Video walk through of house

Kitchen, sinks, concreting and tiling

A lot has happened over the last two months.  The external and internal has been painted - using Dulux paints. The interior colour is largely Lexicon with a feature wall and the three exterior doors Passionate Blue. The kitchen has been installed (appliances remaining) with a beautiful Cobalt Blue glass splashback.

 KItchen with ceaserstone benchtops.  The splashback wraps around the wall over the telephone cupboard.

 The main entrance from the inside.

The main entrance from the outside

 View of the house without the construction fencing.

Bedroom wardrobe

Insulation and Gyprock

Today the gyprock sheeting commenced  - upstairs. There is still some insulation to complete downstairs.

The gyprock finish will be square set as opposed to cornices. it gives a more streamlined look.

 Regarding insulation, in addition to the normal ceiling and wall insulation, we are also insulating between the floors - primarily for noise and so are using 75mm R2 acoustic insulation.

 The balustrade on the terrace has also been installed.

Exterior painting

The exterior painting has started. The upstairs is almost done. The scaffolding is down. The remainder of the first floor will be completed after the ground floor roofing is complete.

When the Red Terra was first put on, it seemed really bright but after a while the colour darkened to a more earthy look and with the vertical slivers of Deep Ocean it all balances out and goes well with red and blue tones enfused throughout the brickwork.

The red definitely stands out in the neighbourhood which has the grey/cream theme dotted throughout - this seems to be the current trend apparently.

They have also started cleaning up the ground (it was a bit of a mess) and in the process the northern fence was "bumped" so have had to call in the fencing guy to fix this weekend.

Roofing and cladding

The first floor roofing is on now and cladding (Scyon Stria) has also commenced.  Here is the curved roof over the garage.

 Standing on the scaffolding, I was able to take photos of the colorbond roofing (Deep Ocean) on the first floor curved roof.

 Here is the cladding outside Bedroom 5.

 And here is what the painted finish will look like.

View of the garage curved roof and the cladding from the south west.

Aerial view of Wright

 Here are two aerial pictures of Wright. The first before any development and the second I guess would have been around November 2011 (zzomed in to Cotter Rd).  Waiting for Google to update their satellite view for once the houses are up.

Here is a photo sourced from the Molonglo Valley website of an aerial view of Wright in June 2012. If you look closely you can see my untouched block with my western and northern neighbours well under way.

Update in mid-November 2012, I realised that Google have updated their satellite view of Wright.  In this photo you can see that the frames of the house are up.

Dulux Paint

They have started painting the house, starting with the fascia (Deep Ocean of course). If you see the photo above the dark blue fascia is the painted part whereas the light blue is unpainted.

They need to paint this before they put on the guttering and the roof.

They are using Dulux Paint throughout.  Incidentally I have had to use timber fascia throughout because of the curves in the roof.  Now you can cheat by using colorbond fascia but that means you use multiple straights to make it look like a curve.  To get a real curve you need to use timber.  So the curves have to be timber.  The straights can then be colorbond but it would then look odd and inconsistent. So we decided to use timber for all fascia.  The downside is that at some point you will need to repaint it.

That's why the next point is so important.

The first floor will have Stria cladding.  On the Hardietex Scyon Stria cladding website it states that if you use Wattyl paint on the Stria, then Wattyl gives you a 15 year warranty on the paint. Now this is important to me as painting the first floor of this place is going to be a major hassle.  This is the wording on the website:

Not only does James Hardie provide a 25-year product warranty on Stria cladding, but Wattyl® Australia Pty Ltd feels so confident it has given a 15-year paint warranty on Wattyl Solagard® when used on Stria cladding.

The bad news (or so I thought) is that my builder is using Dulux.  So I had a look at the Dulux website on what their warranty is on their exterior paint.  They do have The Dulux Weathershield Promise which is as follows:

We're so confident our product will not peel, flake or blister in any weather condition that if it doesn't deliver - we'll replace the product free of charge*. That's our promise to you.

For any claim or query, call Dulux Customer Service on 13 25 25. Proof of purchase is required.

There is caveat:

*This guarantee does not cover paint failure caused by any breakdown of coatings applied previously, where Dulux Weathershield is applied over coatings not specified by Dulux, or in the event of substrate failure or faulty application. To claim, you must be living in the house you have painted with Dulux Weathershield.

But this won't apply to me as its new paint on unpainted material.

Now this doesn't indicate exactly how long the warranty lasts so I rang the number above and was put through to the technical department where the gentleman there advised me that its for lifetime, meaning whilst I'm living there I'm covered. Well that means if it peels, flakes or blisters Dulux will give me the paint free of charge. I'll still have to arrange for it to be repainted though :-(.  

So I rang the builder and asked him to provide me with the receipt. I don't think anyone has ever asked him this before so he referred me to the painter, Adam, who said he would.