Building Poppy's Castle

We're currently in the process of building our home in Sydney's North. Thought it might be a good idea to create this blog to document the process from start to finish. It'll be a big learning experience for us and hopefully it'll be useful for other people planning on doing the same thing.

[poppyscastle]

Just a video of our final bathrooms and all the fittings we used.

[poppyscastle]

OC + Lighting

24th Feb 2018

Occupational Certificate

It’s been a while since I made an update, but the good news is, we’ve moved in earlier this month.  We got our full occupational certificate on the same day of the move.  Talk about cutting it fine!

It was a mad rush to get everything done, but what held us up was the Gas infrastructure supplier.  We waited about 8 weeks before Jemena could get their contractors to install the gas line from the street to our gas meter.  

Apparently they were super busy at the end of the year.  Without the gas installed, the plumber can’t certify us and hence no occupational certificate.  I think if we had the gas installed, we could’ve moved in a month earlier.

I feel super relaxed now that we’ve moved in, you just don’t realized how stressed you are when you’re worried about the move and getting the OC on time.

The last few weeks have been all about getting furniture, styling the house and landscaping.  We’re slowly getting there!

Lighting

We went with mostly LED downlights throughout the house, they are energy efficient and super bright.  We had about 50 downlights, the electrician supplied them for about $15 each.

We still needed a few pendants and fans around the house and we got them mostly from Beacon Lighting.  They had a sale on at the time and there was a store just a block away.  

We were contemplating about getting our lights online on ebay, however, its really hard to know how the actual fitting will look like in the house.  

Beacon has a great returns policy, they were happy for us to buy a few different styles to try and return the ones we didn’t like.  We must have visited the store 10 times during that week, we definitely won’t be able to do that with an eBay seller.

This one is my wife’s favorite, its the Stockholm 1 Light Pendant.  I also used a Phillips Xiaomi Lightbulb and have it setup to turn on automatically at night.  Since its right by the stairs and the entrance, it works great as a night light.  

There were quite a few cheaper alternatives, but the other ones just didn’t look as nice.

This is our LED strip at the foyer in action, it looks really nice built into the bulkhead.  This was about creating an impact when you walk into the house, but realistically we hardly ever turn it on. :)

We installed a LED pendant above the Dinning Table, we don’t watch the Block, but apparently they used it there too.  This seemed quite expensive at first (over $600), but it’s actually reasonable because you don’t need to spend an extra 200 bucks on fancy light bulbs.

The Pendant is the 600 mm version and its just the right size for our 2.4 m dinning table.  In true Millennial style, our tables and chairs were all purchsed online.  The table is the Miles Dinning Table from Castlery and the chairs are Replica Kalmar Chairs purchased during the eBay sale.

Above our kitchen island, we went with 3 Marcel 250 mm Pendant in Smoke/Black.  Our kitchen was prominently white, so this creates a nice contrast.  

These were quite reasonable, just over $100 each.  I actually use these more than our kitchen downlights, it isn’t overly bright and creates a nice mood at night.

The LED light strip under the kitchen cabinets is great, it gives out plenty of light and we prefer this warm white than the cool white that the range hood gives. 

 Love our rangehood by the way, its really stylish and just blends in with our cabinetry.  We got this from IKEA on clearance with 5 year warranty.  Don’t remember the weird name, but it was discontinued, $1500 down to $250.  Score!

In the Alfresco, we installed 4 downlights and also a ceiling fan from Beacon.  The fan is AC, we won’t be using it that often, so didn’t spend the extra for a DC fan.  It has black PVC blades, so its suitable for outdoors.  It actually generates plenty of airflow and helps keeps flies and mozzies away.  

With the high ceilings, downstairs is actually really cool.  So we diverted our cooling budget for a Coonara Gas fireplace.  Gas fireplaces are not cheap!  We paid around $5000 plus about $800 for installation.  Apparently, this should be enough to warm the entire ground floor.  I guess we’ll have to see how it goes in a few months.  

We also got a nice timber DC fan in front of the heater, it’ll help cool the house in the summer and we’ll put it in reverse to re-distribute the hot air during winter. 

This was an Aldi special buy, I actually lined up early on a Saturday morning!  It’s quiet and comes with a RF remote.  It generates quite a bit of airflow and I can actually feel the air all the way near the kitchen island.

The electrician also provisioned network/power/TV cables above the fireplace, however I got a FIRM NO for a TV.  The cable box will be covered by a mirror or a picture :( 

Bulkhead with downlights in the Media room, I think we went a bit overboard here.  This room is super bright and we actually keep the lights off when the TV is on.

Initially, we were thinking of a pendant above the stair case as feature.  However, we got pretty sick of picking out lights and just put in down lights instead.  

We also ended up getting timber shutters for that large window, so there was not much point for a feature pendant there.

We added 2 hanging pendants in the Master Bedroom, just above the bedside tables.

These were Marked down Aldi specials :)  Think they were $15 each.  However, we had to ikeahack the Aldi lampshades with an IKEA cord set, the original cords just weren’t long enough for our 2.7m ceilings.

So we ended up with a mishmash of expensive and inexpensive lighting.  We’re pretty happy with the results and we didn’t blow our budget too much.  However, we do think we went a bit overboard with the downlights in some rooms, so we might have to end up un-plugging some.

[poppyscastle]

Kitchen & Benchtop

10th Jan 2018

We had our kitchen bench top installed on the week just before Christmas, the stone mason was really busy so the install was quite rushed and there’s still a few places that needs fixing.

