Possibly one of the most stressful weeks of my life

This is the first time in weeks I've had time in front of the computer to do something that's not work or house related. The title above refers to the confluence of the final stages of the house purchase, trying to organise Christmas, and a particularly difficult few days at work. Thankfully through a combination of sheer bloody mindedness, Dana's organisational prowess and some good teamwork around the office, it looks like things will come together for settlement tomorrow afternoon, or Friday morning at the latest and that we will meet a significant milestone at work.

In my previous posts about the arcane and entirely opaqe process involved in settlement, I indicated that I found it all quite confusing. Unfortunately, it seems to have proved quite confusing for the veteran players involved whose job it is supposed to be to make these things happen on a regular basis. As a first time homebuyer, it's been a truely signifcant challenge trying to get all these things together when we don't even know what they are and what has to be done, but if there's one thing to learn from it all, it's that you can't really rely on anyone else to make any of it happen. I hate being one of those people who has to push all the time for things to happen and harass people - after all, for the most part they're just doing their job - but that is what you must be in this process.

It's also one of the few times in my life where I've found it to be a real challenge to work through things calmly, where my emotional response has been so strong that I've had to really work to keep it under control and remain rational. Some aspects of it all still make me seethe a little bit just thinking about it, but as long as settlement occurs properly tomorrow or the day after, I think I'll be able to let go of it all. Plus I'll be off work for a couple of weeks, removing another annoyance, and it will be Christmas and I'm going to get to be around some of the people I love most in the world. This can only be a good thing.

I actually feel quite serene and positive about the whole thing at the moment. Things have quietened down at work, there is a beautiful view out of my window (see the picture below) the weather is finally better and I'm really enjoying Tame Impala's "Innerspeaker" album. The album really reminds me of the Beatles for some reason, and is excellent.

There's also been some really excellent things happening recently, in addition to all the annoying house stuff. We went to Melbourne for Dana's work Christmas party, which was super excellent, and also managed to catch some old friends while we were there and get all of our Christmas shopping done. I had a collection of excellent work Christmas parties as well (Team, Group and Department), one of which had some really excellent food.

Life is good. As soon as this house stuff is sorted, it will be super freaking excellent.

PS: OK, so this is going to sound super corny, but on re-reading this I feel I should add that one of the reasons that life is good is the Dana. This week would have been impossible without her, and I would probably not be getting keys to a house any time soon without her. Dana - you make things awesome.

If you haven't got anything good to say...

...then at least try not to get too ranty.

As people around me who ask me about this sort of things, I'm getting a little bit tense about the house situation, which is why there haven't been any updates about it for weeks now. This afternoon, I've got a bit of time to burn before netball, and I think I'm just about comfortable enough to write about it.

Since my last progress update in early November, pretty much nothing has happened. The house is still ready to move into. No more of the driveway needed to be replaced. It took another couple of weeks after that for all the requisite paper work to be re-submitted to the ACTPLA, the ACT planning authority, and we were advised about two and a half weeks ago that it should take ACTPLA two weeks to re-approve, and then it goes to the titles offices for registration. That's where things fell over last time.

If all goes well with the titles office, it should take approximately a week to be registered. Which brings us up to the end of this week, although I'm estimating that it will more likely be next week. The registration of the title, as I think I may have mentioned earlier in my eternal harpings about the build, is basically when everything is done, and it signals that there are 14 days until the end of the contract, in which there is a flurry of activity from all sorts of lawyers and banks and things and they get a big cheque and week get some keys. I don't pretend to understand the things that happen in that process - I thought the whole 14 day process was settlement, but apparently it's actually a point in time, before which a series of papers are signed and exchanged and important meetings happen with gathering intensity, culminating in the ecstatic moment where the house is actually ours. That's how I understand it at the moment, although I admit there may be some artistic licence in the whole thing.

