Tile drama sorted :)

We ended up going with the tiles. The builder actually said he thought it looked better as tiles once he saw it this morning. It seems the tiler thought it was meant to be tiled and didn't check the plan.

This means we get a free room of tiles, feature tiles laid for free and we don't have to pay extra for laying diagonal tiles! Wooohoooo. Glad they stuffed up now lol. They have all been very generous and gone out of their way to make up for it. One happy customer here :D :D :D

When we were there meeting the builder it seemed like it was all systems go - we had the guy just finishing up installing the blinds, the plumber doing the vanity and taps, someone else installing the kitchen appliances and the carpet people came to measure the rooms!

Below: Guy taking the dishwasher in the front door :D

It is looking really nice now :) We have kitchen appliances all in, blinds finished, vanity and bathroom taps all done :)

Still waiting on: Skirting boards to be installed, tiles to be finished, paint to be touched up and skirting boards and posts out the front painted, carpet installed, power points, light fittings and switches, gas HWS installed, pump and tank connected (tank now in right place), grass going in  next week, clothesline, mail box and then the KEYS :) Not long to go now, approx 3 weeks plus the time for council to approve and let us in.

Left: Shower tiles and taps yay :D The shower head may not stay though, it's just a water saving one i had already so we didn't have to pay for a cheap normal one.

: D

Loving this! :) Mirror still to go in.

New toys!!!

Blinds in living area. They match perfectly, considering i didn't have a paint sample to comare it too. Mmmm 'biscuit' :)











I didn't get any kitchen pics as the guy was there the whole time installing everything, i thought i'd be a bit strange to ask for him to move or have him in the pic :S  Photos of kitchen next time.

Tiling Mega DRAMA!!

I went around to the house on monday to see how the tiles were going. We had the laundry floor grouted, wall tiles in place, bathroom floor and wall tiles in place and concrete cleaned/polished ready for tiles. All looking good so far :) I thought it was a bit strage that they had polished the loungeroom (which was having carpet), but didn't think much of it. That night i casually said to DH 'I hope they know the lounge is having carpet' and he goes 'They did the feature tiles right so they must be going off the plan. They were probably just cleaning it all up, it'll be fine' And the topic was forgotten.

On Tuesday afternoon I went back to see the progress. The first thing i noticed was the nice cream tiles laid on a diagonal IN THE LOUNGEROOM!!!! Gahhhhhh, they DID lay tiles in the lounge :S :S

The rest of the house was perfect, the tilers did a fantastic job. I called the builder and told him they'd tiled the lounge. He said that they wouldn't pull them up now they were laid and he'd pay the difference. He just wanted to know if we still wanted carpet and i said we'd be happy to keep the tiles. Little did i know...

Left: The room that was meant to have carpet.

When i got home DH was really annoyed at the mix up, and was insisting we get carpet. Here started the many phone calls between builder, tiler, tile supplier and us :S The builder gave us two options:

1: Keep the tiles, no carpet

2: Install carpet OVER tiles, using glue and nails to pierce the tiles, wrecking the tiles completly and having carpet raised higher than tile height.

The third option we came up with was: Keep the tiles, get a piece of carpet fitted to the room (matching bedroom carpet as planned), overlock the edges (?) but NOT install it so tiles are still good underneath - good when we come to sell as buyer has both options there. Still sits higher than tile height.

The builder didn't like this idea and said the only way he'll pay for carpet is if it's INSTALLED. I think he won't give us the warranty if it's not installed and we think he may consider it a trip hazard (?) / hastle if it frays etc.

We had pretty much decided last night to keep tiles and get carpet over the top. Then this morning...

Dahhh dahhh dahhhhh...

The builder rings to inform us he has booked a JACKHAMMER to pull it all up :S

Can we really justify wrecking a room full of perfectly laid, brand new tiles??? So now we are back to square one. I like tiles as it is better value, easier to clean, you can just change/clean the carpet, and it is good investment to leave them for when we sell the house down the track.

DH wants the carpet as it is soft, it creates a different 'zone' so that people know that carpet = shoes off and no eating on our new lounges, carpet is good for crawling little kiddies (when we have some), it's not cold on feet like tiles and it gives us the option to have that room as an open walled 4th bedroom/kids play area/office/formal lounge.