For the rear benches we went for a cheaper white engineered stone, its like Caesar stone but without the brand name.  This was super cheap, only about $600 per slab.  For the rear kitchen bench, butlers pantry and the laundry, we needed 3 slabs all up.  I think a similar grade of Caesar stone will cost about $1000 per slab.

For the Island Bench, we went with a piece of marble.  We originally weren’t going to go with marble, but we were hooked after seeing a piece in the showroom.   To top it off, real marble was actually cheaper than a marble look Caesar stone.  The marble costed around $1800 but premium Caesar Stone was over $2k.  We figured we’ll save on the back benches and splash out on the island, which will be a main feature of the room.

This piece was actually not the one we originally chose.   While on holiday a few days before the install, we were told the marble we ordered had a massive scratch on it.  We basically had to chose another piece of marble on the phone, we’re so glad the marble looked great in real life.

The installation of the engineered stone was quick and easy, they are quite light and quite strong.  The 3 benches were installed under 2 hours, we went with over mount sinks, so all the holes were cut on site.  

Under mount sinks looks great, but it’ll be a hassle later on when we decide to change sinks etc...

The kitchen rear bench is about 4 meters long, so we needed to join 2 slabs together.  They pre-cut a joint in the factory and its glued together onsite.  It’s then polished and you’ll be left we a fine line which is not too noticeable.   

Unfortunately, they forgot to polish this joint and will be coming back to finish it off.

Originally, we weren’t going to do a waterfall in the island, but the marble slab was actually big enough for the waterfall.  We’ll be wasting the marble if we didn’t do it, but the damage was extra $1000 in manufacturing costs.

The marble was actually really hard to handle and the 3 meter slab was super heavy.  It look 5 people to lift it and it could easily snap if we put the our weight at the wrong points.

The cost of manufacturing the waterfall was so high because of these mitered edges.  The stone mason cuts them at the factory and they are adjusted on site.

Unfortunately, because the marble is so brittle at edge, part of the miter got chipped.

The stone mason color matches some putty, sticks the chipped piece back on and polishes it.  You don’t really notice it, even if you you go looking for it.

We finally removed all the blue protective stickers and this is what our cabinets look like.  I thought removing the stickers would be really satisfying, but it was actually really hard work and got annoying pretty quickly.

The marble looks beautiful, but its so hard to handle and we didn’t really think about the maintenance side of things.  

The marble is already sealed in the factory, so hopefully it’ll cope with the daily grind.  However, I’ve got a feeling I’ll be doing most of the prep work in the rear bench and this Island is all for show.  

Hopefully we made the right choice, but I guess only time will tell.  

I also cut up the cover boards under the wall cabinets and embedded a LED strip.  My wife was super proud of me and she was also impressed with how the the range hood was perfectly level with the wall cabinets :)

I used the IKEA Algot shelf system to fit out my walk-in Pantry.  For a wall hanging shelf system, this is superior to the Bunning’s stuff in every way.  Both quality and price.  I only realized after I fitted out my walk in wardrobe with the Bunning’s stuff :(

Haha, its a lot of storage space for a few cans of tuna!

The manufacturing and install of the Bench tops was around $4k, so all up the benchtops costed ~$8K.   We spent just under $8K on the cabinetry, so our kitchen, pantry and Laundry was under $16,000.  Well within budget!

The only thing left to do in the kitchen is covering the back of the island in matching floorboards(I think we can do with some contrast) and the tile splash backs using leftover subway tiles from the bathroom.

The house is essentially done, we’re just waiting for Jemena to supply our gas and we’ll be able to get our Occupation Certificate.

[poppyscastle]

Garage + Footpaths

22nd December 2017

Since we have an easement on our property, to maximize the use of space, we’ve elected to have a detached double garage.

Rather than brick veneer, the garage was constructed with in single brick with engaged piers.   This means the roof trusses just sits directly on the brick and there’s no timber frame for the walls.

No frames on the walls means no Gyprock and we’ll need to go with traditional cornices rather than shadow lines.  It’s definitely not as pretty, but my car doesn’t care and my bank account is happier.

Since the garage is constructed on a slopping ground, there’s actually a ~250 mm differences in the height on the 2 ends of the garage.

This means we’ll need to construct a ramp for the car to get into the garage.  So we had the Concreters come in to do the ramp and while they were here, also construct the foot paths around the house.  All up, we paid about $5000 for everything laid. 

The form work for the foot paths were fairly quick, but the ramp took a while.  In order for the new concrete to stick, they had to use the jack hammer to break the surface of the old concrete.

Since everyone is rushing to complete their jobs before Christmas, most of the concrete trucks are booked out. We had to wait a few days before a free  booking became available.  But once the truck arrived, the concrete itself just took a few hours to lay and was done before lunch time.

Some photos of the finished footpaths:

The garage door we used were the panel lift series from B&D.  For a more modern look, we went for a larger panel called the “Nullabor”.  It was finished in a wood grain texture in “Ironstone” to match cladding on the main house.

We didn’t really do any research on the Garage Door Opener, so we just went with a Merlin 3850 with a battery backup.  It seems to do the job and its super quiet!  This costed ~$3000 fully installed, installation only look about 3 hours.

The painters also finished off the inside walls with a coat of paint and we’re done!

We’re pretty much in the home stretch now, kitchen bench tops and all the sinks are installed.  All the painting is done and the electrician will be finishing off all the electrical work tomorrow.

Apart from landscaping and the decking boards to do, we are actually finished before Christmas!   

