My Porter Davis Build Blog

Porter Davis is officially closed from Tuesday 23rd December to Monday 5th January. I'm told that Tuesday arvo was PD's Christmas party so suffice to say, very little happened in regards to my build that day. The only change I noticed was that they made sure the whole house was fully locked up, including the garage doors, which they never bother with. In preparation for handover next year (hopefully early Feb!), I've hit the button on this Sony 60" Full HD TV . Has an RRP of $1599 but as part of the Boxing Day clearance at JB Hifi, they were discounted to $998! I'm sure prices will come down further in a few months but it just so happens that my 10 year old LG 42" Plasma broke down last month so this is good timing. A 60" TV from a name brand for under the magic $1000 mark is a pretty sweet deal so I'm rapt.

The garage doors were installed 26th Nov. They are the standard Panelmasta Contemporary doors in Shale Grey. We were umming and arring about whether to go for the upgraded stained look to match the stained front door but in the end we decided to save the money and stick with the standard painted colours. We chose Shale Grey to match the facade render colour (Rampart). Here's the look from the outside. The facade hasn't had it's final render coat on yet so no idea how well the Rampart and Shale Grey will go together. That yellow spot is my sensor light! :)

Originally we had chosen Bolero Rustic Coffee floorboards but after seeing it in one of the display homes, we thought it looked too plain and there was not enough variation in the colour or patterns. We promptly raised a variation to change to Dusty Rock which is a much lighter brown / grey colour where the grains in the engineered boards shows through more. So.., I was lucky enough to get home after work today to find the installers still laying the boards. Here's them getting installed! Here's the look around the hallway

Shelves were installed on Friday 5th December  (week 25 of my build). Nothing magical here. All standard inclusions and no upgrades. It's much much cheaper to do it post handover. Originally I had asked for additional floating desks in the bedrooms but they were around $1000 each... $1000 each?!! Here's the walk in waldrobes for the kids bedrooms

Tiling started on Friday 7th Nov and finished around 26th Nov - week 24 of build. Initially the tiler said he'd only take a week but they ran out of tiles so had to wait for National Tiles to deliver more.  Here's the powder room shower. The darker tiles are the "Belgium Stone Lavagna Lapparto". Each ensuite has one wall with this darker tile. The lighter ones are "Belgium Stone Ice Lapparto". This is used for both walls and floor. 

The Fixing Stage invoice was officially sent to me on 27th Oct which put it at week 19 of my build. That's just over four months which, especially considering my delay due to the power lines, is damn quick. Anyway, back to the fixing invoice, it was sent a tad premature because there were just a 'few' outstanding issues that needed to be attended to... 1. Bedroom 2 door not straight Here the door is not aligned to the cornice or the wall.

This massive 1000sqm apartment with screaming city views and literally walking distance to CBD has just listed on the market. It is expected to fetch a new record for an apartment in Melbourne. Strangely the listing price is in USD so the final price could depend on how the AUD is fluctuating at settlement! http://www.domain.com.au/property/for-sale/apartment-unit-flat/vic/east-melbourne/?adid=2011580160&sp=1

Here's some photos of our Hawthorn bricks. These were category 4 upgrade and costs ~$5k. The off white mortar was another $1k on top. We chose to have the rolled joints instead of a flush finish. I think the off white mortar together with the rolled joints make the bricks stand out better and have been well worth the money.

Painting is complete. We've gone for the grey finish to the walls. Here's how the Winter Mushroom looks. Originally we thought of doing white for the architraves and doors but got convinced by the colour consultant to use the same paint all round. Was a bit worried at first but it has come off nicely. 

The carpenter has been around the last couple of weeks installing the architraves, skirting, ... and doors! Here's photos of the Deco 2D doors for anyone who is thinking of choosing them. They haven't been glossed over yet so hopefully they will 'pop' out more once painted. 

The stairs were installed a couple of weeks ago on 8th October. Here's the pics for the default Classic Stairs Option 2 you pretty much see in all the Waldorf displays. 

