Around $400 worth of lights there

And a new swtich to turn 'em on with.


Not sure what those wires are, hanging down behind the cupboard - or how/why there is a hole for them to be coming down through.

Front door painting started

And a pergola!!

Still goin

Only that tile not grouted, and a couple where the dishwasher go as far as tiles go.

Wood waiting for pergola'ing


Clothesline very nicely concreted in.

4 months

Sept 19th was the day of the 'drawn to scale' post.
Contract date says one week to go, but we'll be a little later than that. Hopefully not too much more though.

Section 94 ey?

So far I've worked out that we're not up for the section 94, but for the section 94A levy, which is calculated as a percentage of the development cost excluding a few things including project management, insurances, taxes, council fees etc. Those percentages mean we pay 1% if the development cost is over 200K, and .5% over 100K, which is a big difference.

That means that if what the builder is making for 'being the builder', plus those other things like insurance, hiring the certifier, etc add up to over $37K, then we would drop below the $200K percentage barrier.
For eg.
dev cost = $200,000. Levy fee = $2000
Dev cost = $199,999. levy fee = $1000

I have no idea what sort of margin builders work to, but I'm hoping it's big so that when the dev cost is calculated we're under that barrier.

Completely floored

Well... not the carpet. And it's not grouted yet.



And some concrete.

And termite chemical pipe

And some other pics





To-do Update
Paint - just outside to do AFAIK
Tiles - almost done
Carpet $
Plumbing fittings $
Pergola/Covered area - scheduled Mon/Tues
Driveway & paths - in progress
Porch columns
Phone connection $
council Section 94 - have to pay :(
Light, TV, electrical fittings $

Oh No :(

My wife just rang to say that one of the builders (the son - remember they're father and son) has gone away for a few days.... but it's not what you think. I'm not upset he's gone. I'm upset the father didn't go too!
They had a wedding in the family and apparently didn't go because of the fairly tight schedule they're working to. I feel terrible that they felt they couldn't go to something like that because of us.
If you happen to read this guys. Thanks for your dedication, and sorry that you missed out.

Now another oh no moment. We've finally received confirmation that we DO have to pay the section 94 levy, after having been told verbally we don't. I thought they were supposed to send us an assessment notice, but they've just told us it is 1% of the development costs. I'm assuming that for us is about $2500. What a waste of money!!

We don't have a council garbage service, but somehow we owe the council $2.5K for all the extra facilities they will need to provide because of our development!

Recarpeting

Carpet reordered. We've gone for a twist cut pile carpet again, but this one is a lot smaller gauge and denser weave. It's the one on top in the pic in the previous post, but the colouring looks completely wrong in the photo.

Grout

The camera doesn't reproduce the colouring particularly well, but you get the idea.

Couple of carpet samples - they look brown in the pic, but aren't.

Garage getting painted.

Getting exciting

You may or may not remember that we were intending to wait for the carpet we chose to become available in the middle of Feb which would have pushed back our completion by a few weeks.
We finally got a more firm date from the carpet people, and found that it would be late Feb before they would have it installed, so we figured it made sense to consider compromising on the selection we made.
Let's just say that was a fantastic chain of events. If the carpet hadn't been delayed, we would have just gone for what we picked, and would have been very unhappy with our selection! When we went and looked at others, we also borrowed the sample of the one we initially chose, and now that the walls are painted, we had the perfect opportunity to really see how it would look. It was WAY too dark.
So we're making the final choice on the replacement out of 2 that are readily available, and that means we'll be able to get in as soon as the builder is finished.
Having that firm 'completed by' date instead of the 'sometime in Feb' is so much better somehow and it's really feeling like we're going to be moving soon.

The painting is close to finished on the inside by the looks of things and wet areas are being grouted (need to get pics).