[poppyscastle]

Plastering and Paint

16th December

Plastering

After the Plasterers laid the Gyprock, they have to do the “Setting”.  This consists of putting a base coat of plaster over all the joints/corners and sanding it down.  This is followed by a top coat of white plaster, which is again sanded down to give a smooth flat finish.  Once the “Setting” is done, the walls are handed over to the Painters to prep for painting.

Base coat of Plastering being applied around all the joints:

Plastering the base coat on the ceiling shadow lines.

Here are some pics after the “Top Coat” have been applied and sanded.  We’re very happy with the look of the shadow lines.

Painting

The interior Painting have almost been complete, we’ve pretty much had a team of 3 every day last week.  

Picking a color was a nightmare!  We were always going to have white walls, but there are so many different shades of white!

At the end, we decided on “Natural White” for the walls and Vivid white for the Ceiling and trims.

Prepping the walls are a pain in the butt, but luckily we have professional painters doing it.  They have to patch up any little holes, put a base coat of paint on the wall and then sand it down once it’s dried.

Here is the walls and ceiling with the base coat applied.

This is then followed by 2 coats of paint in both the walls and ceilings.  The shadow line looks awesome once its painted.  

The Cooler “Vivid white” on the Ceilings and then the Warmer “Natural White” on the walls. 

To break up the whiteness of the walls, we wanted to keep the natural timber look of the stair case.  

The natural pine color was a bit yellow, so we stained the timber in “Northern Tallowood”, which was similar to the Meranti of the front door.  We’ll be using this same color for the Porch/Alfresco Ceilings.

We bought a few tins of sample stains to test before we decided on the color.  Unlike paint colors, how the stain will turn out will depend a lot on the timber you use.  There’s even color variances with the same timber type, so the color samples in store will always look different.

The plaster also came back put Gyprock under the stairs.

We ended up being about 10K over budget for plastering, the extra steel works for the ceilings costed an extra $4000.  The Shadow line was an extra $2000 vs Traditional Cornices.  We also had extra insulation, bulkheads etc... 

The money on the shadow lines and the steel works were money well spent though.  Considering how much ceiling space we had, $6000 is not a lot of money.  It works very well with the high ceilings and really lifts the appearance of the house.

Next week is the final week of work before Christmas.   

The bathrooms are almost complete.

The Painting should be done by the end of the week.

We are finally getting mains power on Wednesday, so all the electrical works should be done by then.

[poppyscastle]

Staircase

10th December

The Staircase was installed last week, it was put together amazingly quick!  The guy started around 8 am and everything was done just after lunch time.

The staircase was measured a few weeks ago after the Gyprock was put on, it was then custom made and laser cut in the factory.  When it arrived onsite, it was basically a giant jig saw puzzle that needed minor adjustments.

They first mount the stringers on the wall and then put in the support beams.

Once the skeleton of the stair case is done, the pre-cut steps are put in one by one.  

Since we’re planning on covering the steps with Floorboards, we just chose the standard MDF steps.  Once the steps are on, the balustrades and handrails are put on.

We hated the traditional post tops, so we chose to have the handrails on top of the post instead.  It just gives it a modern clean look, without the cost of steel and glass.

This is what it looks like completed, the area under the stairs will be boxed in for storage later.  (the stairs are straight btw, its just my wide angle lens distorting things) 

We went with extra wide stair cases, standard size is about 900 mm wide, but these are around 1200 mm wide.  Looks much grander and way easier to move furniture up and down the stairs!

We had the carpenter frame up the storage area and install the door.

When the Gyprockers comes back to finish of some minor stuff, we will have them put in Gyprock for the area around the door and underneath the stairs.  

We also ended up lining our Alfresco and Porch Ceiling with Timber Lining.  Took about 2 days work to do the 2 areas.  We just went with cheap pine lining, since the painters quoted for the entire job, they can just stain it and seal it with vanish without costing us extra.

We were initially thinking of getting pre-finished “Glosswood” but for about 40m2 we were looking at $4000 vs $600 for pine.   Hardwood is far less “knotty” and Pine won’t last as long.   We don’t mind the knots too much, but we might look at upgrading to hardwood or a composite material further down the track.

Its super awesome to have stairs in the house!  We can now go up and down freely without climbing 3 meters up the ladder!

Painters have already started prepping, they’ve already done all the base coats.  They should be all done in about a week.

We have concrete coming in on Monday for the footpaths on the side of the house and also for the garage ramp.

Shower screens are also getting installed sometime next week.

Everything is coming together, we’re almost done now!

[poppyscastle]

Kitchen Build

1st December

Overall the building an IKEA kitchen was surprisingly easy, as long as you have the right tools at your disposal.

Putting together the basic frames were quite quick.  We tackled the main kitchen first, this was definitely the hardest, but everything else was a breeze afterwards.

To build and mount the cabinets, it took 2 days for the main kitchen, 1 for the island, 1 for the pantry and 1/2 day for the laundry.    Then it took another 3 or 4 days to put in the doors/drawers/cover boards etc..   So all up, it took about 1.5 weeks.  This was mostly done by myself, so if you have an extra person, this would’ve taken a lot less time.  For over $10K worth of savings, the 1.5 weeks was worth it.

Main Kitchen

The cabinetry itself is one of the easier IKEA builds, the most time consuming part is leveling all the cabinets and mounting the rear rails.

All the cabinetry mount on rails.  Once you get the rails attached to the wall and level, then its just a matter of hanging the cabinets onto the rails and locking them in.