Went to visit the World of Style over the weekend. Wasn't intending to, but my Tiles Consultant rang up during the week to inform me that I needed to rechoose one of my Tiles (Belgium Diamond Lapparto) as they have been discontinued.

Plastering pretty much happened straight after lockup. In fact it was booked for the day of lockup but the plasterers didn't show up. That's pretty good of Porter Davis to just get on with the show without waiting for the invoice or my payment. As it turns out, the guys rocked up for work on the Sunday 28th September and the walls were fully plastered by Tuesday. Here's a tour of my plastered house! It's a pretty surreal experience to see the realisation of your 2D plans come to life.   Starting with the entrance, this is the view from the front door. Stairs, powder room, study to the left, the lounge to the right

My Pre Plaster Inspection was carried out by Branko from Building-Expert.net.au . I decided to switch from Houspect because I wasn't completely satisfied with the review process during the slab stage. I found that I wasn't really engaged, and it wasn't explained to me what the issues were, what fixes would be expected, etc. Essentially I paid the fee, got the report emailed to me and that was that.  With Branko, I organised to meet him on site so I could see get explanations on the spot on what the issues were. You will notice the photos are of a bit less than desirable quality. It is because his DSLR battery ran out and he had to revert to his iPhone camera. Such a bummer. For the brickwork, it wasn't washed yet and scaffolding was still up, so he couldn't report much except to say that it looked satisfactory. I happen to think the bricks were amazing but I guess satisfactory is good enough from his standpoint. He did note that expansion joints were all co...

Lockup happened over a week ago Friday 26th September - Week 15 of my build! Everything's moving faster than I can blog, which is a good problem to have! Ever since the scaffolding went up a month ago, there's been 6 to 10 guys working furiously on site, sometimes even on weekends! Here it is fully bricked up, roof, eaves, windows and doors

These are the issues that I spotted myself during the framing stage. It pays to go on to the site regularly so mistakes like these can be fixed early and easily. 1. Frame Overhang The one on the left overhangs by more than 20mm and the right is around 10mm. The standard compliance is 10mm but my site supervisor asked for both to be fixed whilst the concrete guy was there anyway.  You can see the right corner was fixed but left wasn't applied to all of the overhang. 

Inspected my gutter yesterday and found a few defects. Here, it is slightly buckled and dented near where the downpipe is.

Just realised I have not posted my home network plans, so here it is. I've purchased the 8 port pack because the 24 pack was overly pricey ($3897 for 24 pack vs $1402 for 8 pack!) and there was no sane number in between (you can not just add 1 or 2 more ports to the 8 port pack). Ground Floor:

Tuesday September 16 - Finally our roof is on! In the time the frames and chipboards were laid bare, they had been exposed to all sorts of wild weather, from sunny days to flash floods, hail and thunderstorm. Finally, I can feel at ease that the internals are now protected. Here's the Marriot 48 finally taking shape!

After a couple months of waiting, the day finally came for scaffolding to be erected. That day was Tuesday Sept 9. Week 13 of my build Here, you can see the panel of boards they had to put for protection against accidental electrocution. The power company has also put some sort of wrapper insulation around the closest power line. As the power had to be shut off for this work, the tradies had to get all this done by 3pm which was all pretty good timing because around 3:30pm, a mini flash flood and hail swept through Melbourne. 

You will remember I received my post contract variation for a different dishwasher. At the time I didn't give it much thought. You know, it's not something I can control and it's something that comes 'free' with the standard inclusions. Then I looked at the specs and compared it with the old model and I am pleasantly surprised... New Model: BSID4610X vs Old Model: DWS5X  vs  Capacity : 15 place settings vs 14  Water Rating: 6 star vs 4 star (9.8L vs 13.9L) Energy Rating: 4 star vs 3.5 star Noise Level: 42dB vs 47dB Filtration : 5 stage vs 3 stage There's also a 3rd layer split cutlery tray, anti drip platforms, wine glass supports... newer technology.. yadi yadi yada.. all in all.. # winning ! :)

