Tuesday, September 11, 2012

PCI...or TMI?

So first things first... PCI is booked for next Friday at 2pm. At this stage handover is likely to be the 1st or 2nd of October (though obviously the 1st is a public holiday). This has been exciting news today, but also very frantic! The amount of information that Daniel has had to retain today is beyond ridiculous, hence the 'TMI' as this has all suddenly become too much for one day.

Today our electrical fit off commenced. We took all of our light fittings out to the house last night (in the dark). This part of the process has always been a bit of a worry for us, because we had some pretty specific wishes on our list. Before we even got there this afternoon to check it out we had already had several calls saying that we needed to purchase some light bulbs, and that one of our kitchen pendants was broken.

We got to the house, saw the front lights, everything seems good with those. I went straight to the bedroom and was immediately horrified to find that our bedside pendant lights were WAY too short. After that I could barely focus on anything else because I was so upset that the one thing that I was particularly excited about was all wrong. We also realised the wrong fan had been installed, which was puzzling at first, since we had actually delivered the fan ourselves. Turns out Coral had ordered the things that were in the contract-which we had been told many times not to worry about. So the electrician got confused and just put in the fan that Coral provided, which is exactly the same as ours but with a light in it, and hideous.
Front lights installed
Pendant lights, way too short, and fan with a light, ughhh..
One sad little broken pendant
Toward the end of our visit we looked in the pantry and found a whole heap of stuff that Coral had ordered, which they had already said would not be ordered and we would be credited for. So no idea what will happen with that, hopefully they can just return them.

On the way home we got in touch with the electrician and we were able to explain the issues we had found. He was pretty good about it and will be working on fixing it tomorrow. Luckily the pendant lights in the bedroom just have the chord looped up in the ceiling, so he can lower them (Happy Lauren). We just have to go to Beacon and get them to replace the broken glass in our kitchen pendant lights, and we should then be able to sort this out ourselves because it won't require an electrician to change the actual glass. He will also switch the fans for us and fix a few other issues.

The oven, cook top and dishwasher have also been installed.

Oven, cook top and range hood
In addition to the electrical stuff, the plumbing fit off has also commenced. The basins, toilets and taps have all been installed.

The water tanks will hopefully be delivered this week and they have setup the sand pad for them to go on. That's all a bit of a worry for us, but hopefully it will all come together in the end. It's been extra hard because Coral are providing two of the tanks, and we have to coordinate a third coming from a different supplier.
Pad for the Water tanks
Our potable water tank also ran out again, which was a surprise. This time we have gone with someone else to refill it, and honestly, it has been so much more straightforward. They are going to do it by tomorrow morning, and we have already paid. One sigh of relief right there!

Tiling is due to commence this Thursday, so we will be staying away from the house on those days. I guess that means carpet will go in very soon too.

It feels like there were so many things to finish, and now all of a sudden I can't even think of what else needs to be done.

This will mean we will be out of our rental in time without having to ask for an extra week. I have already booked mini movers, we both have the day off for PCI and have the second week of October off work to move.

We will add some more photos in the next few days. It was so late when we went today that we really didn't get many good pictures.

6 comments:

  1. It's getting so close now! This is when you know it's real! What a pain about the lights etc. Great that you will finish in time to get out of your rental, one less stress to worry about! I've said it before but I absolutely love your facade colours!

    I must say, I am NOT a fan of fan/light combos either - they just look wrong to me!

    If I can give you one piece of advice, it's to check the placement of lights etc at PCI. It was one thing I didn't even think of checking and it wasn't until last week that I realised 4 lights have been put in the wrong spot, and they are very specific spots that I will now need to arrange to get moved and have the ceiling patched etc. Anyway not in any rush to get that done but when we change our lovely bulbs over to proper lights I will arrange it then.

    Good to hear you've changed water guys too! It's amazing how much an unpleasant tradesmen can ruin an experience for you!

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    1. Yeah we're going to take the whole day off on PCI day, I want to get there early in the daylight and go through everything. I will take all my paperwork with me. I'm thinking I'll even take a little step ladder, torch, mirror... things to help me see.

      We won't have much of a chance to go over everything before then because of the floor tiling.

      We're considering also getting a handover inspection done by a building inspector. It's about $500, but might be worth it?

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  2. So close, guys. Excellent! I must admit to being on site during the electrical installation, (after an 'electrician who knows best (but really didn't)' experience a few years ago. You never quite know what you're going to get, even with a perfectly laid out plan. We still ended up with three lights in the wrong spots as they couldn't grasp that I wanted them centred to our dining table, not the room. Anyhoo, it will all be sorted out, so that's great news.

    Also fantastic that you won't have to play 'when will we move out' regarding the rental. Definitely not a fun game to play!

    Enjoy these last weeks!!

    M
    x

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  3. They're making us buy all the light bulbs for the lights, which I find weird. The woman from the electrician's office told me it is because "80% of your lights have to be fluoros", and this has been echoed by the SS who says we need to satisfy these requirements before handover. Firstly, this is blatantly false because we have to have 80% energy saving lights - not fluoros, secondly all except for a few pendants will only accept a 20W bulb max so it's not like I can stick a 100W Edison bulb in anyway, they have to be energy saving or the thing will melt, and thirdly 80% of zero is zero - think about it, if I don't put any light bulbs in at all then I have satisfied the requirements. None of this made sense to her. I also explained I didn't know what size bulbs I would need, so she said "E27", and I told her that doesn't tell me the size of the light bulb, but she insisted that "E" refers to the screw mount and "27" is the size of the bulb. Absolute bullshit! E27 means it's a 27mm screw mount, and does not indicate the size of the bulb at all. She doesn't know what she's talking about. The light fittings have a glass front, so if the bulb is too long or too fat - the glass front won't fit back on. It's a pain where we live right now, because most fluoros are too long to suit the light fittings, even though they will work fine if you leave the glass cover off.
    Anyway, my plan was to only purchase a few fluoro bulbs for the areas we needed lit up first, and then to look for LED bulbs for those fittings. LED bulbs now come in all the standard sizes, they are quite a bit more expensive, but they use TEN TIMES less electricity to produce the same amount of light, and they last over 10 years. I think for energy efficiency this would have been an A+++ strategy, but no, their stupid requirements are going to force me to buy 60+ of the much less efficient bulbs immediately because they are cheaper. We bought the first 30 of those last night... the old fella at Bunnings was all "holy shit 30 lights, where the hell do you live!", I didn't have the energy to tell him I'd be back for another lot when they restocked the bulbs.

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  4. OK so I just got a call from the SS. He says we're stuck with all the extra lights and fans we didn't want. Coral had told us we'd be credited back for them through a variation since we specifically told them we did not need them and the electrician said to supply the lights ourselves, but now they're saying those are our lights that we wanted. There are lights there that we never even asked for, and of course they are not part of our electrical plan.

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  5. Needless to say, we both need a BIG holiday!

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