Attaching the rails can be a bit tricky, you’ll need a stud finder to make sure you screw the rail to the stud and also the rails needs to be cut if its not the right size.  

An Angle Grinder was handy here, 2 mins vs 10 mins messing with a hack saw.  Luckily, I had previously added extra support before the dry wall went on, so I had plenty of timber to mount these rails.

Since the slab is never 100% level, you’ll need to use these adjustable legs on the front of the base cabinets to level things out.

Once everything is level, you clamp and screw each base cabinets together.  IKEA tells you to start from the side, but we wanted the center cabinet to sit directly in the middle of the window, so we started from the middle and worked out from there.

Having a laser level at your disposal definitely make things a lot easier, its really handy for keeping your rails level.  The hardest part by far was leveling the top of that high cabinet with the wall cabinets.  We wanted the top of the cabinets to all line up, so it took a few adjustment of the rail before we got it perfect.

Without a tall cabinet in the Pantry, it took me 30 mins to install and hang the top cabinets, as compared to the few hours in the main kitchen.

It took a few goes, but we pretty much have the wall cabinets lined up perfectly.  Almost perfect, maybe 0.5 mm off?

There was a bit of a gap next to the high cabinet.   Instead of putting in a massive cover board, we put in some 40 cm wide open wine racks instead.

We were told to just clamp and screw the wine shelves to the side of the high cabinet.  It seemed a little flimsy, so I elected to build some support with scrap timber I had laying around.  The cover board and kick board will cover this, so it doesn’t need to be perfect :).

So after 2 days, this is all the base cabinets put together.  Time consuming, but not really that difficult and super satisfying when its done.

Kitchen Island

We marked out the kitchen island and leveled it with out rear cabinets.  There’s about a 1.2 meters space between the island and rear cabinets.

The island uses these special metal legs that allow you to screw the island to the ground.  You’ll need a hammer drill to drill some holes in the concrete, put in some plastic insert, then screw the legs to the ground.

They are a pain in the butt to adjust and are not very good.  The plastic legs actually have higher range of adjustments, so I had to add my own packers to up the height.

Since only the back of the island is attached to the ground, I can actually lift the front of the island.  It’ll probably be okay with the weight of the stone bench top installed.  But I’m not taking any chances, so I screwed some timber to the ground with brackets and attached the front of the island to the timber.

Took me a day to install and level out 3 Island Cabinets!

Pantry

The Pantry was very easy to do,  I just used the level I measured for the main kitchen.  I marked it on the wall and used the laser level to set out the guide lines.  The top and bottom rails were mounted in no time and the cabinets were hung on the rail.  Although IKEA recommends 2 people, if you’re strong enough, this is can be easily done by 1 person.

My kitchen isn’t blue BTW, its just plastic film that protects the surface of the door.  I’ll keep this on until all the painting is done.

The doors are super easy to put on, I just had to screw in half the hinge to the frame and everything else just snaps into place.  

There’s very little gap on each side of the cabinets, you’ll need at least some gaps for the actual door to open.  So for the pantry, the cabinets worked out just as good as a custom kitchen.

Laundry

I had to wait for all the tiles to complete before I can put it cabinets in for the laundry.  There’s an exhaust duct that runs from the WC next door to the outside, so this will need to be covered by some bulkheads.

Again, laundry was simple to do and only took half a day.

The great thing about an IKEA kitchen is the customization and the range of accessories available.  We optioned the cleaning interior, not sure what we’ll put on it, but it looks super handy!

Bulkheads/Cover boards/Doors/Drawers

Timing worked out perfectly, our cabinets were hung while the Drywall guys were still on site.  

So we had them do 2 bulkheads one in the main kitchen and one in the laundry. 

Kitchen guys don’t normally do the bulkheads, so there’s probably thousands of kitchens waiting for the space above their wall cabinets to be covered up. 

We initially only planned on doing one in the main kitchen, but that exhaust duct kinda forced us to do the laundry as well.  This cost us about $1000, it was a 1 man job and the guy took about 4 hrs to do 2 bulkheads.  Super quick!

They built the frame of the bulkhead with metal rails instead of timber.   Its so much quicker this way, the guy measures the rail, cuts it with tin snips and TEK screws the rails together.

Here are the 2 bulk heads completed, looks sleek and finished.

We went with mostly drawers in the main kitchen.   The drawer are all BLUM hardware and and costs about $120 each. The sides of the draws all metal and have these built in adjusters to move the door front in all 3 axis.

They feel super premium and are soft close.  There’s a reason why drawers are more expensive, not only are the hardware more costly, they are also a complete pain in the butt to put together.   Each drawer takes about 20 minutes to install, so multiple that by about 20!

I also cut up the cover boards to fill any gaps.  Ideally, you’ll need a table saw to cut up the long cover board to size, luckily I had one handy.  A circular saw just doesn’t work very well for the long pieces, you’ll always end up with an uneven angled cut somewhere.

As you can see we had our floor boards laid.  It’s been laid all the way to the front legs of the base cabinets, so the kick boards will just sit on top and we won’t need to have any ugly trims around the kick boards. 

The plan is to lay the same floor boards on the back of the island, this will create some contrast to the matte white door fronts.  We went for a stone water fall on the 2 sides of the island, so the dishwasher will just sit in the empty space with no cabinets and the waterfall.

We had to go with doors instead of the draw fronts for the sink cabinet, as the drawers didn’t fit with all the pipe work.

We also put cover boards under the wall cabinets, which hides all the screws and cam locks.  

Building the kitchen was definitely a bit of work, I’ll only recommend it if you have time to spare like me.