My framing started Friday July 4th. I thought this was way too soon since my slab was only poured on Tuesday! Turned out though that it only meant my frames were delivered on that day Then they spent a couple of days marking lines out on the slab. It wasn't until Tuesday 8th July that they actually started laying the frames on - a whole week after slab pour. That's about as much gap between pour and frame that I could have hoped for from a volume builder.  Within 3 days, my whole first floor was practically done! By Friday 18th July, the second storey was almost complete. The Roof trusses would be done on Monday and that would complete the frame stage... Monday came and went and no work was done. Tuesday came and went and no one was on site. What happened was that the OH&S guys put a stop to work on the second storey as they were working too close to power lines... Oops! Here's a pic of the issue: The scaffolding and platform to ...

Since contract signing, these are the extra post contract variations that I've had to sign off on...  Variation 15th May At the time of receiving this first variation I was pretty darn frustrated. Site start was meant to be in May and here we are middle of May and they've only just done the corrections to the contract. Remember, my original site start was in MARCH! The changes were: Corrected 200mm wide wireware 2 tier slide out drawer with blumsoft closer. I was originally quoted $635 but this revised it down to $383 ($231 for the drawer and $152 for the soft closer) Corrected drawings to show floorboards under shelving in store room Corrected plaster void from 100mm to 1000mm from floor level in master retreat Remove Hallway doors - saved $1500! Updated tiling price to base off revised floorplan - saved $1000 Upgrade to HX35i - Got charged $1210 for this one even though I had this in my original contract at $800ish. Not happy.  Update heating zone 1 to grou...

My Slab was meant to be poured Friday 27th June. However, Victoria was hit by a 'weather bomb' , few days before hand and my site was absolutely drenched. According to my slab supervisor, a digger had to be dug out of another site. So all work stopped for the week and, needless to say, slab pour did not happen on Friday. Luckily the following few days only had light patches of rain and the subbies worked overtime on the weekend to prepare the site for slabbing.  After the rain stopped, they dug out the top soil and replaced it with crushed rock to keep the site dry. See the mountain of dirt at the back? Hope they remember to remove it! Here's the trenches for the strip footing by my front porch All the lines have been marked by this roll of string All boxed, waffle pods, steel in, and ready for pouring  Drove by at the crack of dawn, Tuesday 2nd July. The concreting was just about to begin.  Here's the finished product! All...

Finally the diggers were in, much to the delight of my kids.  Here's the Engineering drawing to where all holes are meant to be dug. You can see where they have filled to the right of the 'line of cut', there are more piers than anywhere else. Must be because the fill in more unstable. This must be what my Tender BC meant when he said it would cost more if I was to move the line of cut and raise the slab more. ie. more piers would be required.  I have noted that one of the strip footings needs to be poured separately to the slab and not tied in. When I mentioned this to the slab supervisor, he said they normally pour together but separate it with a plastic membrane. I also noted that there was no separate strip footing inspection required on my building permit. When I rang the building surveyor company that issued the permit to ask about this, they were not too fussed with this footnote and didn't think a separate strip footing inspection was required.  Her...

We've hit dirt! Official site start was Monday 16th June! Didn't get any phone calls from the slab supervisor before hand but, to his credit, he did call after the site cut was complete. Sounds like a decent bloke and he has done a commendable job so far in responding to phone calls and listening to my concerns (mainly around the old fence where our new garage will be) As we didn't need any dispensations, none of our neighbours received copies of our plans so, out of respect, I have provided them with a copy of the drawings anyway so they know what to expect when it is all complete.  The front:  It is a bit of a deep ~1.2m cut but hopefully once the slab is on it won't look so extreme.  The middle: This white line is where they marked for the cutting and filling.  You can also see our side fence has collapsed during demolition. Neighbour was nice and suggested we only rebuild it after the construction. I am asking PD to put on temp fencing to c...