Handover - We have finally taken possession of our home, after a few minor issues we found during our final inspection, all have been completed and the fun now begins with concreting and flooring. We have hit a snag in relation to the flooring and those of you who are doing their own flooring take note, it is quite important if you are laying a timber floor to have the floors as flat as possible, to our surprise our floors particularly upstairs are shocking, with the floor so uneven we have been told it must be totally re sanded. We have contacted Henley to advise them and have a meeting with them on Wednesday. They have been very responsive so far, hopefully they will rectify their error and the floors redone quickly.

Pre wiring the intercom/doorbell, alarm, surveillance system and network points has helped immensely with installation. We would recommend to all that are starting a build to have this done, all in all the Henley/Mainvue experience has been a good one, but will reserve this judgement until all fixes have been rectified. We will post another update after we move in at this stage some time in late October 2012. Cheers....

Stair lights installed

Video Intercom upstairs/downstairs

Alarm panel

Surveillance

Door Bell - with camera

Day 149 - 9th of July 2012, much has happened over the past month, the kitchen has been completed and installed, all cabinets fitted off in the wet areas, along with most of the tiling and painting. The Garage has been completed apart from the roller doors and painting. We have been told that completion should be around early August which would mean that it has taken approximately 6 months from block handover. One of the things we have found is with the windows the builder has installed, have latches right in the middle, this makes it hard to get suitable blinds for such as plantation shutters. All in all looking forward to the handover meeting due next month.

Day 118 - 08th of June 2012 - Much has happened in the last month, the plasters have finished, and the painters have moved in, they are expected to be finished by the end of June. The bricks have been cleaned and the scafolding removed. The Solar panels have been installed and the frame for the garage roof has been erected. The stair case has gone in as well as all the internal doors.We have met with our new site supervisor who is great and very informative and gave us great advice when we met. 

We have selected our floor and have gone with engineered timber. We got a good deal from Solomon's flooring  in Brighton, @ $78.00 per square meter for European Oak wide board. We will attempt installation in a small area to see how it goes, if we find its too hard the professionals will be called in. This week, the kitchen has been started along with the laundry and other cabinetry. Tilers should be through in the coming weeks, with a planned hand over date in August, assuming all goes to plan.

Day 87 - 08/05/2012 - Quite a bit has happened in the last two weeks. The brickies have finished their job with the final touches done today. The plasters came in on Wednesday and have have finished the rough plastering. The garage still has no roof and the balcony is yet to be rendered. I have put some before and after shots of the plastering. We are having some issues with the flooring namely finding the right product to suit our needs. We have settled on engineered timber flooring throughout the house and have narrowed it down to an oak wide board look. The search continues. We have not had any updates from Mainvue regarding the progress, but from what we can tell, its full steam ahead. One mistake we made was not choosing the glass staircase option, but at over 10K its probably not worth the $$. The luxury lighting package at over 4K is not worth the expense for the sake of about 30 down lights and extra power points, its far too expensive for what they offer.

Day 72 - 23/04/2012 The brickies have completed most of the downstairs and the scaffolding is due to arrive later this week for the final bricks to be laid upstairs. Electrical roughing has started and most of this has been completed. The plasters are due to arrive next week. The bricks have come up nicely with the guys working on the house leaving the bricks relatively clean and free of excess mortar, I suppose this means less cleaning later on. We have started the process of looking for timber flooring which is going to be a nightmare considering all the different types of timber there is on the market. We have already secured our source of Merbau decking at a very good price in fact the best price we could find, from a company called JTR Timber www.jtrtimber.com.au  in Melbourne with all lengths in excess of 4 meters, which is the best for larger areas. The site supervisor advises there will be a site clean before the plasters start. To date Mainvue have been great and the site has been kept fairly tidy, unlike other building sites you see. They have protected the windows with a goo covering which has helped protect the window panes from falling mortar. We have continued to receive regular updates from the office and our site supervisor.

Day 64 - 15th of April 2012, the brickies have been on site and have finished the bottom floor, we have selected an Austral Brick - Chocolate colour with natural rolled mortar. We are a little concerned that the mortar is a little dark, but time will tell once it has a chance to dry.  We are hopeful that the the mortar will dry to a lighter colour, as it has done in places on top of several bricks. We are quite happy with the overall colour of the bricks, going well both the timber windows and Aluminum windows we have down the side of the house. Lots of activity inside the house with the carpenter in straightening walls getting them ready for plastering. We expect the house will soon be at lock up which means no access to our own  house without a chaperon.

Day 52 - 2nd of April 2012. Not much has happened on site this week, apart from a meeting with the hydronic heating plumber where we went through radiator locations throughout the house. We made a few modifications to sizes and locations of the radiators given certain restrictions on window height and so forth. Our site supervisor was very accommodating, offering to make small modifications to ensure the radiators fit.   We can understand why Mainvue have decided not to pursue hydronic heating  given its complexity. The roof guards have been removed and all the upstairs windows have been installed. We have been told the bricklayers will be on site this Wednesday, hopefully to make a start.