You’ll also need the right tools as well, if you don’t have them, it’ll take you a lot longer.  

Here are some of the tools I ended up using:

Circular saw with 60 tooth finishing blade

Electric drill

Hammer Drill

Impact Driver (a must!)

Laser level

large and smaller leveler

Table saw with 40 tooth blade

Hole saw

Clamps

Angle grinder

Hacksaw

Screw drivers

We’ve already picked out our stone, ended going with a piece of marble for the island.  (We saved on the cabinetry, so we splurged a bit on the stone.)  Can you believe marble is actually cheaper than premium Caesarstone!  We just went with a cheaper engineered stone for the rear benches and the laundry.

Stone measure happens on Tuesday and the bench should be installed by Christmas.

[poppyscastle]

Kitchen Design

27th November

Our main kitchen is pretty simple affair, straight line of cabinets with a kitchen island.  We also have a small butler’s pantry, where we plan on washing up pots/pans and make our coffee.

We’ve had quotes from Nobby’s/Freedom/Good Guys kitchens, all of which were around the 15K mark just for the cabinetry in the main kitchen.  The designs were mostly with doors and minimum amount of drawers.  These were all flat pack kitchens in standard sizes, they are “custom” kitchens because their “designer” mix and matches their cabinet size to suit our needs. 

Being very experienced Ikea Furniture builders, we decided to look into their new Metod Kitchen line.  We used their online kitchen planning tool and came up with the basic design for our kitchen/pantry/laundry.  We then paid for a $99 design appointment, where the someone from the kitchen team checked and made changes/recommendations on our design.

At the end, we have plans for our 3 areas.

Main Kitchen

Pantry

Laundry

Since our areas consists mostly if straight line cabinetry, it was quite easy to mix and match the Ikea 400mm, 600 mm and 800 mm cabinets to suit our needs.  This is essentially what the other kitchen companies were doing anyway.

The Ikea drawers and hinges are all high quality stuff by Blum, I read somewhere that Ikea were actually the biggest importers for these hardware.  (I wonder if other kitchen companies secretly get their drawer and hinge hardware from Ikea?)

The main complaint about the Ikea Cabinets were their thin back panels.  Its not something we will notice anyway and Ikea’s Cam lock system makes the cabinets more solid than the imported flat-pack stuff the other companies uses.

We went with their most expensive drawers for the base cabinets in the main kitchen and stuck with soft close hinged doors for the rest.  We also went with their premium Matte white Italian made Voxtorp doors. 

At the end the price for the cabinetry and hardware came to around 10K.  This is for all 3 areas, with approximately 20 Blum metal drawers!

To seal the deal Ikea was offering 20% off and 2 years interest free finance.  So we have all the cabinetry taken care of for approximately $8000 and I didn’t have to pay a cent!  There’s no 6 week wait and everything was delivered the next day.  This is compared to 15K just for the main kitchen with 2 drawers!

The downside is the need to build everything yourself.  But since I have lots of leave accumulated from work, I have loads of time to build my kitchen.

[poppyscastle]

Bathroom Tiling

22nd November 2017

The tiler came in last Saturday to start on the ‘screed’ base for the bathroom/laundry.   This will dry over the weekend and he’ll start the tiling on Monday.

We have 2 bathrooms, 1 WC and 1 laundry that needed to be tiled.  The tiler is an absolute machine and he was done with the base by Lunch time. 

Considering the stairs are not in yet, that’s quite an achievement!   The ‘screed’  base is a mixture of some bricklayers sand and some cement.  

The tiler had a helper downstairs mixing the base and filling them into buckets.  He would then use a pulley and lift the mixture up onto the upper floor.

The screed base is then leveled out so that water will flow towards the floor wastes. 

Tiles

We picked our tiles 2 weeks ago from TFO in Smithfield.  It was quite a trek to get there, but prices are so much better than the likes Beaumont or Amber etc...

You’ll need to organize your own transport though, however they do have a list of preferred contractors.  Our 1.5 pallets of tiles was delivered for $150.

For our floors, we went with a Lappato Honed Porcelain tile.  We love the finish and has a honed concrete look.  These were only $29 per meter, but has a weird non standard 450 x 900 size.

We catered for 10% wastage, but since the tiles were so large there was actually a lot more wastage.  We got quite lucky, as we ended up using every single tile!

But because the tiles were large, it also meant it only took a day to lay the floors of all 4 areas.

For our wall tiles, we went with large subway tiles with a bevelled edge.  They were 100 x 300 mm in gloss white, which were only $18 per meter.  The sizing matched perfectly with the floor tile, the width of 3 subways equals 1 floor tile.

We’ve always loved subway tiles, they always looks so good on pinterest!  However, we spent the last week second guessing ourselves.  We were concerned full floor to ceiling subway tiles might be a bit too overwhelming.  

The tiler didn’t think it’ll look good either and it was an absolute pain in the butt to lay!  The cheap cost of the tile is probably offset by the labor involved to lay.  

It took 2 days to complete the 2 bathrooms and the tiler will be back next week to finish off the WC.

Once it was done, we(including the tiler) were all very happy with the result.  The bevelled edge looks amazing in the sunlight and works quite well with the floors.

Grout

We actually spent more time deciding on the colour of the grout than the tile itself.  We ended up choosing a grey grout(Palladium) for both the walls and floor tiles.  

We spent days thinking whether we should use grey or white grout for the wall tiles.  We were concerned the Grey might be a bit too contrasting, but I hate cleaning mold off white grout and there’s a lot of grout lines here!