Licences, that reminds me. Our lawyer/conveyancer (I'm pretty sure the lady who is doing it is not a lawyer, even though we signed up for one at a law firm - fat lot of good it did us) finally got around to getting the terms of the licence agreement (to re-hash, that's the rental type agreement between us and the developer that would enable us to move in before settlement) and while it looked good in terms of the 'rent' they would charge, there were some pretty suspect penalty clauses in it. Specifically, we'd be liable for a massive jump in rent, to the tune over about $800, if there was any delay in settlement after the 14 day period when the title is registered. Normally this would actually not be too much of a worry - we're pretty sure we'll get all our ducks lined up in that time, but it's getting awfully close to Christmas, where the requisite lawyers and bankers will not be around to participate in the orgy of papers, declarations, deeds, insurance waivers and bank cheques. It would also apply in addition to the penalty clauses already in the contract of sale, which are not insubstantial in their own right.

In short, it's a bit of a risk that we're not keen to take, despite the possibility of moving in early.

With the timetable as it is, if we're lucky, the best case scenario is that we move into the place the weekend before Christmas. The next best is that we take some time mid week, and move in the days before Christmas. The next best is that we settle on like 23/24 dec and move in after Christmas, when we get back from Perth. The worst option is that settlement falls after everyone buggers off and we pay penalty fees until every one's lawyers et al get back from their Christmas break, although the agent has promised they will argue that the penalty fees should be waived for that period if this occurs. Much as I appreciate that sentiment, I don't know how much success they would have in that scenario - the developer hasn't often listened to them so far. The last option, and while it's not hugely attractive, it's better than the worst, is that there is some delay with registration of the title, and settlement doesn't occur until after Christmas some time.

So that's where we're at. For the most part at the moment, we're trying to manage our expectations and make sure everything is lined up so that we can move quickly if we have to. The waiting game is frustrating, but we're getting pretty good at it these days - I'm thinking of developing some sort of zen philosophy based on it all.

I also realise this blog is becoming mighty boring without any nice pictures about the progress of the house or what we're doing, and also because I haven't even had time to post other odds and ends on here because of work. I'll try and rectify that at some stage in the future, but probably not right now. Instead, I will just let you know that the netball season is in full swing again, and we've had some real crackers in the past couple of weeks. One of the finest moments a few weeks ago involved the opposition goal shooter having a bit of a tanty and storming off to cry in the gents after pretty much every pass to him was blocked by myself in goal keeper, or our goal defence. His salty tears tasted of victory that night....

More house stuffs

Progress on the house continues - the valuation from the bank came back last Friday, with the excellent figure of $445,000, which represents a capital growth of like 8.5% since we signed the contract last year! It also means that our loan valuation ratio will be 75%, meaning no mortgage insurance and we should qualify easily for the rather excellent home loan package that we applied for.

We've also made some movement on curtains, after an initial set back. The set back was that the fabric that Dana and I had chosen and obtained a swatch of is no longer available! We've had to go back to the drawing board, which I think Dana has found quite frustrating. I've got a slightly more philosophical attitude about it...

Anyway, we have chosen some likely swatches from the shops and we have arranged for the real estate agent to let us into the house to get a couple of quotes on Friday. I'm really excited about this, because it means that we should be able to get the curtains done fairly quickly after settlement, so we won't have to live with sheets on the windows for too long.

Here's one of the fabrics that Dana is quite keen on at the moment:

I might add some more after I've been home and seen what Dana has brought home from the curtain shops today.

Curtains and "moving in under licence"

We had an email from our real estate agent yesterday about completion dates, and options for moving in. The builder has said that they should have the certificate of occupancy by the end of August, which means the units will be habitable, and finished for all intents and purposes. The date of settlement (which, as I understand it, is when both parties get what they are promised in the contract - ownership of the unit for us, money for the builder) will then depend on the registration of the units plan with the ACT Govt.

This is where things fall down a bit - the ACT Govt could take anywhere between three weeks and three months to register the units plan. It probably should take a lot less, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a rule somewhere that it must take less, but this is not something that the ACT Govt seems particularly worried about. After the units plan is fully registered, there is a 14 day settlement period. So the best case scenario adds five weeks (three weeks units plan registration, 2 weeks settlement) to the time that the unit is ready for occupation physically, and when we could take full ownership of it.

Which is a bit shit to be honest.

