The Quietness from the Golfers Pde Blog

A Long Awaited Update...

Day 210 - April 7th, 2015

It's ninety nine days since I posted the last update to this blog on the reno at 21 Golfers Pde. That's a terribly long time between posts, don't you think! At least I didn't let it reach a century before posting an update.....

I now realise why I have been so tardy in updating you of the progress (or otherwise) in this project. Put simply, I'm in denial. 

Nearly 3 months ago, I opened my last post by saying something like 'I have this natty little spreadsheet on my computer's desktop that allows me to know the number of days that we have been working on this project when you enter today's date. Chris the builder promised us that we would be finished by Christmas (I'm sure he meant 2014???) so my app only calculated days up until 31 December 2014. Hmm...dumb ass! I've just increased the app's range to go until the end of March 2015 - fingers crossed we won't be still working on  this project then!

Well folks - we are still working on the project and it's still a fair way from being finished. There are a lot of 'little' things that the builder still has to finish off and he's already started on another project - it's lucky we still owe him some (a lot) of money so we know it will get finished....eventually. Unfortunately, these delays and holdups have pushed both Anne and I into a state of anger, confusion, disappointment and frustration. Now I'm in denial and a state of depression that we aren't finished.

I still have nightmares about Dick the renderer who we paid off last week and asked him to leave the building site and never to return. We'll have to get someone else to fix up his mistakes - which are mainly in places where everyone immediately notices the stuff-ups (like around the front door or above the garage door).

There has been scaffolding across the front of the house since November and a lot of the front lawn is now dead from having building materials stacked on it for so long. We're still waiting for the flooring to go down as the builder hasn't levelled the floor yet so we still puddle through dust on the raw concrete floor as we trek out to the toot at night as the reno'd main bathroom still isn't finished.

Did I mention the dust? Or the fact that our garage has been a garbage tip full of dirt and crap and builder's tools for nearly 7 months! Or the fact that the travertine tiles on the front balcony had to be replaced because they cracked due to .... nobody knows why, but it was related to tiling and rendering.

But...we have made a lot of progress so I'm just going to throw in a heap of photos to show you where we are up to.....

Sanding the new gyprock in the loungeroom

















Below - the kitchen in advanced construction phase

Below - three pics of the new bathroom on the rear extension - in use already as the main bathroom has been demolished

Looking in through the door of the laundry - the feature wall of the new extension room is the dark grey colour suggested by our interior designers - I was a bit dubious when they recommended it but it actually looks great in the flesh.

Looking at the main laundry - now in full use despite my tools being everywhere

Below - the view of the new stairwell and new lower gradient steps. A solid wall replaces the old fashioned timber balustrade around the stairwell.

Below - the demolished main bathroom

The bathroom with wall sheeting and waterproofing and tiling partially complete

The main bathroom - without the bath and vanity installed but with the tiling largely done






Below - the kitchen nearly finished - note the concrete floors that will eventually have timber laid on top.

Excavation for the rear deck underway and the new water tank before installation

The bearers down for the rear deck.












The new rear deck with decking laid.

The view from the front balcony with the travertine tiles laid and the glass balustrading installed. Top photo looking north west towards the escarpment and Minnamurra River.

Bottom photo looking north east towards the ocean, Mystics Beach and Bass Point.

Below - the new rear extension with our old leather lounges and TV in place. The feature wall is pretty obvious. No flooring yet but we put the furniture in place as we had friends down for Easter.

I'll try and give you an update soon on the nearly finished (hopefully) project.