Visit to site to inspect floor and wall tiles

Friday 29 August 2014

We were invited to visit the construction site again this morning by our Site Supervisor to meet the tiler and to inspect our selected ceramic floor and wall tiles, before they’re installed in the bathroom, ensuite bathroom, laundry and toilet.  All went very well.  It was a bright sunny morning with heaps of natural sunlight pouring in the windows along the eastern and northern aspects making the interior very light and bright.  It’s going to be a nice home.

We’re very pleased with our Site Supervisor, Wayne.  He’s very friendly, helpful, obliging, knowledgeable and informative.  Our Site Supervisor and all his colleagues that we’ve met and dealt with at McDonald Jones Homes have been very professional and respectful towards us.  Being a same-sex Gay couple in a long term relationship of 13+ years, we’re very appreciative and thankful for that.  We’ve never experienced any form of discrimination whatsoever throughout this whole demolition and construction process.  We are extremely happy to recommend McDonald Jones Homes to anybody looking for a good builder with an excellent reputation in the home building industry in New South Wales.  Our Site Supervisor asked me this morning if we’re happy with the build so far?  I told him, “We never want to build again, but if we ever have to, we’d love to build another McDonald Jones Home without any hesitation.”

The tiler is a very friendly Vietnamese Australian and he’s going to start the tiling work tomorrow, Saturday 30 August 2014.

All the internal Gyprock walls and ceilings have been finished and the plastering, acrylic rendering and painting work will start soon.  The ceiling cornices have also been installed.  We’re so glad that we chose to have our ceilings raised to the maximum possible height of 2.7 metres (8 feet 10 inches).  It cost an additional AUD $5,230.00 at the time we signed the contract but it was money well spent.  When the ceilings are raised in height, the windows, doorways, architraves etc. also need to be raised to a corresponding height.  When checking back through the paperwork tonight I realised that it’s a year to the day, today, that we signed our building contracts.

All the internal doors and built-in wardrobe doors have been installed.  At our request, all the doors were raised to a really tall 2,340mm high (7 feet 8 inches).

Some of our kitchen cabinets, cupboard doors and drawers have already been installed.  They’re finished with a 2-pak Polyurethane Classic finish and the colour is called ‘Pumice Gloss’.  We selected the ‘Soft Close’ draw option for all the drawers.

The door to the walk-in-Panty in the kitchen has also been fitted.  The wood grain frame surrounding its translucent glass panel will be lacquered.  

We selected LED dimmable downlights for the common areas of the house and the circular holes have been cut into the Gyprock ceiling panels for the downlights to be fitted.

Our big 4,500 litre rainwater tank in ‘Ironstone’ colour has been delivered to the site and installed on its concrete slab next to the garage.  It hasn’t been connected to the rooftop guttering and downpipes yet.

We’re now in our last remaining days of Winter 2014.  Monday 1 September, will be the first day of Spring here in Australia and our days are getting longer again.

On Monday 1 September 2014 our windows are being measured-up for the internal Plantation Shutters that will be installed in about 6 to 8 weeks’ time.  We shopped around, got plenty of quotes and did our research.  The Site Supervisor is happy to meet the person from the Plantation Shutters company on site on Monday to give them access to the site to measure all the windows.  We’re having white-coloured hinged Plantation Shutters installed on all the windows and bi-fold Plantation Shutters on the Glass Sliding Doors.

Here’s some photos that I took during our site inspection on Friday morning 29 August 2014.

(Click on photos to view enlarged images)

Master Suite & Alfresco Cabana

Master Suite

Gourmet kitchen with walk-in-pantry

Pete the Master Chef contemplating his first menu

 The open plan Family & Dining areas

A panoramic collage of the open plan Family & Dining Areas

The open plan Family & Dining areas

Home Theatre Room (below)

 

WarmTech Undertile heating

The framework for the bathtub in the bathroom

Before (23 June 2014)

Now (29 August 2014)

Our big 4,500 litre rainwater tank in ‘Ironstone’ colour

Floor plan for the Douglas 10M

Dimensions for the ‘Douglas 10M’ with Chase façade

Overall Home Dimensions

Dimensions quoted in metres (m).

Home width:	8.45m
Home length:	21.21m
Width of block of land:	12m
Depth of block of land:	49.5m
Size of block of land in square metres:	594m²
Internal Ceiling Height (raised to):	2.70m
Height of doors (raised to):	2.34m

Room Dimensions

Open-plan Family & Dining rooms:	4.4m x 6.6m
Master Suite:	4.1m x 3.6m
Bedroom 2:	2.9m x 2.9m
Bedroom 3:	2.9m x 2.9m
Home Theatre room:	4.1m x 3.5m
Single Car Garage:	3.0m x 5.5m
Alfresco Cabana:	3.0m x 3.9m