 






Day 44 - 25th of March 2012. The roof tiles were delivered on Tuesday and the scaffolding went up on Wednesday. The Roof tilers were on site Thursday/Friday and finished the roof. The front balcony has been framed in addition to most of the windows installed on the ground floor along with foil wrapping.  We met with our site supervisor on Friday who was really helpful and took the time to explain the building process and our time line of expected completion. He knew his stuff and picked up on a few issues that Mainvue will rectify; this gave us confidence that he was on top of things. We have been told the bricks should be delivered on site next week and the brickies are due to move in for about 3 weeks. This means we should be at lock up by the end of April.

Day 36 - 17th of March 2012. The roof trusses were delivered on Tuesday and put up the next day, the framers are close to finishing their part with the plumbers moving in on Friday. Speaking to Mainvue on Thursday we have been advised that the roof tiles should be up next week. The only issue this week has been the rain with quite a bit falling. Our timber windows and timber sliders were left on the garage floor and are full of water. Given the timber is untreated, we hope this does not affect them too much. We have our first meet and great with the site supervisor on Friday.

Day 29 - 10th of March 2012. The second floor frame has been completed and several windows have been delivered to site. We visited the site on Friday and briefly spoke to the tradesmen; according to them the roof trusses will be delivered on Tuesday next week and should take a day to install. We are starting to panic a bit now, as we realise how much work we are going to have when we move in. Mainvue's communication has been been great so far and our coordinator is very responsive to questions and e-mails.

Close up of frame being constructed
on site

 


Day22 - 3rd of March 2012. Delivery of timber and steel beams happened on Tuesday with the crew on site a couple of days later. We expected there would delays in getting the frame up due to the heavy rain over the past week; however, the boys were on site Friday and Saturday working away under the rain, most impressive! We have been advised that the framing process takes approximately 2 weeks after which we get to meet our site supervisor for the first time for a walk through.
We can now see the house finally taking on shape. Pictures have been taken from the footpath, as we have been advised not to enter the site due to OHS.

Day 15 - 25th of Feb - the slab has been laid. On one of the hottest day's this summer (38 Deg) we got to the block at around 8.00am to find a convoy of trucks at our site with a concrete pump dumping cement. We were a little concerned that the heat may be too much, but trusted it to the professionals. They started around 6.30 and were done by Midday.

Day 7 -Tuesday the 21st of Feb 2012, The foundations of our house slab begins to take shape with the compacted sand in place with peers poured last week. We are expecting the slab to be laid by Friday.

Fence installed - Day 3

Loo and bin delivered 1st Day


We have a start...

Day 1 - Monday the 6th of Feb, we received a call from MV letting us know that the site will be scrapped on Friday the 10 Feb with the cut and fill to be done on the same day.
On Wednesday the 8th of Feb 2012, portaloo and dumpster were delivered; finally some progress toward our new home...


Day 3 -Today the temporary fence went up along with pegs along the boundary of the house, with a new front tap, hopefully tomorrow the plumbing starts in full swing.

The house we have chosen is the Emporio ER432 
Builder: Mainvue homes
Start Date: 10th of Feb 2012




To renovate or rebuild?
When deciding on the age old question of renovate or knockdown we considered many options and found the best for us was the latter. Our house was build in the 70's and we came to the conclusion that renovating was not a viable option given the amount of money required.
So the search began for a builder. We looked at a lot of houses and many  different builders, Porter Davis, Metricon, etc... Then we happen to come across a Henley display village in Cranbourne Vic. The sales consultant we spoke to at the time suggested we give MainVue a try after a brief description of what we wanted from our new home.  After visiting the Saltwater coast display village we finally found what we were after. The staff at Saltwater coast were very helpful and a big thanks to the sales rep who looked after us, who was very knowledgable.
We payed our initial deposit in May 2011 and went through the tender stage in October, to signing the contracts in November. The delay was brought about by our decision to try and sell our existing home (for re-location) rather than demolishing. After waiting 4 months for a sale to come through, (which never did) we decided to call the demolishers in.
Quotes varied from 13K to 9K for the same service. We ended up demolishing on the 5th of Dec (the whole process took 2 weeks - due to delays in obtaining the demolition permit and the demolisher themselves) but you get what you pay for. We handed the block over to Mainvue on the 17th of Dec.

Aerial view - prior demolition

   

Demolition in progress

   

Demolition complete

Given the Christmas/New Year break we had to wait until Early Feb for Mainvue to get to site.

Emporio ER432
We originally looked at the single storey Almafi; however this would not fit on our block, and settled for the Emporio.  Some options we went for:
*Upgrade electrical package
*Hydronic heating
*Double Glazing
*Fireplace option
*Fully glazed internal doors
*Double Plus garage
*Triniti Facade
*Kitchen Island Bench