Sunday, February 5, 2012

Day 198: We got plaster...ing (not plastered)!


Finally, we got some real progress in our home build.  It's been a long time coming, but we sure were excited when we finally got to see plasterboards (or gyprock, or drywall, or wallboard or whatchamacallit) covering the frames, studs, wirings, noggins and insulation inside the house.  Now we can see how the inside of the house is all coming together.  Pretty hard to imagine how it's all going to look like if it were just frames and insulation.  Without any local display home to keep the image fresh, we have to rely heavily on our imagination coupled with the plans and the photos we took when we went to see the display in ... believe us ... in Kellyville Ridge, NSW (a long time ago, just as we're about to start the build process).

We took a lot of photos (that's how excited I was), I mean a lot.  I love photography, have it as a hobby or a past time, but it's getting kinda weird when I knocked myself out taking photos of walls and windows and ceilings and rooms and walls and more walls and more walls again ... c'mon, how many shots do I need to take for an empty room, freshly plastered, bare flooring, dusty and ...

I'll spare you the agony, my excuse is I took a lot of shots (again, I mean, a lot of shots) to show my wife how it  is progressing ... as if she's there.  Thinking about it now ... I should have taken a video, instead.

Following are some pics on how things are on Day 198 of our build.  Next time ... stairs, cabinets, and maybe some tiling ... we'll see.

Warning: There are more than 10 or 20 pictures here!!!  Don't tell me I didn't warn you.



So excited to see how things are going inside ... let's have a look, shall we?

Front door (that's just the temporary door), cornices on the floor ready to be put up at some stage.

The hallway.  Garage access door to the left; guest bedroom (door not in picture) to the right; straight ahead towards the kitchen, dining and family room down the end.

The guest bedroom/study; this' has a got double cavity sliding doors (right side), ensuite is just behind me

View of the guest bedroom ensuite; towards the left is the  (sliding) door to the shared (with powder room) toilet.

View of the stairs (hopefully next week), under-stairs storage room, and laundry and WIL on your left
(I'm standing where the sitting room is)

The sitting room, with aluminium french doors out to the (future) courtyard (just behind the garage).

The laundry.

View to the door (double cavity sliding) towards the pantry (left), the refrigerator space (centre) and a corner niche (right).  Don't know yet what to put in the niche, yet, but my wife already got her eyes on the F&P 3-door (french door) stainless steel fridge.

The kitchen.  With an island bench on the foreground.

The dining room with a large picture/fixed window on the left.

The tri-sliding doors opening to the outdoor room.

The family room.  Yep.  TV and entertainment system are going to be put up here.

The stairs.  Would be nice to see the actual stairs to be finally built here.  Next week.  Our SM promised us.  Should have been this week, bit of a delay from the stair masters.

Now let's go upstairs ... yes ... up these ladder ... for now ...

The leisure room.  Shame the big windows are obscured (RESCODE requirements)

Going to the left (towards the direction of the front of the house) is the main bedroom

Yes.  We do have a big view (window and balcony) of the road in front.

Main bedroom.  Behind this wall/partition is a "walk-in robe".

Single cavity sliding door (variation) to the main bedroom ensuite.  This used to be wide open.  But I don't think neither me or my wife would be happy to be woken up by bathroom lights if one of us need to go in the middle of the night.  Besides, the original design didn't have a provision or space to put any towel rail or even light switches.

Main bedroom ensuite.  Toilet on the left, shower in the middle, double vanity to be placed on the far right of the picture.

Bigger than usual bathtub.  With a view of our neighbour's property.

This is actually the other bathroom.  We've just gone out of the main bedroom now.

Bathroom.

Bedroom (could be 2, 3 or 4).

Another view of the bedroom.  This one has got a WIR on the right.

Are these gaps acceptable?  Would like to see those 75mm Scotia cornices cover these gaps.  Will need to keep an eye on this (and other ones, too).

Now let's go outside ... down this ladder first ...
There's a long picture window currently blocked (for safety reasons) at the moment.

View of the right side of the house (from the front).  We could call this the "service lane".  May need to have this concreted.

If you're wondering if a Metricon house is a Nolan or a Riva or a Liberty, here's how you can tell that it's a Liberty.

The Laundry door.  The hot water tank might be installed here.

One of my favourite spot - the Outdoor Room.  Timber lining for the ceiling is currently being put in place.  Nice.

View of the other side of the house (behind the garage).  Garage will have a roller door in lieu of an access door to the rear.

Inside the garage.  That's the internal access door and the electrical circuit panel will be installed on the right. 

The double car garage with a workshop option.

Next week, more progress ...

7 comments:

  1. Nice one guys! Love the pic fest - you can never stare at too many walls when you're building...it's an affliction I'm not yet over!

    Apart from the French doors, your bedroom looks so familiar being the same layout as ours - even down to the cavity slider for the ensuite which Paul & I have nicknamed 'The Tardis' as the door opening is so narrow you expect a small wardrobe, but you step inside a massive ensuite space!

    Looking forward to seeing it all painted. Must refresh my memory now on your colour selections!

    Nat

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  2. Thank you for all those photos, we are also going to build Liberty and haven't seen any display house.
    Enjoy reading your postings. Thanks again, Sandra

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  3. Thanks, Nat. We originally asked for double cavity sliders for the ensuite, but that wouldn't solve the problem of having the ensuite light switches outside (in the wall/partition behind the bed) and not having towel rails. So we settled for a single cavity slider, as wide as possible (we got a 1020mm wide one, I'll check). Yes, it does look narrow for a door to the main ensuite.

    Interestingly, yesterday, we went to Metricon (and PD's) display homes at Wantirna where it used to be the Boral plant (now Mirvac's estate - Harcrest), and we saw a similar ensuite with double cavity sliding doors - with light switches and towel rail (albeit, narrow) behind!!! They increased the depth of the wall where the cavities are to allow for wirings/tubings and attachments to the wall where the cavity sliders are (without affecting the slider doors)- brilliant idea!

    But, too late for us now :(

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    1. Double depth wall is a great idea to get the sliding cavity and still have wiring & towel rails. They always come up with something after the fact, ah well. 1020 is a good width. Ours is only 620 which I think I'll have trouble getting through if we move in a couple of months from the baby being due! It's ok though, more wall space = more wall art :)

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    2. Snap, we went to have a look at Harcrest in Wantirna too. I really liked the first house (single storey), there was some lovely decorating and art there, but the riva was a bit ordinary I thought!

      We had the same issue with our ensuite being wide open and having nowhere to hang towels. We started off with sliding doors and then deleted them when they told us that we would have to walk into the bathroom to turn on the light and vice-versa. Huh? In the end we did some research on towel rails we wanted, and then made the opening smaller to accomodate them. Ours is 1100mm wide now and much better.

      Also I was thinking about those rescode windows. We got them to put translucent film on ours instead of making the glass obscure and they only open a small way which is a pain for airflow!

      Plaster looks ace guys! And in my humble opinion, there can never be too many photos! Hopefully its full steam ahead from now on!
      Kirsten

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  4. Hi Sandra, thanks and welcome to our building blog. Yes, it was quite hard initially to sign on the dotted line to build the Liberty without actually being inside one. Have to imagine really hard how big the rooms are. Have to carry around a laser measure when we visit display homes to compare the room sizes. We have noticed a number of Liberties around, though.

    Would be great to hear about your build journey, too. And don't hesitate to ask any questions about ours.

    Cheers,
    Jon

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