Ground Floor Frame is almost up!

There has been heaps going on at our block and as of this afternoon the whole ground floor is almost framed.

The chippies were due to start last Friday but for some reason about being footy players (????) they had a day off and began our house on Monday. Not a big deal seeings as though the timber didn’t arrive until Friday lunchtime. The lil fella, bub and I were lucky enough to be passing by just as the truck was unloading and Lachie was thrilled to see the ‘crane’ in action!

There have been a few issues regarding the supply of electricity to the site. We organised and subsequently had completed the underground electricity pit over 2 months ago and informed M of this. We signed over authority for them to connect power when we signed the final contracts a few months ago too. The electrician who did all the wiring to the meter box etc (that’s another error I’ll go into shortly) or the office at M still not organised for power to actually be connected and now we are waiting for United Energy to connect power to the site (it could take up to 2 weeks).

Luckily for us (but perhaps not our future neighbours) our SS is a man of action and isn’t really interested in going through the office for everything. He organised for a generator (at their cost) to be on site Monday morning so the guys could power their saws, nail guns and most importantly their radio, sandwich cooker and kettle J No holdups there…

Monday morning bright and early the chippies got started and progressively during the week the house is starting to come together.

I have heaps of piccies taken on various days….

The end of Day One and look how far they've come. I was a little timid in taking the photos. I didn't want them to think I was taking photos of the shirtless one ;)

Day Two - the basic frame for the whole downstairs. This is the front of the house (minus the garage on the right)

Lovin' the nice big entry.

This is the study at the front of the house. The Meter box there is the standard one and not the one that we had to pay $500 to upgrade to (apparently a larger one is needed for extra circuitry). We asked the office and they are in the process of getting the right one installed. Lucky we noticed now as the frame and bricks will go around this and the upgraded box is larger and wouldn't fit.

The sitting room and stairs (on right) The Jetmaster gas fire will go in the middle and there will be lovely big windows on either side. Mummy's retreat = no sticky fingers allowed. LOL

Powder Room with two lovely little windows to go either side of the mirror.

Laundry...so nice and big!

Adults Lounge and TV area - so much bigger than we remembered

Kitchen (on left) and Dining leading onto Grand Outdoor Room

Kids Rumpus Room

Looking from the back of the block onto the Rumpus and part of the Grand Outdoor Room.

Looking back again... love the wide space of the doors from dining to outdoor room.

From the back sliding doors to the front door. Hello... Hello... Helloooo...Heeelllloooo

This afternoon the boys and I did a driveby again and most of the internal walls, bulkheads, ply etc is in place too. I forgot to take the camera so no photos. Cam was told by SS that they guys should be finished ground floor by tomorrow. We will find out whats next when we speak to him again tomorrow. In the meantime, our invoice for slab stage only arrived today.

Its so exciting to see the makings of our lovely home :)

Kirsten xoxo

Abolished…

We are getting really close to demolishing the old house now and as a result this week my task was to get the electricity and gas lines/meters abolished. A seemingly simple task, it took all Monday, most of Tuesday and all of my resolve to get these items organised.

Electricity was really simple, I rang United Energy, the distributor who told me to call AGL who were the retailer the previous owner used as the electricity was still connected. The lovely guy at AGL opened a non-supply account for me, emailed me the form and I had the whole thing organised in about 10 minutes. Sweet.

Gas was a whole other story. Now, I like the odd glass of wine but usually I don’t indulge until the kids are in bed. Monday and my dealing with Origin Energy had me hankering for a crisp glass of Sauv Blanc at about 3pm to try and get me through the rest of the day.

It seems that on the general Origin energy phone number, no-one knows how to get gas disconnected. I was on hold for 50 minutes, transferred to 4 different people and when they finally answered I got disconnected and had to start again… that was just Monday morning.

Not willing to waste more time on hold, I twittered about my ordeal and tagged Origin on twitter. Almost instantaneously I heard from Claire, their social manager and she had my details passed onto my own private customer service officer who would do all the waiting on hold for me trying to sort this out. Redeemed! Or so I thought. After being transferred a few more times, the guy at National response centre told me I needed the previous owners final meter reading to get the abolishment and subsequent employees told me I needed to create and account, get gas connected, disconnected and then abolished. What the? I threw the towel in at that point on Monday afternoon. 10 Origin employees, over 2 hours on hold, 1 message on twitter and still no idea how to get rid of the gas.

Tuesday was a different story. A new call to the National response Centre had me connected straight away with Rylie who was fantastic. She emailed me the form whilst I was on the phone. Told me all I needed was a copy of something with my name as the owner, the meter number and a completed application form. I sent this in on Tuesday night and by wed morning the job was raised and the gas will be taken out ASAP at no cost!!! I can’t believe how easy it was. Apart from Rylie, Origin Energy really need to get their act together and certainly won’t be in the running to supply our new house with anything once it is built!