So there you have it. We are at stalemate. By tomorrow morning we have to give the builder either permission to rip it out or leave it (with or without installing carpet over the top) I think he plans to work out where the decision was made and have them pay or have it covered by insurance to cover the extra costs.

action at last!

We have good news :)

The excavator has been and the pipe is moved :) They left the black (power supply?) pipe sticking up though so we will need to look into that, i'm really hoping that we won't need to get them to come back AGAIN to move it too. Really, i have no idea why they didn't just move it while they had the hole dug. Anyway, at least something has been done. It has been raining all day so if they do need to come back it will be a big delay of at least another week :S :(

The REALLY good news is that the tiler arrived late yesterday (thursday) afternoon! He was just setting up but he is finally there! :) :D Today i did a 'drive-by' and there were two of the tilers cars, an open garage and it looked like they were busy so i wasn't going to hold up their progress for anything!

I might get some photos if i go past tomorrow. Sooooo happpy to see the tilers arrive, the builder gave us an estimated move in of 5weeks from when the tilers finish. It feels so close, i want time to hurry up but the tilers to take their time and do a good job :) lol

New Pics :)

We have been talking to the builder again this week.
The good news: The tiler *should* be starting this week :)
The excavator *should* be coming Tuesday to dig up the pipe causing us all the drama


The not so good news: We won't be moving in until AT LEAST mid November :( The builder estimates we will move in 5 weeks after the tiler finishes (the first time he has even given us an estimate of a move in date) Nothing much can be done until the tilers are finished so we are hoping that we will get lots of tiles done this week!

The site has been levelled. This is where the garden goes :)

The line is where we are going to pave. The pavers will go past the sliding door to the BBQ gas point, and around the corner up to where the air con unit is. 2m wide near door, 3m wide along side of the house









Looking towards the street. This side will all be garden (except for paved area)

We have shed roller doors!!











Tile boxes! :D Now we just need a tiler to put them all down!

333ml floor tiles. These are the same throughout the whole house.

 The feature tile for the bathroom will be three rows of these squares wide and will run horizontally above the shower and bath. In the kitchen the same tiles will be used in 9small squares to make one square, laid as a diamond.

Wall tile, feature and floor tiles are all the same throughout. Wall is garage lining painted in 1/4 hog bristle
















The shed kit has arrived. They just dumped it out the front :( so it took us about 3hrs to break it up and carry it into the garage piece by piece :P

The front door is also here :) This is the top of it, it will be stained by the painters when they come back after the tilers come.

The paint is looking awesome! This is the niche all painted and ready to be go :)

 Not a good pic but you can see the finished paint and aircon installed :)

 The top cupboards look darker now that the paint has been done (peruvian clay - laminate)

The daiken air conditioner :D :D

 Bath ready for tiles












Shower base is done

 The backyard and paddock crazy with weeds

 Looking from the front door

The front of house now that the site has been levelled. We even have a strip of turf left over from the house across the road! I don't know if there is much point though, it'll just die as we won't be there to water it :(

Updates

We have had a few things happening at the house over the last week or two. My parents were in town today, so I took them around to have a look at the house (they hadn't seen it since it was just a dirt block)

The builder happened to be across the road on another build so we were able to get a key to have a look inside. I haven't been inside the house since it was half painted. The paint is now complete (except for skirting boards which will be done after tiles) and it is looking really good :)

The tilers haven't come BUT the waterproofing has been done and all of the tiles are waiting in the garage. I had a look at the tiles and they look good. We only have one style each of floor tile, wall tile and feature tile to keep it simple. They looked exactly the same as in the shop so very happy so far :) We could be waiting up to 2 weeks for the tilers as they are booked out. Nothing else can really be done untill they have finished.

The roller doors for the shed/garage also arrived this week. We had to meet the guy on site (He'd driven all the way from Sydney that morning) so we could sign for them. We also had to carry them around the side of the house - just to be on the safe side as we didn't want someone to come and help themselves to them :S

The shed kit will arrive on the 7th. We still don't have a slab :( The builder still can't get onto an excavator! At least he has been there with the bob cat and our yard is now levelled out. We also have our reverse cycle aircon installed. It's a Daiken and looks really nice - can't wait to use it. We are still waiting on the kitchen appliances, electrical fitout and bathroom fitout. The internal doors are all on but no handles on yet. The front door hasn't turned up yet either.

