Not quite there yet

Our final invoice was emailed through within an hour of our walk through.

Must admit that we were both rather nervous about that final bill!

However there were no unexpected costs that hadn't been revealed to us. Provincial Homes actually credited us part of the Storm Water Provisional Sum and a couple other things as well. 

This will greatly help towards the cost of our driveway :-)

No our nasty surprise was about to come from the Certifier.

We have our loan with The National Bank. Apparently some banks will pay the final sum to the builder before gaining an Occupancy Certificate. 

Well NAB will not. So keys are out of the question until the Occupancy Certificate has been processed. 

The Certifier carried out his inspection on Thursday the 21st of August and proclaimed that an Occupancy Certificate would not be possible before the driveway and landscaping has been completed. 

This is not uncommon or unexpected and in situations like this you can apply for an Interim Occupation Certificate. 

To get the Interim Certificate a stack of certificates need to be sent to the Certifier and some works need to be completed by Owner that would have been much easier to do after handover.

•  A privacy screen 
• The number of the house displayed on the brickwork (LOL)
• Balustrade to be completed to the front porch by owner (This is the pain in the butt we don't even have power on yet!! ... For some reason Provincial Homes wasn't interested in doing this as part of our contract)

P.S. Provincial Homes does not cover the cost of the Interim Certificate either so we are looking at an additional cost of $366.

Final Walkthrough

We finally got our walk through out of the way!
There were more delays then expected in the last couple of months getting trades to return for finishing touches on the Garage, getting the concreting of the back stairs done and in particular waiting for Castle Railing to install our balcony balustrade.
At the time of our walk through some things still weren't done:

• Painters needed to paint the garage, complete the external façade & the stair rails
• Electricians needed to connect the power & finish the external lights
• Silicon needed doing in all the bathrooms
• Water Tank was not yet delivered or installed

Besides these few things the house was looking fantastic and only a few painting touch-ups were noted during our walk through.

We booked our Handover feeling very excited that we would finally be picking up our keys. However, there is still one setback to overcome...

It wasn't the painters - They turned up and completed the painting.
Photo of our beautiful façade below:

It wasn't the silicon on the sinks - That was done on Saturday.
The water tank has been delivered (though we are waiting for a gas pipe to be moved that is in the way)

Still waiting on the electrician but that was no surprise LOL (We have been trying to get the power connected all month...)

Tile Gallery

Our tiling is complete. Now we're just waiting on some paint and a few fixtures. Had a quick walk through with our Site Manager and thought I would share a few pics :-)

Powder Room:

Main Bath:

Ensuite:

Laundry:

Deposit paid on our floor coverings

We decided to install our own floor coverings after handover for the living areas. Paid our deposits and really happy with the savings we made going through online stores.

Our Selections:
Timber Porcelain Planks (light grey) - Ground floor including Alfresco
Purchased through Sydney Tile Gallery $34.95 metre!

 (Not our house)

Quickstep Laminate Eligna (light grey oak) - Internal stairs and top floor
Purchased through DIY Floorboards Australia - for a great price and NO SHIPPING /dance

We had to remove tiles from our contract for the Alfresco area and didn't get much back but we feel it was worth the additional expense as it was really important to us to have the living area flow through to the Alfresco.

Locked up, Site clean & a brand new Kitchen!

Our house is all locked up!  Here is a pic of our front door:

Front yard is also looking much more presentable after a site clean:

Here is a close up of the stairs in our garage:

Our Internal Stairs:

We have Power!

This was another big week for our build. All the Insulation is in and the Gyprock has also been completed. It only took them 2 days! The first time we have seen tradies there on a Saturday :-)

We also had our Power hooked up to the mains. The Electrician was great and gave us several options where the power could be attached to our house.

There are several lines already crossing our property from neighbouring houses as you can see from the photo so we opted out of the additional $1500 for an underground line.

Private Building Inspections

Time to organise a Private Building Inspection for peace of mind and to pick up things that we would miss as we know nothing about building houses LOL

We decided to get an inspection at lock-up and one at handover. 

Our three quotes:

Jims Building Inspections - $385 + $480 (Total $865)
Howard http://www.hnkryan.com $550 per inspection with homeone discount (Total $1100)
Houspect.com.au Total $950 for both Inspections 


We went with Houspect even though they weren't the cheapest as they were super quick to follow up on my inquiry and have a local office on the Northern Beaches.
The inspection report was emailed within 24 hours of doing the inspection complete with photos of our house :-) Only two minor things were picked up. A bit of plaster on the fence (lol) and some water damage to the timberwork to several of the upstairs windows. It did pour all weekend before the roof went on and should be easily fixed.
All up we are pretty impressed with the quality of the build so far! The house looks great and if the Internals are completed to the same standard we will be very happy customers :-)