Project Regent

With our fences and landscaping complete, our backyard is private and a bit of a fortress. To a cat who can’t jump 6 foot fences, that is.

Hamish, the ever inquisitive sookie of a cat loves to explore - specifically anything he will fit in to. We open the pantry - ooh, there he goes. We open the linen cupboard, yep he can fit there too. Where’s Hamish? Oh he’s under the couch. He’s between the washing machine and the door. He’s behind a chest of drawers. And if we can’t find him, he can’t be too far. So we try his sun bathing spots, such as the concrete and gravel out the back (where he prefers to lie half on concrete, half of dirt), or the mulch (as it’s apparently nicer than kitty litter).

But sometimes he does get a little better of us. For a while anyway. Just yesterday as I was walking past the alfresco, with no furry meow in tow, I happened to look out and see four furry paws barely visible underneath the barbeque cover. So, with the camera near by, I get down to Hamish-level, and give a “Hammmish…” yell. And I also get a sequence of photos that just had to be posted.

With the lighting a bit better (i.e. not dark), I also ventured out last night to try some better night photography - and these look much better too. With only minutes between the two photos, the colour shift was phenomenal as the sun quickly set, altering the colour of the sky and the shades it painted on our house.

"Hamish..."

"Hamish?"

"Awwww... Hamish..."

"Meow"

Sunset

Sunset + 1 minute

So…

Wow…

It’s been a while. We sorta got distracted when we got given the keys to the house. It’s been pretty crazy since then, packing, moving, Christmas, New Year, Hamish moved in (the cat), drive way, fences, letterbox, couch replacement, light fixtures, bin install, ironing board holder install, peeping-hole (for the front door thank you) install, garage tidy, letterbox number install, blinds, plus a bit of R&R in there too.

Settlement day was 11th December 2009, and we arrived for our final inspection with our Site Supervisor at 8am, which was all good - hot water was ready, oven going in, rangehood installed, and it was starting to look very finished.

We did, however, have no garage door at settlement. The garage door company had told our Site Supervisor that the doors had been measured. Then the install date comes and goes, and no doors. So the SS rings them, and is told “oh, no that hasn’t been measured so isn’t ready”. Bah. So delays on that, but it’s all installed now, and looks (and works)  really well. But I guess it wasn’t too much of an issue given that PD don’t do any external gear to the house (i.e. driveway) so not like we could lock the cars in - we’re just grateful that it was installed shortly after, and our SS has been fantastic post-settlement with getting those odd jobs fixed up. Although, one still comes to mind he needs to address… But anyway…

The kitchen is simply superb - the 5 burner cooktop and 900mm oven is a dream to use, and already has had beautiful things made on and in it including our Christmas turkey, paella, a stir fry or two, plus, of course, components for home-made ice cream. Oh yeah, we know how to live.

We moved in about a week after settlement, which was the weekend before Christmas, and unpacked 95% of the gear by then. There is, of course, still 5% to go, even today, but we’ve run out of bookshelf space, so they can stay in a box for now.

But it’s been pretty smooth sailing (except the fences, but they will get a post in their own right later), with the phone connected and internet active when we moved in - so in that sense it didn’t feel like a “new” home as it was all ready to go. And of course, our geek cupboard is very geeky now including switches, modems and routers to get our networked house up to the world of Ethernet. We have our wireless running from the lounge room through an AirPort Express so that we can stream music from our computers to the lounge room speakers via iTunes - it’s just all working so well.

And the best bit, I can see the TV from my office (the 4th “bed” slash “store” room), so can get the best of both worlds.

The thing to look at… the site clean up. Ours was pretty, well, piss poor to put it no other way. We had chunks of concrete left around - see the photos for some size comparisons - and we were told that the site had been cleaned. Rubbish. So we now have a mound of crap that PD didn’t clean up sitting at the front of our place, that our landscapers had moved to prep for landscaping efforts.

But anyway, it’s getting on, and I have another post up my sleeve including driveway photos, and then time for another stir fry - my turn to cook.

To two of our fellow followers and soon-to-be first-time builders who have emailed us already - I do apologise for the delayed updates - but if you’re going house hunting around Point Cook at the displays or your own block, give us a tingle and come and say hi.

As with all new projects, we are already starting a list of things to get addressed in our three month post-completion work, but nothing that we weren’t expecting or warned about, so that should all be pretty straight forward when the time comes… wow, only two months until that…

Facade (sans garage door)

Facade (sans garage door)

Updating White Plastic with... oooh shiny...