Since the subway tiles are rectified the grout lines were actually pretty small and it actually didn’t look too much different from being un-grouted.

We’re going with Matte Black Tapware, so we also installed some nice black tiled floor wastes to match.  These were something like $25 each, but looks way better than the shiny $5 chrome look ones from Bunning’s.

Everything progressing well, plastering and kitchen should be done this week.  

Next week:

We have flooring being installed on Monday.  

Stone mason is measuring up the kitchen bench top

Stairs are booked in for installation on Friday.

Concrete might go in around the house and on the drive way.

Steel works for the decking might also be starting.

Going to be another super busy week!

[poppyscastle]

Plastering

17th November

Plasterer was started a few weeks ago even before the lower roof was complete.  The Plasterer were basically coming in for a day or 2 each week doing the prep work.  It was only when the house was watertight 2 weeks ago, did they go full throttle on the plastering  .

Ceilings Rails

Normally the Gyprock is nailed directly onto the timber frame/floor joists.  The timber on the ceilings is never 100% uniform, so the level between each sheet of Gyprock will be slightly different.

This is normally not a problem in a small area, as you’ll rarely have more than 3 or 4 sheets of Gyprock.

However, since we have such an open area.  The unevenness of the Gyprock will end up creating a “wavy” effect on our ceiling and will be very noticeable

The Plasterer recommended we put in these adjustable metal rails in the ceilings and the Gyprock sheets will be screwed into these metal rails. The bulk of the prep work was leveling/installing these rails and adds a few dollars to the cost per meter. 

Insulation

Once the property was watertight, they started putting the insulation into the walls.  The insulation(Pink Batts) were sourced from the Plasterers, they buy so much of the stuff, so it ended up being cheaper than Bunnings. 

The insulation was put in both the internal and external walls.  Hopefully, this will keep out the heat during the summer, as we don’t plan on installing A/C just yet.

Walls/Ceilings

The walls and ceilings went up pretty fast, I’ll say it took about 4 days to do the entire house.  

I’m quite amazed at how they managed to get all the sheets to the 2nd floor without stairs.  I guess they’ll have to do this a lot, as stairs can’t usually be measured until the Gyprock is up.

The house looks much brighter once the walls/ceilings are up, hopefully it gets even more so when its painted.

The Gyprock sheets are held on by glue and screws.  All the screw holes and joints will be patched up.  They have this machine that dispenses plaster and tape for the joints.  

One person does the taping and another guy trowels it afterwards.  They are super quick and makes it look so easy!

They use staple guns to attach these metal corners for all the external joints, which will be plastered and sanded, creating a nice straight corner.

Cornices/Bulkheads

We wanted a clean modern look, so we opted for shadow lines instead of traditional 90 mm curved cornices.

They put in the wall sheets first, followed by the ceiling sheets that’s slightly lower and a few mm away from the wall.

They screw in these metal trims in the gap, which will be plastered over creating a nice shadowline look.

Here’s the finished bulkhead near the entrance, this is covers the pipes nicely.

Plasterers are probably a week away from completion.

The next few weeks will be manic on site.   Plastering, Tiling, Painting and Kitchen Install are all going on at the same time.  Fun times!

[poppyscastle]

Waterproofing

14th November

Once the bathrooms were boarded up last Wednesday,the Water-proofer came in over 2 days on Thursday/Friday to waterproof the 3 bathrooms.

You can see the ground area where we have showers are done in a much thicker type of black waterproofing membrane and the walls are just done in some thinner blue membrane.  

The flange is put over all the floor wastes and they are also water proofed.

Our ensuite:

Our Downstairs WC

Waterproofing the 3 bathrooms costed approximately $2000 and a certification is also provided.  

The membrane takes a few days to dry, so we had the Private Certifier come in on Tuesday and they gave the waterproofing the OK.  

The tiler scheduled to start next Monday.

[poppyscastle]

Lockup

11th November

Today, we’re officially at the “Lockup” stage.

All the panes of the sliding door were put in today and the lock on the entrance door was also installed.

Sliding Doors

We had 2 sets of sliding doors, a typical set of double sliding doors and also a massive 6 meter wide set of stacker doors.

The double sliding doors consisted of 2 fixed pane and 2 glass sliders.  Since the fixed panes were installed with the frame, putting the two sliders on was a simple 10 min job.

The Stacker Door  was a real pain in the butt though, it consisted of 2 fixed panes and 4 sliders.  6 panes to install!  We had loads of trouble installing the fixed panes at first, the instructions were inadequate and we just couldn’t get the panes to fit in the rail.

We eventually figured it out, but the key is to adjust a plastic stopper at the top of the fixed panel.  Make sure its at its lowest position before you try to install the fixed pane.  You also have to install the fixed pane from the outside.

The 1st of the 4 sliders was also a pain to fit.  The key is to adjust the wheels at the bottom to its lowest position and to fit the pane from the inside where the fixed panel is.  If you’re strong enough, I found 1 person lifting the slider in place was easier.  When you have 1 person on either side, the door always tend to be higher on one side and it just won’t go in.

Once we figured this out, the other 3 sliders were easy.  All up, moving all the doors in place and loads of trial and error took us almost 3 hours to install the 2 sets of doors.  

We really love the stacker doors , much easier to operate than bi-fold doors and so much cheaper.   The only thing we might have done differently is to get higher sliding doors to match our 3 meter ceilings, but those would’ve been a real nightmare to install!

