blog

Mid May Progress

Posted: 23-05-10

Rayburn in. Bathrooms complete. Bedroom painting. New controller. Costs.

At last! I've been waiting for this since the year dot! The Rayburn has finally been installed, complete with flue and it looks fan-tastic!

Tasia and I had tossed a coin to decide what colour to paint the villa board behind the Rayburn. Tas called tails it would be the same colour as the rest of the wall and I, heads, it'll be white to differentiate a little and match the kitchen cabinetry.

Have a look at the pic to see who won.

We completed painting the bathrooms last Monday and the toilets were fitted on Tuesday. As of this weekend, our cast iron bath has been lugged up the hill from the container on-site and installed along with the "elephants trunk" taps and rigid, victorian style shower stalk and head.

We all think they look fantastic and the color scheme works fantastically, a scheme that has been echoed throughout the rest of the house - a very muted, "villa" look. You'll know what I mean when I get some more photos up.

John, Tasia and I spent all day Saturday and Sunday painting the main bedroom and the second bedroom. Just to paint one room takes heaps longer than you might think simply by looking at it. One coat of gib-board prep-coat on walls, ceiling and coving. 2 coats of ceiling white and only then can the 2 coats of the desired colour be applied. Oh and in the right order...

I picked up the new solar controller the other day and it's the right one. That's the good news, the bad news is that as the towel rails are run off a coil in the cylinder, to prevent all heat being sucked out by always on rails, a timer needs to be installed. To my mind this should have been sorted out months ago, but I had to remind the supplier that we were nearly finished at the house and it's about time this stuff get installed - if it still can...I've said it before and I'll say it again, if I didn't have an interest in this stuff, I'm not sure half of what we have in terms of the solar system, would have been sorted, or indeed sorted properly.

We've been to-ing and fro-ing between the building company and ourselves to work out what the final payment is to be.

Normally, it is a set figure of $25,000 once code-compliance has been issued by the council. But as a few things have come in a little more, some a little less, and a few more things we've decided to do, which is another subtraction, there have been at least eight versions of the final spreadsheet.

For what it's worth, the set price we agreed was $350,000. Since we will fit the fretwork, the kitchen has been altered, we changed the water-filter, we tiled the bathrooms earlier than we originally intended and all the rest of it, the price to be paid is currently at around $354,000 . Not bad considering all these changes are down to us - we agreed a set price and that is what everyone setting out on their own building project, should make sure they do with their builder.

The radiators are due to be installed this week, but some final bits and pieces needs to be painted where the rads go, before they can be done.

That's me tomorrow night I fear.