The builder/developer have suggested an alternative option, which is that the owners to be "move in under licence". My understanding of this is that we enter into a sort of special landlord/tenant relationship with the developer, with a fee payable at settlement in lieu of rent. We don't know how much this will be yet, or any of the other details of the potential agreement. This will come from developers lawyer to our lawyer at some stage in the future.

Much as it frustrates me to give more money to the developer despite the whole thing being at least 7 months overdue, I'm actually rather keen to take this option. You have no idea how ridiculously keen I am to get into our new house and start sorting it out properly. Of course, for that to work, there would have to be scope in the agreement between the developer and ourselves for use to do things to the house. For example, we would need to be able to have TV aerials, phone lines, curtains etc installed. Otherwise it wouldn't really be worth it.

Speaking of curtains, Dana has been making moves on that front. She's recently requested swatches from online fabric company duckcloth, which should hopefully arrive in the next couple of days. They're variations on the same theme, and they are Henry Approved, pending a gander at the swatches.

This is my favourite of the two. The other, seen below, has a different background colour that just doesn't appeal as much. Having said that, I'd probably be happy with either, and it's hard to imagine what the curtains would actually look like from a picture on the internets.

The plan at this stage is to try and buy the fabric online and then have someone else make it into curtains for us, and install the necessary curtain rods (or whatever they're called). This is not something I can do myself - I am no handy man. We're going to get on to that this weekend, in addition to couch purchasing!

Very exciting times all round, I can't wait until the end of next month!

I'm going to head home and prepare for tonight's netball game. We're without our star centre due to injury, so I hope we can still hold our own without her. If I recall correctly, we beat the team we're facing tonight last time around. However, we also managed to almost poke one of their eyes out in the process. It was an accident, but I wouldn't have been too happy if I were them.

Skylight

Popped past the house this afternoon - unfortunately there were people working on site (industrious buggers) so we didn't get to check out the paint job that was going up last time we popped by. Things are coming along nicely around the site though - I think all the buildings are just about water tight, but some of the garages are not quite there yet. Some of the internal roads are going in as well, which makes the place that much more finished.

From the outside, there were two new additions to our unit that were of note - they've installed the skylights! I was quite happy to see this, as the en suite and the laundry were looking quite dark on our last visit. I was also pretty happy that there is one installed in the laundry - I haven't checked in a while, but I didn't think there was one on the plan!

Things are coming along nicely anyway. I still think they're going to be pushing things to get everything finished this month, but I can always hope. The silver lining, as always, is that the longer it takes, the more money we'll have in our pocket when we're ready to go. Barring some horrible intervention, it will certainly be ready by December, when the contract stipulates it must be ready, and we start being in danger of missing out on the first home buyer's boost (touch wood). However, I'd be lying if I said I was happy at the prospect that we might have to wait longer than the end of August to move in.

Anyway, the completed skylights remind me of this track from the Blade Trinity soundtrack:

 I enjoyed it, even if it does sound like futuristic elevator music...

Anyway, I'm going to get back to enjoying a lazy quiet weekend - have been feeling under the weather all week, and I think being a hermit for a weekend is the only way to go.

I leave you with a little video a found care of Google Reader's recommended feeds. It's a video made by a student of the University of Hannover in Germany - check the original Vimeo post for the full details. Anyway, it's a CG projection of Super Mario Bros on to a wall.

Super Mario Bros. from Andreas Heikaus on Vimeo.

ZOMFG they're painting!

Just a quickie to say that we popped past the house this arvo, after a lovely lunch at the Smokehouse Cafe at Poachers Pantry (and a visit to Clonakilla to pick up some vino), and the windows were covered up with black plastic.

This can mean only one thing - they're painting! I'm so excited!

Unfortunately, there were some builders on site, so we didn't go in. Apart from Esa - Old Father Time has no fear. The other interesting thing about the site is that the last couple of houses all have roofs on them now. Looks like we might just make the July completion estimation, which would hopefully mean a late August/early September occupancy. 

Adventures in trespassing...

Last weekend was a long weekend in Canberra, and I feel like I got at least three weekends worth of stuff packed in there. One of the things I got packed in there was a proper fence jumping and exploration of the site. While we were on site, we ran into another home-owner to be, doing exactly the same thing.