That's all for now. I forgot my camera so no piccies :( :(

FINAL selections list (locked in !)

Well the ideas have changed a bit over the last few months but we have finally locked in our selections. Now we are just waiting... waiting.... waiting for the bank to give the official go ahead so that our builder can start. It is very frustrating at the moment but hopefully we will be starting soon :)

Selections:

Roof and gutter: Colourbond wilderness

Fascia: paperbark

Brick: PGH 'Bathurst'

Front Door: Hume Vaucluse XV5 either wood stained or painted a cream colour to match 'Paperbark' facia

Internal door: Hume standard oakfield

Carpet: Carpet choice nylon twist stainmaster carpet. Cream/pale brown in colour

Tiles:

Main living area floor: 333mm square light cream tile

Wet area floor: 250mm square light cream tile similar to main floor

Bathroom and kitchen wall tile: 250mm x 300mm (?) light cream gloss tile with a slightly darker 'vein' running through it.

Feature tile:

3 high horizontal strip across bath and shower
3x3 (as shown) square in diamond on kitchen wall

Bathroom:
Mixers to vanity and shower
full porcelain close-coupled toilet
standard bath.
vanity with water overflow and integrated semi-recessed bowl
Kitchen:

We added pot drawers and moved the dishwasher, includes basic mixer tap and 1 and 1/2 sink with basket waste.
Appliances are all Omega. Retractable exhaust hood, gas hotplates, elactric fanforced oven/grill and dishwasher, all in stainless.

1. Bench top diamond gloss 'Lunar Stone' with round edge, 2. Top cupboards and kick board 'Peruvian clay', 3. Bottom cupboards 'Pumice'.

 

update

It's been a while so i better update:

We still haven't decided on a feature tile after 3 trips to the shop :( i'm happy to pay the difference if i have to but DH is not so convinced.

We went to the carpet shop yesterday and chose a nylon twist carpet in a latte colour. DH wanted cream but i think we will stick with the latte as it should hide stains that little bit more. The room will lighten it anyway and i don't want a cream carpet that will glow once it's in the room. The carpet is right on budget which is great as i was worried it would go wayyy over. This means we might have a little more leway with the tiles :)


The builder rang last week to tell us he was sending out a colour selection pack :)  (we do it all ourselves as we are not building through a big company) It is now thursday and still no pack so i might ring him tonight to find out if he was slack or if it just got lost on the way!

Our neighbour now has walls, trusses with support for the tiles/colourbond & has been wrapped :) At the same time the one across the street (by the same builder) also has walls and trusses but hasn't been wrapped yet. It is going so quickly so hopefully ours will too. :)

Anyway that's all for now. I'll update when there is some more news

Tiles that we have considered

The tiles we are thinking about at the moment. The two big cream tiles are the wall tiles, the brown/cream tiles with diamonds & triangles are the feature tile. This photo doesn't really do any of the justice. The feature looks like marble in real life and the wall tiles are a nice gloss. There are three choices of floor tile. The lighter brown (at bottom) is ok but costs more, the middle tile is prob the best colour match and the top tile is a 200x200 version of the 400x400 living area & kitchen floor tile. DH likes the top one and doesn't want brown floor tiles so i think we will end up going with the same floor tile with 200's in the bathroom/laundry and 400's in the kitchen/living.

I want to keep it simple and light as it is a small house and we don't want to over do it. We also have to keep future buyers/renters in mind as this is a 'stepping stone' house

Anyway let me know what you think!

The blue feature tile i liked on my first trip to the tile shop.

more tiles...

haha.... well I got the tiles and showed hubby... and he said he didn't like them at all :( He didn't like the feature tiles and he wanted blue floor tiles. I asked him why he didn't tell me this before and he replied with 'well, I didn't think you'd choose tiles like that'. In the end we decided we wouldn't have any blue at all as I didn't want a blue floor and he didn't want the feature. He did like the floor tile for the living area though so we will stick with that. So cream and brown it is! I asked DH to look at some pics of bathrooms and tell me what he liked. We both liked a pic that was all cream tiles with a brown/cream feature tile containing triangles and diamond shapes.

After we decided this I also went to the two other shops in town. One was very modern and WAY out of our price range. It didn't matter anyway as the sales assistants treated me like I didn't exist. They didn't even pretend to serve me. For your information I AM a realistic buyer but you're not getting one cent of our money!!!

