Saturday 25 May 2013

We have keys!!

Yay handover happened on Friday morning - and probably lucky for everyone at home it was in the morning due to my excitement! I am the one that still can not resist having a peak at her Christmas presents before the big day and yet still gets excited at Christmas and today was no different.

Clarendon came to the party on Wednesday afternoon advising us that they would agree to refund us the extra cabling they didn't actually lay. That was a fight harder than it should have been and certainly wasn't worth an argument taking nearly all month to resolve. DH then has to sign the paperwork on Thursday to get a new invoice created. We had already requested the higher amount from the bank and after a quick talk with our broker it was decided that it was better to hand over a higher value cheque and receive a refund from Clarendon.

Our SS met us at the house and he walked us around showing us the items that had been fixed. The painter was still there fixing up the skirting board in the garage so we had the opportunity to have him touch up anything we found (only the electrical box). We set up the appliance delivery date and our SS took us through a folder that explained things to consider when looking after a new home. It also had all of our various certificates in it.
Then it was finally the exciting time - our keys were taken from their packet. First we were shown the window keys. Then the internal garage door key. Then the laundry. Slowly we were taken by each external door being shown that the builders key no longer worked and how our keys worked in the doors. Finally we reached the front door and the official handover occurred!!
A couple of signatures later, a handover of the cheque and a gift of lovely Sheridan towels from Clarendon and the house was all ours!

















Friday 10 May 2013

PCI

Yesterday we attended our Practical Completion Inspection. Doug and I met with Dad and the Site Supervisor in the afternoon at the house - now without the fence and portoloo - to go through our inspection. Our SS is great, he is knowledgeable and goes through each section thoroughly.
We started with the Final Consolidation report where we systematically went through each section ticking everything off, whilst Doug got distracted eagerly wanting to move onto the "hands on stuff." Finally we were able to get through all of these sections with everyone confident that everything had been included. We then systematically went through the house room by room, testing all light switches, taps and toilets, looking at the paint quality, windows, frames and all other bits and pieces.
The tilers turned up part way through the day to fix the wrong tiles in the laundry. They turned up without tiles, not knowing where the spare tiles were located in the house and proceeded to use a hammer and chisel against the bricks to remove the wrong tiles. SS threatened them with the bill if they damaged any part of the house - and then recommended to us that we didn't go into the laundry whilst they did their work! It was all quite amusing - but glad I chose not to buy my tiles through Clarendon for the $2000 extra cost if these were the guys that were going to do the work.

There wasn't a lot to fix, mainly little bits of paint that needs to be gone over. This is our list:


  • Plumbing to gutter to be relocated
  • Brickwork joinery at entrance and in alfresco to be repointed
  • Bricks around house to be repointed
  • Scratches in glass of sliding door and one window to be fixed/replaced
  • Broken window to be replaced
  • Under oven drawer in kitchen did not close
  • Missing screw from cabinetry above dishwasher
  • Missing divider under sink for tea towel holder
  • Holes in slab to be filled
  • All globes to be installed
  • Paint touch ups
  • Final clean
  • Skirting board in garage to be made straight (yay WIN!)

From some of the lists I've seen others go through ours seems pretty minor and the overall build quality looks fantastic. SS was walking around with bits of tape himself and was happy for us to mark anything we liked. We do feel that the skirting board conversation - helped very much by Dad simply saying "come on it looks stupid" was a big win and Doug is happy to have been able to get him to agree to get the brickies our to look making a couple of the corners in the brickwork neater. So overall a very successful day.

It is now over to Clarendon's estimators to reassess some of the site cost charges they are not refunding back, due to changes to location of services prior to land registration but after contract signing and then we can happily head off to the bank to receive our final check. SS says he is expecting handover to be in two weeks! Fingers crossed these weeks fly by.

Friday 3 May 2013

New PCI date

Woohoo PCI has been moved to Friday afternoon. House reaches practical completion on Thursday. And of course we've already been sent the final invoice. Eager to get that across to the bank to hopefully not slow down our end of handover - just a few things to correct on it first.