Hey peeps hope you have all been safe and well! It has been some time since I have provided an update on our home build and to be completely honest COVID has played a core role in keeping our home at bay.
There has been timber shortages, tile shortages and mandate issues that saw workers protest for 6 months and no work completed on our home. Climbing construction costs and today's inflation rate at 5.1% means that building a home in Australia today is going to become an expensive exercise.
I've had to put a bit of pressure on the builders as you can see from the image above my facade hasn't been completed and there is significant exposure despite my builder telling me it was completed.
COVID restrictions ment I wasn't able to leave my home to check on progress and while the builders were submitting stage payments, they weren't actually completing the work!
But since things have been open again I have been actively pushing and a few complaints to take things further but our home is far beyond handover stage now.
But despite that, there are things completed over the past few weeks so let's take a look at the progress.
The colour pallet that we selected has blended together quite well and that lovely stone island bench in the middle has provided a beautiful artistic and functional piece. The waterfall stone also gives it the added benefit of appearing as solid stone.
Everything blends in fabulous and the style we were going for was Hamptons and we seem to have pulled it off.
The issue that my partner and I had was selecting between laminate floor boards and tiles. I prefer tiles but my wife wanted the laminate floor boards as she felt they provided more of a hamptons feel.
Their light colour also Brighten up the house and give more of a holiday welcoming feel. I have to admit she was right but I'm still not completely sold on the laminate floors, but I make up for it in the bathroom.
I spent a bit of money in here and went full floor to roof tiles and if you look closely there are 2 shades of tiles. This provides a bit of a feature wall within the main bathroom.
The main bathroom consists of his and her sinks and plenty of storage which no doubt my wife will take up all of!. I also went a cheap free standing bath because I didn't know what I wanted. As I have plans to remove it and out in a spa eventually.
But as it was quite expensive it didn't make the inclusion and I'll be doing that as a side project a little later down the track.
I took some shortcuts to save on costs both in the laundry and butlers pantry I have sink over stone whereas in the kitchen the stone sits on top of the sink so it provides more of a clean visual.
As the butlers pantry and laundry aren't where we will be spending most of our time or where we will be entertaining guests I didn't think it was worth the additional costs in upgrading the sinks.
The house may look large but I'm using wide angle camera it is actually only a small double and we chose this because we wanted to have the backyard space to provide a play area for the kids and to install a beautiful garden.
I'm not sure on backyard space where you're from but in Australia it is becoming a rare thing with many only having 4 metres as an average. We used to sell quarter acre blocks but those days are long gone and an average block size now is 350sqm.
So unless you go up you don't get any space in the backyard for the kids. I'm happy with how it has turned out as we have ended up with a 14 metre by 10 metre backyard which will provide some decent play space for the kids to grow into.
The rest of the house is still under construction and there is a delay on carpet and other finishes. We still have a number of months to wait but hopefully be done by this year.
But what are your thoughts? Are we hitting that hamptons feel?