Front Door

We ended up getting a digital lock installed in the front door, this means no more keys!  There’s nothing more annoying then going for a run with a set of keys in your pocket or forgetting your keys when you go out.

I’ll go into a bit more detail about our digital lock on another post.

We also paired a matte black door handle with the door, but that hasn’t been installed yet.  

Gyprocking is well underway, all the Gyprock has already been nailed on and we just have plastering/sanding left.  Probably about a week away from completion.

[poppyscastle]

Doors and Lower Roof

1st Nov 2017

Been a bit busy lately, so I’ve been a bit lazy with the updates.

The Private Certifier inspected the property last Saturday and gave the interior the OK to board up.  So we can basically start the dry walls as soon as the Lower roof goes on.  There’s only 2 more inspection left, 1 for the Bathroom Waterproofing and 1 for the final inspection.

Interior Doors

While we were waiting for the the Lower Roof to go on, the carpenter came in and installed all our doors over 3 days.  He charges a daily rate of ~$500, so that gives you an idea how much it costs to get the doors installed.

The doors that we choose were Hume Doors Accent HA4, all doors are 2340 high and the majority are 820 wide.  We choose these higher doors because we’ve got quite high ceilings(2.7 m upstairs and 3 m downstairs) and the standard 2040 doors might look a bit small.  The plan is to paint these white and match it with some matte black door handles.

We got pre-hung doors, which meant the doors came with a matching set of door jamb with hinges installed.  Pre-hung doors costs a little more, but the installation is easier.  With the finishing carpenter being on a daily rate, quicker install = more doors he can do in a day.

You can see here that half the hinge is on the door and the other half is on the door jamb.

The hardest and most time consuming part is installing the door jam.   The carpenter uses a laser to line up the jamb and painstakingly adjust it to make sure the jamb is exactly square.  Installing the door itself is easy, just take out the pins and slot into the hinge. 

Our first shipment of doors actually arrived without the hinge, so Hume had to take all the doors back and reship the correct ones.  This delayed the door installation by 2 weeks!

Front Door

Initially, we were planning to put in an 1200 x 2340 Pivot door, they looked so good in the display homes.  However, those doors are crazy expensive!  The door itself is ~$800, then you’ll need to add about $1000+ for the door jamb and Pivot hardware.

As a compromise, we choose a 1000 x 2340 door.  By going for a 1000 wide door, meant we don’t need the expensive Pivot hardware and we can go with a standard hinge system.  

The door actually looks a bit narrow in this photo, but it might be due to my wide angle camera and the fact that its 2340 high.

Because the way a Pivot door works, the opening of a 1m wide hinge door is almost the same as a 1.2 m Pivot door .  Using a hinge door also means we can use a double rebated door jamb and have the option to install a fly-screen later.

In true millennial style, I purchased the my front door off ebay!  Tru Door is a door manufacturer in Victoria and has a well stocked ebay store.  The door has 6 frosted glass and is made of SOLID Meranti.  The door itself was ~$400, I also purchased the hinges and matching Meranti Door jambs.  It took a week to ship from Victoria and the damage was ~$700 delivered.

Since the door was not pre-hung, the carpenter had to cut/assemble the jamb and the whole install took approximately half a day.  The door was apparently really heavy and took 3 person to lift.  I guess that’s why the guys at Tru Door recommended 4 hinges here.

All up the front door cost just under $1000 installed, we’re very happy with the result and its WAY cheaper than a Pivot door.  If you were looking to purchase a front door from Bunnings, there’s no way you’ll get a solid timber 1000 x 2340 door for $400.  

Lower Roof

The lower roof was completed on Wed.  The actual install of the roof sheets was really fast, it was literally done in a few hours in the afternoon.   Since it was a flat roof, they just had to make simple straight cuts with tinsnips.  The capping over the bricks/cement boards was custom made offsite and the actual install took a full day.  

The downpipes/rainheads are also on order and should be installed next week.

Since we had loads of rain on Saturday, it was the perfect test for the roof.  Apart from a few minor areas (now fixed), our house is now watertight!

Things are happening really fast now and we might actually make it before Christmas!

[poppyscastle]

Skylight installation and Bye Bye to Scaffold

31 Oct 2017

Bit of progress in the last few days.

While the Scaffold was still up, the painters came in and painted our Cladding in “Iron Stone” to match the roof.  The cladding turned out really nice and we really like the contrast between the Surfmist Render and Iron Stone.

We also had the skylight installer put in a skylight for the top floor corridor.  The Velux skylight itself was cheap, it’s a fixed pane 550 x 700 mm and cost just under $400.  

However, on a steel roof you’ll actually need custom flashing around the skylight to prevent the roof from leaking.  The flashing itself was around $500, plus an extra $900 for the install.  So all up, the damage was around $2000 and the install took 2 x half days to complete.

The install also included the modification of the framework and the light shaft for the skylight.  You can see whilst the skylight is only  550 x 700, the opening on the ceiling is much larger.

The dry wall guys also came in and boarded up the Porch and Alfresco Roof line.  These will eventually be painted in Iron Stone as well.

Before:

After:

The Renderer will come in again to finish off he sides of the Porch, so that the render will be flush with the posts.

The Alfresco looks much nicer boarded up.

Once all the work was done, the scaffold was taken down.  This was surprisingly quick and only took 1 day to do.

He’s a view of the front facade without the scaffold.  Its really starting to come together.  I think it’ll look even better when the porch gets painted and the capping of the lower roof gets installed.  

