been? (the yellow circle is actually on the wall by M, not me using Paint, the bit that is missing the wrap is on your left of the yellow circle/arrow).
I finally received the quote for the dustpan thing just on Sunday afternoon, $330! jeepers! Don't judge me but I think we are going to stretch that piggy bank even further and get it, it's one of those things, if we don't get it now it pretty much can't be done later. I will just have to make sure I get my monies worth from it and use it allllll the time. The vacuum guy said he wants to meet onsite tomorrow but he hasn't confirmed the time with me yet so we will see. They also do data cabling, intercoms etc so I have a feeling our meeting could mean more $$'s, lucky I planted a money tree on Friday (more on that later). We didn't go through M for the data cabling as it was a whopping $1K for their data package, we use wireless at home now and plan on buying a top of the range wireless modem/router shortly, and figured we could get someone to do it a lot cheaper afterwards if we go down that path, but potentially we can go through the vacuum guy....maybe...we will see what our SS thinks we can get away with.
I received a phone call from the Construction Manager himself on Friday, he wasn't overly chatty, just wanted to find out whether our SS had been keeping us informed and whether we had any issues...I said communication has improved since the beginning where it was zero but still a little lax...and there are no issues that I know of.....but that could be because our SS hasn't told us of them, who knows. The CM said he would follow up as the SS should be keeping us updated weekly. It would be different if we lived far away, but we are at the block almost every other day anyway, and so long as I can see that things are moving and nothing is glaringly obviously wrong then I don't really need him to call, though it would be nice!
Because our block has no trees I really want something quick when we move in (I am incredibly impatient) and don't really want to wait for the hedge trees to grow, and cant afford to buy the bigger ones, so I had a little brain wave. I bought a bunch of the $6 ones, and some cheap plastic pots and have planted them now so they will have 3 or 4 months head start on what they would have when we move in. Yes it will be one more thing to move when we move house, but hopefully worth it. I also came across a plant called a Fortune Fig, that is supposed to bring money in when it is outside the door, well I figured snap! that's exactly what we need right now, so I spent more money in the hope that it will bring money? sounds crazy really doesn't it!. Oh well fingers crossed it works! 
Just on a side note, how good is Gumtree! The other week I picked up some free pot plants....now I just need to be able to plant them.
The spa frame in the ensuite went in this week, can't wait to be in it for real!
The forecast in Brisbane is rain alllllll week, literally every day says rain :'''-( but up until I started writing it hadn't rained , so they should have had about 6 or 7 hours to brick today, fingers crossed they made good headway. The brickies are going to make us a letterbox too, I wonder if it is too soon to have the mail re-directed ;-)
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI've just started reading your blog. I build with M a couple of years back and only moved in about 14months back. It's great you are able to chop and change along the way. Our SS was stubborn, he wouldn't allow it. Nor would he allow any other contractors on site. For example when the brickies did our place, they had actaully worked off an old contract which stated flush mortar. We changed to rolled at some stage, but actually seeing the flush mortar, I didn't mind it. I came back the next day and asked why they reverted back to rolled when I told them I wanted Flush. They said the SS had made the mistake and it had to be that way.
A few other changes I requested, they said they would charge me for, as they deemed it was a variation to the contract. You have to be careful about these. As they could actually come back and say that's it's not in the contract. Depending who your SS is, it can be the difference. Technically you are not even allowed on site to take photos. They own the site, until handover.
One thing I regret doing is either wiring in data cables myself or, running pull rope so that it would be easier after the build. I still haven't got around to doing it yet.
We found out the hard way that if you are tight on budget, you can't help but go over. We gave into paying and being charged more for better upgrades, as it would help later on.
Yes Metricon are frustratingly slow. There are some days when nothing get's done. Even though it seems like there's a slow market. But they are never slow in invoicing you for progress payments. Go figure.
I didn't even know they would do a clean sweep each week. For the life of our build, I never seen the site cleaned, except for before the tiles went down... and NO, they don't pressure clean it. Just sweep. We were doing the weekly clean for a while, before we realised it was a waste of time, and that if a tile comes loose, then Metricon would be liable to fix it.
Re: drainage around the house. M actually put down crusher dust before the end of build to assist with our drainage. Only because I requested it. They didn't even charge me, probably because I protested about the high site costs, and requested a refund on some of it.
I wish you all the best with your build. I think I know where you are building. I will be following you through with your build. If you have any questions, don't hesistate to ask... No I don't know why they didn't wrap that area. I can only guess it was difficult to get to or they forget. It wouldn't surpsie me.
Hi Jay, thanks for your comment and reading my rambles, having already been through the build process the information you can provide is invaluable! The first SS we had was strictly by the book and wasn't going to let us even put the lights in, so although our new SS has been lacking communication (more so early on) at least he is flexible with a few things. We did sign a "note only" PCV to state we were having white mortar all around, the SS said sorry I can't give you a credit, I wasn't expecting one, but nice of him to think it! We made HEAPS of changes in PCV's, I think we ended up with 7 of them in total, because we sort of jumped in straight to contract and then figured it out from there, and have since found that the SS has missed a couple of things that are in PCV's. We are secretly hoping it will work in reverse, we had included a glass balustrade in the original contract but when it came back at $5700 we took it out....I am hoping they will miss that it has been taken out...but don't like my chances. They never removed it from the plans, but they did note it in the PCV's so we will see.
ReplyDeleteYes we have also noticed the invoices seem to arrive the very day they are finishing whatever it is you are up to, they obviously mail them before the work is completed. I'm glad I'm not the only one that has swept the house! I felt a bit crazy but I like it so much better when the floor isn't covered in mud.
I am hoping we might get some sort of refund for site costs, but doesn't seem likely, especially since our sales consultant originally chopped $2k off them.
Very glad to hear you are still happy with your home 14 months on. Did you ever have any problem post build getting M to come out and repair anything? If you know where we are feel free to drop by and take a tour :-)