The last shop had a really friendly & helpful guy but he was new to the tile selling business and didn't have much range. I tried really hard to find something we would like but he just didn't have anything we were looking for. So the first shop was the best one all along.

Anyway I went back to the first tile shop and politely explained that we had completely changed our minds and would need to pick all new tiles :( I showed the assistant the pictures and he was (again) very helpful. We managed to find some tiles that were very similar to the picture and I was very happy with the results. I took the tiles home (hoping that they would be accepted by DH). When I showed them to him he said that they were ‘ok’ but he didn’t really like the feature that much!!! Argh. Anyway I asked if he could live with them and trust my judgement and he said he thinks he could.

The only problem with these new tiles is that they will cost more. The walls are right on budget, the floor is $2/m2 over (added cost will be an extra $100 for the floor) and the feature is a fair bit over :(. I worked out how much it would cost to put the feature on the entire length of bathroom and kitchen walls and it was going to be $370 extra :( then I realised that we would only need it in actual shower, above vanity and above bath. Now I estimate it will cost an extra $280. The guy also said he might be able to give us some money off if we buy them ourselves so hopefully it will be cheaper than that again. I offered to pay the extra money for the feature as I don’t want to go back again and I really like this design.

So now we haven’t officially decided on anything but I’m hoping DH will come around and agree on these ones. I told him if we are changing again he has to come with me and we won’t leave the shop til we have something locked in!!!

We also looked at the colorbond website. They have a really good interactive section where you can change the colours and features. As a roof colour I liked jasper (a medium brown) and DH wanted zincalume – a silver colour like a shed. We ended up compromising and deciding on paperbark – a cream/pale brown colour) which we were both happy to have. Its funny coz we have never disagreed when making choices like this before (eg when getting our furniture etc) Maybe houses are more long term and the colours are harder to change later on.

And in other news… I rang the builder and asked him a few qns. He is happy to do gloss or diamond gloss laminex bench tops (some builders won’t as they can scratch easily) I think he may have even said we can get diamond gloss at no extra cost! Fingers crossed.

Also he said our start date will be mid January – first thing next year as far as builders go, considering that they have their Christmas break. So that’s the news at the moment. Until the next dilemma…!?! hehe

TILES!!!!!

Today I went to the tile shop :)

Even though it was the first visit to 'just get some ideas' I fell in love with some glass feature tiles :) Dark blue, light blue, med blue & turquoise. What won me was that they have a kind of silver 'glitter' (for want of a better word) at the back of each tile that makes them sparkle. They look so light and fresh. They are little glass squares and they come as a sheet. I would prefer the long thin rod shaped ones but they only come in squares. That doesn't matter though coz they still look awesome!

I also found a large square cream tile (400x400) for the open plan living. It has a sort of white & brown vein in it which up close I didn't at first think looked that great but from a distance they look really good. I found all of the ones with only a feint vein in them just looked like plain cream at a distance. That same tile also comes in a 200x200. I haven't decided yet if I will just use the exact same design in the living areas and bathroom. As it is a small house I think it will be too busy to have too many changes in designs. But then is the same floor tile throughout too boring? I need to have a think about it and get back to you.

The guy there also found me a wall tile for the bathroom. It is a plain cream gloss tile that matches the floor tile. I haven't completely decided on it though, it went well with the other tile but it is fairly plain. I imagined the wall tiles with a bit of fleck or something, but I guess with the floor tile and feature having detail it will be ok to have a plain wall tile. I think I would prefer the floor to have the detail if I had to choose ones that's plain. It will make the feature stand out more which is what I wanted and I think plain cream will look clean and fresh. I'm glad it's gloss coz it will open the room up and it will be easier to clean :P

So there are the ideas so far. I'm half considering just using the same feature tile in the kitchen and be done with it. Like I said, the house is small and I don't want to add to many different ideas. The guy suggested I could use the same feature tiles but put them differently like in diamonds in the kitchen rather than strips. That way it will keep the theme but not be too monotonous. Hmm... something to consider anyway.

There are two other tile shops in town so I’ll have a look at them before I make any choices. Then my hubby & I need to sit down and agree on them all (he just wanted to see the choices and have a say, rather than waiting around in shops for hours & hours)

Anyway that’s the latest update for now. I’ll try and up load one of the pics of the tiles together. Bye for now :)