[poppyscastle]

Cladding and Leaf Guards

22nd Oct 2017

Weather’s a bit weird this week, rain one day sunny the next.  However, we’re able to make a bit of progress between the rain.

On Monday, the roofers were in during the afternoon and started on the leaf guards.  They came back on Wednesday to finish the job and installed the 2 whirlybirds too.

The Leaf Guards are steel and color matched to the Iron Stone of the roof:

The Whirlybirds needed to be installed near the ridge of the roof.  We picked 2 spots near the rear of the house, so I’ll be less visible from the frontage.  

Some people are a bit skeptical about the benefit of Whirlybirds, but I’ve had one installed in my previous house and it made the house a few degrees cooler during the Sydney Summer.

Like I said last time, we decided to change our cladding to JH Scyon.  It took just over a day to install.  We’re very happy with the result and also the $2K that we saved.

Because the planks are quite thin(14mm), it makes it quite hard to handle when we’re dealing with long planks.

On the external corners, there’s an aluminum boxed corner trim where the cladding slots in.  The cladding are nailed into the studs thru the lip.

Once the next piece of cladding is slotted in, the nail ends up being hidden and we’re left with a nice ship-lapped finish.

These boxed corner are paintable, so they’ll be painted “Iron Stone” like the rest of the cladding.

For Next week, we have a skylight being installed on Tuesday and the painters will be in on Wednesday to do the cladding.  Hopefully, the scaffold will come off as well, so we can start on the lower roof.

[poppyscastle]

Exterior Paint and Cladding

14 Oct 2017

The lovely dry weather for the last few months has come to an end, we had quite a bit of rain this week.  It wasn’t heavy rain, but just enough to affect the progress.  

Talk about bad timing, we’re just about 1 week away from “lock up”!  

Luckily, majority of the house is under cover, so the roughing in of the electrics is 90% done.

The builder was able to put up all the timber beads around the eaves on Monday.  There was rain over the weekend, so the Painters just sent 1 guy onsite on Tuesday to prep the Eaves.

All the gaps around the eaves were filled up with Gap Filler and the painter was able to do 1 coat of the Eaves.

Loads of Rain on Wednesday, the render was left to dry on Thursday and two painters did a full day on Friday.

They were able to complete the 2nd coat on the Eaves and 1 coat of the Render in the upper level.

The Colour of the Render is Surfmist, it looks a bit white at the moment, but there should be a bit more contrast once the Porch and Cladding is painted.

While we’re on the subject Cladding, it’s a disaster!  After Bunnings “forgot” to make that order we placed 4 weeks ago, our new order have been delayed yet again.  

We were told the cladding will arrive on site on Friday (yesterday), but nothing turned up!  Turns out, they never got the confirmation from Urbanline and our colour isn’t actually available for another 10 days!

At this point, we’re pretty sick of dealing with Urbanline via Bunnings and we can’t afford anymore delays, so we’ve decided to change the cladding.

We’ve chosen to go with the James Hardie Scyon Stria Cladding, its a ship lap style 325mm wide boards, that looks like this:

These board were the ones we wanted, before we decided to go with the Urbanline Duro clad’s.  The timber look Cedar finish of the Urbanline looks pretty premium.  However, with the garage and porch now up, we realized it won’t make that much impact visually anyway.

The James Hardie product are stocked items at Bunnings, so it’ll be delivered within 24 hours and it’s actually half the price of the Urbanline stuff ($4K vs $2K).

So the lesson learnt here is NOT to deal with Niche Suppliers via Bunnings.

Whirlybirds/Gutterguards were a no-go this week due to the weather, so hopefully the roofers will be in on Monday/Tuesday.  The painters will also be in next week to do another coat of the render and to also paint the Eaves of the garage.  

Once its done, then the scaffold comes off and the lower roof goes on.  Fingers crossed! 

[poppyscastle]

Plumbing

7th October 2017

Took about 3 days for the Plumber and his apprentice to do the roughing in.  All the gas/water pipes have been machine tested to ensure we have the correct pressure.

This is our first new house, so its interesting that PVC piping is the norm these days.  I guess its a lot cheaper than copper and easier to work with.  It’s also a requirement these days to have a separate set of pipes to re-route water from the rain-water tank to flush the toilets.

You can see 3 sets of pipes here, Green (Rain Water), Black (Hot/Cold Water) and Yellow (Gas):

Our upstairs bathrooms happened to be above our entryway, this meant we had a whole lot of sewage pipes in that area.  Luckily, we were planning to have bulkheads around the ceiling of the entryway, so the plumber was able to route the pipes inside the bulkheads. 

We’re also planning on insulating the pipes, so we don’t hear the sounds of the pipes while we’re watching TV in the media room next door.  Probably an overkill, but It doesn’t cost much, so why not?

Since we’re planning on installing a gas fireplace, we had the Gas pipe plumbed all the way to the living area.   Downstairs should be pretty cool during summer, so we’re redirecting part of our cooling budget for a fireplace.

I loved chilled water, so I even got water plumbed to the fridge area.  Since the plumber charges for the whole job, that extra tap is not going to make any difference to the price.  But whether I get the approval for a fridge with ice and water is a totally different story :(.

For our ensuite and main bathroom, we’ve decided to go for wide vanities, so we’ve made provisions for double sinks.

Schedule for next week

Monday(9th Oct), the builder will be putting timber beads around the eaves.

Tuesday, the painters will be painting the Eaves and the upper level Render.

Wednesday, Roofers will be putting in Whirlybirds and gutter guards.

That’s the plan anyway, we’ll see how much of it materializes at the end of the week :).