The front door is centred!

Well just to let you know that Henley have rectified the issue of the off-centre doorway. We are much happier with our door centred, on the inside and the outside of the house.

Before pic:

After pic:

We've been advised that A.V. Jennings have accepted the gap above the front door?? So we will wait to see how that looks when it's finished. But still not happy because we paid for it to be done.

They have been busy on-site today. The roof tiles have been pointed. The gas has been connected on-site. We have 2 out of 3 doors that have locks - just the front door left to do now. The eaves are being put on and the balance of the roof safety barriers need to come down as well. It's looking much better!!!!!

Here are some pics:

Shouldn't be long now to lock-up i would think???

Bricking is finished....for now!!

Ok, sorry if i've been a bit quiet, but there has been a bit going on at the house that needed following up so there was no point updating.....

The bricking has finally finished today (for now) and this afternoon we had the lock-up carpenter in, finalising things and the roof tilers were back doing the pointing of the roof tiles.

We've had an issue with the positioning of our front door, the surrounding brickwork and it seems there is also gap above our front door that isn't supposed to be there.

I have some pics to give you an idea....

This is our front porch/doorway, there is a gap that shouldn't be there over the top of the door and secondly the LHS and RHS brickwork (on either side) of the doorway is not even (as per the display home pictured below?). You will see that the LHS brickwork is wider than the RHS (the total space around the door is 25cm, so we have 10cm one side and 15cm on the other):





This is the display home. Notice the brickwork is even on either side of the front door? It seems that the bricks that are located between the study window and the front door are cut slightly to make the join of brickwork around the door even on both sides.




Now this is a picture of the inside framework for our home... on the LHS of the doorway there is one stud, but on the RHS there are 3??? Therefore the door is off centre (more towards the LHS) on the inside of the house too. Same as the brickwork.


As opposed to the display (pictured below) which is offset to the RHS??? I can't understand how it can differ??? Now we also have 67mm arch's going in and they would look pretty silly if the door is not centred along that small internal wall.


Now in saying that, the builders spec's documentation says that the quality etc. should be the same as displayed in their display homes. But our front door is off centre when the display home is nicely centred. The brickwork is different and is not the same quality as the same area in the display home.

There is a gap above the door which is not supposed to be there. Our estate's developer (A.V. Jennings) does not allow "in-fills" above front doors or garages. Therefore we paid a few $$$$ to have the infills bricked up all over the house and had to have the garage re-engineered to accomodate the brickwork under the eaves with a lintel. This was the ONLY way that we were going to get approval from A.V.Jennings for the build to go ahead. We have gone for higher ceilings in our home as opposed to the display, but that shouldn't make any difference. A.V. Jennings still would not approved any in-fills over the door!!!
But Henley are saying that the gap needs or has to be there and that doorways and brickwork never line up??? So here lies our problem....who is correct????

Regardless this gap is not on the plan and A.V. Jennings approved the building of the house based on the plan. The representative from A.V. Jennings, "W.W" has requested that "T" our CSR call her to discuss this as they should not be changing the plans.

I find this ironic, as we requested reducing the amount of render to the front of our home recently and we were told that it would need to go back to AVJ for approval, but the builder can change the plans and guess what???? No approval required??? Why is that???


So anyway, we were supposed to have a quick meeting with our S/S "D" on Wednesday which ended up going for 1.5 hours....

I have taken photos of similar Cottesloe homes that have been built in the area (with the standard facade) and this morning I even drove to the closest display home to take pictures and we sent them to our CSR.... All of the homes have the same brickwork, it's only ours that's different.

At the end of the day, we want what was/is displayed.... We do not want to/and will not accept anything different. If the problem was around the side of the house, we probably would not be as fussed. BUT this is at our front door! The entrance to our home, the starting point for our visitors to judge our home and we cannot spend so much money and accept the doorway as it currently is.

We are waiting for Henley to get back to us regarding this issue, hopefully it will be soon.

Our sparkie is supposed to be in soon, then insulation goes in early next week. The plaster arrives on Wednesday so everything else is moving forward....which is great to hear!!! Our S/S "D" is really moving along with our home...

Hopefully the doorway will be re-aligned and re-bricked soon and then we will finally be at lock-up!!!!

More updates as soon as they are available....

Nearly there - well the brickwork anyway?

Well only a few 2-3 more days of brickwork left for our lovely brickies.

Here are some pics from our last visit:

All set for lock up next week!!!!

Wooo Hooo!!!!

More brickwork.

Well the sunshine is back in Melbourne and so returned our brickies to our house!!!

They have just about finished the front of the house and commenced work on the LHS. Nearly 1/2 the house is bricked already....

Kevin came out to the house today and had some concerns about the overhanging framework in some sections, but he is working with our S/S - "D" to resolve them. Henley have been very positive about these issues and we hope to have everything resolved soon.

Here are some pics:

Hopefully we'll be able to have Kevin back for a pre-plaster inspection next week.... WOW...Lock-up stage....hmmm not looking forward to THAT invoice!!!

Roof tiling is finished & Brickwork re-commences...

Todays update:

Our roof is complete, well.... they still have to remove the safety barriers and insert the tiles that fit into those spots, but the capping has been cemented in place so it's just as good as done now. There has been very little wastage of roof tiles too. What you see left on the roof is IT...and very few wasted tiles around the site too. That's not bad, in my opinion.










The brickies....(God bless their exceptional work)... have recommenced today as well, all 3 of them.





The quality of the brickwork is REALLY GOOD, well i think anyway. That good that it even looks like you wouldn't really require the bricks to be acid washed....seriously, they are that clean!!!! Very happy with the raked mortar too, we selected this as we wanted the bricks to be the feature, not the mortar. We are loving the colours we have selected...they really work well together.

Very straight brickwork too....VERY, VERY NICE WORK GUYS!!!!!

Can you tell we're Very Happy Chappies today!!!!

Oh and in regards to the slab issues, Kevin is coming out on Thursday. He's got Henley's Engineer's report but wants to have a look at these sections for himself....
Just gotta love Kevin!!!!

It's all happening...

Well the tilers commenced on-site today and i drove down in the arvo, fully expecting the tiles to be just laid out in nice little piles on the rooftop...

What i saw actually made me gasp!!!!

The roof was more than half finished!!!!

The tilers didn't get it all done today though.....not that they were slacking by any means either.... it was a stinking hot 34 degree day in Melb so i can understand the need for these guys to call it quits for the day.

Also met our S/S the lovely "D" on-site and he came out to chat for a bit He wanted the tilers to be finished laying the tiles today as the brickies are scheduled to re-commence on-site tomorrow. They can't work underneath while the tilers work on top, too dangerous if something falls off the roof! One of the brickies assistants was there today preparing/measuring the front bedroom section of the house....

The roof tiles we selected have a nice shine to them which we preferred over the matt varieties. That and the fact that no one has the same tile profile as us makes us stand out from every other house in the street. I like that.

The leftover bricks from the garage have been stacked at intervals around the front of the house and we should see some brickwork to that area tomorrow.

We have 3 brickies i think, well 3 guys worked on our garage and their work is pretty darn good. Our neighbour's house had one older guy working on it and it took him weeks to finish.... So these guys should knock our house over in a week or so i would think...

The front door (slab repair) still needs to be poured.
We recieved the Engineers Report today which i will fax off to Kevin for evaluation and subsequent inspection on-site. We don't want anything to hold it up, but on the other hand, we want it done correctly!!! This is what it looked like this afternoon:

Everything is going ahead at full steam!!!!!!!

GO HENLEY GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!