Crap. They're size 11 shoes.

Damaged pipe at the rear

Size of crap left on-site post-cleanup

Site Cleanup? Where?

Red. Splash. Red Splashback.

Installed. Working. Lit. Woo!

So it’s the eve of our final inspection. So that’s exciting in itself.

And I must pull my finger out, and include some of our recent photos. So these are from Day 98, which was last Friday. A little scary to think we hadn’t even cracked 100 days and yet we have a near complete house to look at.

Tomorrow, our inspection day, is the end of Week 15 - so we’re doing pretty well time-wise, and by handover it will be the end of Week 16. Just such an exciting time. Apart from the stress of organising everything after thinking “ah there’s plenty of time”… not really.

But anyway, here is a preview for you to look at our rendered pillars, carpet and updated bathroom fixtures including mirrors, shower screens and all the nice things like that.

We’ll no doubt have more to talk about tomorrow after our inspection.

Rendered Facade

Pillars and Lights

Lounge Room

Dining and Kitchen

Kitchen Tap

Ensuite

The View from the Toilet

Mikey's Office

Laundry and Spare Room

So we mentioned the doors.

And here they are. Enough said.

Splat

Locking

The Dirty Doors

Well today we went for a drive… and I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore Toto.

So how was Sunday spent? Well our first stop was the Porter Davis Display Centre at Officer. And no, not the local Police Station, but the Officer that’s about 68.5km from West Footscray in a South Easterly direction. And this is when the freeway opens up and turns back into paddocks. Yes, it’s that far out. But we did take a look at one of the new two-storey Access homes, as well as the three new Lifestyle homes on display - and all it did was re-affirm that we are so thrilled with our house selection. The Lisbon comes second best, but we would need a wider block (16m wide), and also then have an 11m deep back yard. Yes, we want a garden, and yes we want real grass, but no, there ain’t no way I’m mowing 11×16m of grass each weekend.

So our second stop - we ventured to Clyde North to see a construction-in-progress Regent 23 being built with our facade. That is, when we get there. Simon, our trusty TomTom navigator, decided to take us some odd way to a road that doesn’t exist yet. And then advised us to drive through the ‘burbs to just do a U-turn. Well, GoogleMaps on the iPhone came in handy here to put Simon in his place (i.e. hit the mute button). But we did make our way to Cascades on Clyde and then the estate map started to make sense. The exciting thing about this is that we have yet to see our facade in the flesh - we’ve only seen a single promotional picture from Porter Davis. And on seeing the facade, well it just looks sensational on the Regent 23 - stands proud and majestic, yet classic and modern, and something that won’t age. Mikey has been in touch with the owners of this home on the HomeOne forums and we also knew that the window fittings were the same colour as ours, and that the bricks were the same style as ours, just the red variation. So very exciting to see it starting to happen - now it’s our turn!

Stop 3… back to Marriott Waters just to take a look at the display homes including the Regent 23 - we also had our eyes at Plantation Shutters today and given our bedroom window will have three equal panels, both agree that three shutter panels would look best (as opposed to say 2 or 4, creating more vertical lines visually). But we saw one home have them that fit a three-panel window like ours (and looks great) and also saw a three-panel window with four shutters, creating more lines. Yeah no, not for us.

And finally Chadstone for a JB Hi-Fi run. After fighting for a carpark against stupid BMW drivers who couldn’t park to save their life and pedestrians who seem to want to be run over, we eventually made our way into the crowds inside. Eeek. But while we’re there, we may as well have a look around including the Apple Store (of course) and Country Road. We found some great towels, but, well, our house isn’t built yet, so maybe we should get them when they’re on special or something (a total price tag of around $200 to towel our bathroom with a single set of towels for a couple), so kept wandering. But Myer had 40% off towels. And they sell Country Road. Sure, they’re not the exact same design (close, but), but at 40% off, it’s a start. So, to accompany our brilliant red feature tiles in the niche in the shower we now have brilliant red towels, face washers and a bathmat to get us started when we move in. On the next sale we’ll be grabbing an alternate colour to complement both the red and other tones (grey, brown, white) in the bathroom, but that can wait. $120 of towels that are now just sitting nicely in their big Myer bag is enough for one day.

So, phew, six hours later, we made it to Oz and back, and the brilliant technicolor tones we saw today have faded away and we are back in our black-and-white world, at least until our own house and future home falls into place. There’s no place like home.