He was pretty keen to be friendly, but he did tell us a few interesting things, foremost amongst them, we don't actually have to jump the fence - there are a whole heap of places you can just lift a bit of the fence up. I felt a little silly when he pointed that out. He also gave us the name of an online curtain company, and showed us the cornice-less design (he called it square set) in his unit. The square set thing looks pretty cool, very modern.

Then he told us why he bought his unit (because of the view, that someone had since obscured with a house). Then he showed us the extra light fittings he had installed. Then he showed us the kitchen bench top that wasn't the one he wanted. You get the picture. Nice guy, very keen.

Anyway, there has been some more progress on the site. Most of it seems to be going on in other people's places - one of them has all the light switches installed, all the tiles, and most of the kitchen - but there has been some in ours as well.

Here are all the cabinets waiting to be installed in the kitchen. I think the big one in the front will be the bench.

There's also waterproofing around the shower and bath in the bathroom. You can also see the vanity unit that will eventually be installed in there as well.

Same goes for the en suite - waterproofing and vanity.

Its kind of interesting seeing how some really small things make the house look finished. The two pictures above show the newly installed cornices in the living room and the gap between the walls and the roof in the kitchen, where they will be installing the kitchen cabinets instead. It's such a small part of the room, but it really makes the living room look more finished compared to the kitchen.

These two pictures are not from our unit - they're from another one in the complex that is a mirror image of ours. I've just included them to show what the kitchen and lounge room will look like when they're a bit further along. You can see the light fixtures as well!

Anyway, new season of ER just started in GO, and you'd better believe I'm watching that shit! George Clooney AND Noah Wiley are back on it!

Minor house update (no pictures)

We did a quick trip up to the house on Sunday, not expecting any progress. We were pleasantly surprised to see that they had installed some of the cladding above the windows on our unit, and have started installing insulation.

What was slightly more interesting was seeing some of the progress on the other units. At least two of them were being painted and having the kitchens installed, as well as the tiling and the inside of the wardrobes. One of the most advanced has the same floor plan as ours (but mirrored) so we could get an idea of the kitchens.

I'm happy to report that they look quite good, with plenty of cupboard space (something that we lack right now) and a glossy white finish on the shelves and draws. I think it's going to look really good when the bench tops are on!

I'm really looking forward to our place catching up with that. Will try and get photos soon.

In other news, we're going to see our friendly mortgage broker (Gregor) tonight, which should be good. He was really helpful last year and I'm looking forward to see what he has to say tonight.

House update!

This evening we finally managed to find the site unmanned and got to jump the fence and see the progress inside! I've got a few pictures, although the low light didn't result in totally great shots.

Here's the front of the house and the entry way. Eventually the gaps that you can see in the first picture above the porch and the garage will be filled in with a kind of beige coloured cladding, as will all of the areas above windows around the rest of the building. You can also see that the roof above the porch has a couple of bits of wood supporting it, and the permanent supports are all wonky. This is because the concrete bases for the permanent supports haven't been installed yet - for some reason they do them about the same time as they put the gyprock up on the inside. I have no idea why.

Here's the living room and the kitchen. No real big changes since the last post on the house, apart from the wall behind the wooden frame. One exception to this is the little wooden frame where the fridge will go, which also gives an approximate position for where the kitchen counter will be. You can see that on the right in both of the pictures above. One other thing that has changed, but you can't really see in this picture is that one of the dodgy bits of work on the wooden frame in what will be the pantry cupboard has now been fixed. Yay!

We have a bath! No interior walls yet, but we have a bath. I do rather enjoy that you can look straight out of the window while you bathe.

Along with a lot of other wiring, they've also installed the ducted gas heating in the roof. At the moment it looks like giant silver intestines hanging out of the roof cavity. With the wiring in place, we can get an idea of where the power points, aerial sockets etc are; they were left off the original plans. Thankfully they all seem to be where we'd want them - specifically the aerial and power sockets fit where I want to put the TVs. 

Dana took the opportunity to measure up the windows for curtains. She's always thinking ahead. At least that's what she says, I think she just likes the idea of curtain shopping. 

