Day 8

After the site was cut last Monday, there was daily activity at the block all week. By Friday they appeared to be on schedule to pour the slab today, just as the site supervisor had advised.  

We headed off on a day trip to the Sunshine Coast on Saturday with me contemplating whether I would sneak down and watch the slab pour today or not. As we had my sister visiting from Melbourne, we decided to swing past the block late Saturday afternoon to find......

Lo and behold, they poured the slab on Saturday! So the first phase of our build was completed in six days. It looks like we will be getting a rather large invoice for Christmas. 

It was so exciting to wander around and imagine ourselves living in all of the rooms and to start to think about the landscaping. We have a lot of work ahead of us but I think it will be very rewarding to see it all come together.

We don't expect to see any more work on the build until mid January, but I'm sure that will come around very quickly given how the rest of the year has flown by.

We are both looking forward to some downtime over Christmas. It has been a hectic year to say the least.

Day 2

Day 2 signalled the arrival of the all important porta loo and silt barriers plus crushed rock on the driveway to provide all weather access. The Bureau is predicting rain for the remainder of the week. We hope it doesn't have too much of an impact on the schedule for the plumbers etc.

We also met our neighbours on the right hand side (part of a different subdivision) last night when we were inspecting the excavation work. They are a young couple with three children who all seem lovely and think that we picked the best block of the land available in our section, so we like them already. :-)

I have been trying to condition myself to be patient throughout the build. Clearly I failed, as I am already thinking "whats next, whats next" and I can't guarantee that I won't be down there checking progress every day that I can. It seems that living less than 2km away from the building is a blessing and a trap.

Day 1 - Site Cut

We missed a call from our Site Supervisor last Friday as we were out of phone range. By the time we got the message it was well after 6pm, so I called him this morning. Much to our delight, he advised that they were cutting the site today! Luckily I had a busy workload to prevent me from going for a sticky-beak before Andy got home. 

Tonight we headed around to the block for a peek before it got dark.

I don't think we will need much of a retaining wall on the left hand side.

King of His Castle - looks like we have some landscaping to do!

I can just see over the top of the dirt pile!

The site supervisor said he is planning to pour the slab next Monday 16th Dec, so if all goes to plan we will be getting several tonnes of concrete for Christmas. What an awesome present. :-)

Time for some action

Other bloggers are so right when they say that building involves a lot of waiting, interspersed with a few highs when major milestones are reached. It really is a roller coaster.

After drumming our fingers patiently waiting through the production phase, we headed to Melbourne for some work commitments and most importantly to catch up with friends and family before Christmas. 

It seems that every time we fly somewhere, it prompts some action. Sure enough, as soon as we got to Melbourne we received an email saying that our file was ready for the construction team. Funny... I thought we were building a house, not a file. Dad that joke is your fault! :-)

We have been given the names of our Customer Service Administrator and our Site Supervisor and have been told to expect a call from the Site Supervisor within the week (by this Thursday) to advise when construction will commence.

Whilst they have quoted a 6.5 month build time (not including the Christmas shutdown period) they have advised that based on current work, they expect to complete it in 5 months. Adding on the Christmas period of about one month, this brings us to a late May or early June completion.

I'm running a large conference in early June so I hope it is finished either a fair while before that, or just afterwards. In the past I moved house two weeks before a major event and it was not good for my mental state!