Category Archives: Harkaway Homes

An Aerial View

A colleague at work has access to a system that provides aerial photographs.  He looked up our property and this is what he found – a pictorial story board of our journey from above!  The one in January was just days before demolition, and the September 2014 photo 10 days before hand over.

Aerial View 4th September 2013
Aerial View 4th September 2013
Aerial View 19th October 2013
Aerial View 19th October 2013
Aerial View 9th January 2014
Aerial View 9th January 2014 
Aerial View 4th March 2014
Aerial View 4th March 2014
Aerial View 3rd August 2014
Aerial View 3rd August 2014
Aerial View 5th September 2014
Aerial View 5th September 2014

 What an amazing find!

 

 

We’re In!

We have moved in!  Hand over Monday the 15th and we spent the whole week moving in.  It was exhausting but thrilling as well.   Our GoBox of stuff was delivered Tuesday morning and we camped out on mattresses on the floor that night.  The house wasn’t quite complete, but we had the occupancy certificate:

  • The stove hasn’t been installed – it was dented when the box was opened and our builder asked for it to be replaced.  Hopefully the new one will be installed this week.
  • The main kitchen sink isn’t plumbed yet – it was missing a screw, which Ikea didn’t have (not even in their display unit) so it is being sent from Sweden!
  • The front screen door is yet to be delivered and installed.
  • The painter spent Monday and part of Tuesday doing touch-ups on the paint.

We are absolutely happy with how it is turned out.  It was so nerve racking making so many choices and not knowing whether they will all work together, but they have.  

The roller coaster ride!

If I had written this post on Thursday night it would have been mostly ranting; but the passing of a few days has been more positive.  We weren’t supposed to do “house stuff” last weekend; we were supposed to be having a few child free days away at a vineyard.  Unfortunately our baby sitters for Oscar were sick so we had to cancel, but we had the time off work so we thought we’d make the best of it and go out for a nice lunch together. It didn’t turn out that way, but perhaps cancelling our weekend was a blessing in disguise as we didn’t have to deal with all this stuff today.

Hubby stopped by the house Thursday and Period Details were there to install the pressed metal sheets, he just happened to notice that the splash back sheets were the wrong colour.  After some frantic checking on what we had asked for we told the builder it was wrong .  These sheets have a six week lead time, so we weren’t happy.  But then it got worse; the colour we had chosen was no longer available!  It hadn’t been available at the time it was ordered either but was when we chose it several months earlier.  (This is the third time we have missed out on our selections because they didn’t get ordered when we chose them.)  So our relaxing day off was spent trying to choose a new colour.  Kath and Dave from Period Details were very helpful with suggestions as was Dulux Powder Coatings in sending us sample paint chips overnight. The biggest issue was that we wanted a metal look and it had to match the colouring in the stone bench top.  Friday afternoon we made our decision:

New Kitchen Splashback Colour
New Kitchen Splashback Colour

Dave from Period Details has cut the sheets to the correct size and they will be re-powder coated, so the delay should only be one week, not six.

The next issue we discovered was the paint in the ensuite.  It was supposed to be the Dulux “Off White” but looked brown.  Hubby thought it was the Hog’s Bristle for the main areas, used in the wrong spot.  It turned out the paint was tinted incorrectly. The rep from ecolour came out pretty quickly, acknowledged the mistake and replaced the paint today.

These things always come in threes! The stained glass has been installed, and looks gorgeous! The only problem is the glass around the front door was supposed to be obscured glass so no-one could see in, but it’s clear.  We called Harkaway and they agreed to organise the replacements straight away and have someone coming out to do the swap over. 

Stained glass on front door - clear not obscured
Stained glass on front door – clear not obscured

 

Update on kitchen splash back: things did not go so well with the recommended selection.