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.