Building the Charlton by Porter Davis

So each weekend hubby, bubs and I would trek out 45 mins each way just to see progress on the house so you can imagine my disappointment when we arrived this week to see all the doors lock and no way in. I know we officially shouldn't be on site without our sit e supervisor anyway and doors should be locked up so I guess I better stop whining. 

Architectural Drawings (left)  Our Build (right)

Notice how the top window has been built right to the top of the eaves whereas in the drawings the window sits slightly lower from the eaves to enable the mouldings to border the entire window frame. Yup pretty big boo boo. 

I raised this with our site supervisor who has agreed that it is a mistake. Normally the windows are set to the top of the roof line so the carpenters must have just assumed this without looking at the plan. This is a costly mistake or as my site supervisor says a "pain in the bum" but because it's in the plan they will fix it no questions asked. Great stuff. I assume this means they'll have to get some scaffolding up, pull down the hebel, plaster and all to redo it all again...such a bummer indeed. A bit suprised this wasn't picked up by our site supervisor earlier?

Stair Cornice Issue Update 

If you have been following my blog you'll know that I'm currently trying to sort out an issue I have with a wall below the staircase whereby the supporting beams under the staircase protrude out past the wall preventing the cornices from being able to fully extend to the full length of the wall. 

The picture below is is the current solution which I'm not too happy about. What's strange is not every Charlton being built has the same issue so what is so unique about our build? Add to that there is proof (thanks to other fellow Charlton builders out there) that a staircase can be built without the beams sticking out past the wall. 

Patch of plaster to make it look like a cornice

and then they try to pretty it up with a cornice end and some paint work.

Display Home - Of course they would get it looking perfect in the display right.

A huge thank you to all of you that have responded and supported me with this issue. So glad to know that I'm not just being difficult. As I understand our site supervisor is still investigating and will compare plans between our build and that of the display as well as other Charlton builds currently in progress either that or he has gone silent.

Mouldings put on garage and pillars We made an error in provisioning the light fittings higher than the mouldings instead it should be the other way round.

The practical completion phase is the final stage of the build. It involves all the paint work, electricals, bench tops, sinks, tapware, flooring, tiling, wardrobe, pantry and galley fit outs and pretty much all other internal and exterior work required to get the home to completion.

This week's progress includes:

• Waterproofing of wet areas
• Tiles and grout have been delivered
• Bench tops installed
• Roof tiles for the alfresco delivered 
• Garage roof still in progress
• Interior paining continued 
• Decorative mouldings installed onto facade 
• Rendering continues after a very long break in between coats. 

With only about 4 + weeks to Christmas my gut just tells me we won't make it in time given the amount of work left to do and the stairs issue to be sorted out. Whilst it would be nice to see handover on this side of Christmas I certainly wouldn't want a rushed job at the risk of compromising on quality. So if we don't make this year then my bet will be end of Jan. Spoke to our BC who will be pushing for an approximate date from our site supervisor as we really need to start booking in our trades for post handover....flooring, blinds, driveway, side gate, fence, argh..it's giving me a headache already :(

To add to my headache, I have put an formal email to our site supervisor expressing my views on the issues regarding the patch job under the stairs and inconsistencies with the stair width between the two flights of stairs. (I'll have another post on this later.) I have yet to received a response as I suspect he is still on leave so might need to follow up with the temporary site supervisor and get his thoughts on the matter.

Anyway so here is this weeks update with plenty of pictures. Enjoy!

The Sinclair Facade

With work on the facade progressing its nice to see the house start to show some personality. I have to admit we love everything about the Charlton but felt the facade options were limited. Ideally we were hoping for a more hamptons facade which looks to be all the rage in the building industry right now. We really love the New England facade that's currently available on the Hoffman and Rochford so it was such a pity that its not available on the Charlton. We even waited about 3 or 4 months in the hope they would offer it on the Advantage range of houses but they didn't so we ended up choosing the Sinclair facade for its classic look. We plan to tone the down the 'sophistication' by putting in plantation shutters on windows. I think it will work ;)

Renderers have finally progressed again and have last week rendered the top half of the house. I'm quite pleased with how the colour has turned out. The mouldings have gone on but it looks like they will still need to comeback and put them on the garage and then be painted. We chose colour Doe by Dulux which is a shade lighter than the main render colour. We're hoping to achieve something similar to this picture but instead of wooden framed windows we've gone white aluminium and have matched the roof and garage door with a dark grey colour.

Sinclair Facade

Sinclair Facade in progress

Render Colour Dulux Champignon

Decorative mouldings to give it that classic look.

Waterproofing

Not a lot to say here but waterproofing has been applied to all our bathrooms. I'm guessing tiles will go on next.  

Upstairs main bathroom

Footprints everywhere

Master Ensuite

Our tiles have been delivered. Yippee, yes I'm excited about a tile delivery. haha. I took a sneak peak through the paperwork sitting on the pile of grout to check the order because we put through a last minute building variation to have our tiles changed.   Can anyone tell me what that pole thingy is for?