These were piled up in our garage. Roughly half the other units on site have got some of the internal walls up, so here's hoping ours will be up soon as well!.

And here's the proof - this is the living room of the unit two doors down. It has the same plan as us, but for a few more windows in the south side of the building. It was really weird going into someone else's house. It gets more weird to go in the other houses the closer the get to completion and actually start looking like homes.

Here's their bath!


It's been weeks since we last made it onto site, and it could be weeks more before we get on there again. There's so much happening on site right now, hopefully it won't be too long.


PS: late night TV is pretty terrible. No wonder people choose to download TV rather than watch the crap that's actually broadcast....

Quick house update (but mostly game nerding)

A very quick update to say that the house now has some bricks on it! Had a quick look on the way home last night and we have bricks to the roof line on the north side, and about halfway up on the southside. Will try and get up there to post some pictures soon. I was planning on cycling up there after work today, but the weather is a bit on the foul side, so I might not make it.

In other news, as anyone who I've talked to in the last week or so can attest, I've bought a copy of Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition, and have been spending all my spare time playing it. I've been looking forward to playing this for a couple of years now, pretty much ever since it came out in 2008. It was one of the first purchases I was planning on getting for the ps3, but I didn't end up picking it up until last weekend.

It's been really interesting playing it, the change of format to first person shooter has made the gameplay much more tense and scary, which is a mixed bag for me. It makes it slightly more exciting, but I'm not that great with scary things, so I find myself saving way too often and having to take breaks when it gets too much. I'm still not totally sold on first person shooters on a console either - I miss my mouse and kb! I think the game would be much easier on the PC as well, I would certainly never bother with the faux turn based V.A.T.S system the game utilises as a nod to it's turn based combat roots.

That all seems quite a negative paragraph, so I should reiterated that I love the game and am finding it tremendously addictive. I especially enjoy that grenades and mines are much more useful than they were in the first two games, and that it's much easier to be sneaky. The storyline is engaging and the freedom that the fallout series gives the player to customise and take their own path through the wasteland remains intact, which is something I always loved.

Anyway, I don't want to start reviewing a game that has been out for years and already extensively reviewed elsewehere. Suffice to say, I'm enjoying it.

Week like....21 (I think).

I'm off work sick, don't really feel very verbose (having trouble stringing a sentence together atm), so I'm just going to post some pix of the house that I took last week. The big news? Part of the roof frame is on!

First a couple of pictures of the house. Note the partial roof frame!

Here are some pix of the roof frame from inside. Nice and airy!

Here's a shot of the neighbours. As you can see, the brickies are only two doors down. They need to brick up the garage before they can finish the roof frame.

To close, a couple of pictures from around the site. The units you see above are a design with a detached garage, so they don't need the bricks all done before the roof frame could go on.

I'm gong to eat lentils and think healthy thoughts.

Fully framed mate!

Just a very quick note to say that the house pretty much has a full frame now. I took some pictures on the weekend, but it's a bit hard to see the progress from the shots - will have to roam the site at some stage soon and get some better ones. Will see if there's time before the trip to Melbs.

Weel 16 - partial frame

The key thing about this weekend in Canberra is that it is VERY FREAKING WET. We've had something like 85mm in two days here which has precluded all the out doors activities I was planning for this weekend. I'll post about one or two of them in a bit, but this post is about.....(drum roll please)....a partial frame!

That's right, the rear part of the house, where the bedrooms are, now has a frame.

Hooray for exposed wood! Dana tells me it's not even a thing that the wood is all exposed and wet, because it's treated pine - I'm not sure if I actually find that particularly reassuring, but there's not much to be done for it. And as should be clear by this stage, the house will have a timber frame with a brick veneer on the outside.

I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine who used to work in a design/architecture firm about wood frames versus brick (aka double brick). I came from the perspective that double brick houses must be better, because they were more solid etc. However, according to my friend, there's really no difference in terms of structural integrity, or insulation, or any of the other arguments I could come up with. He also pointed out that they had some advantages. I'd be lying if I could remember what they were now, but I would imagine saving space is probably one of them. I imagine they'd probably be a bit cheaper and easier to put up as well.

Anyway, back to the house.

Above is the view into my future bedroom. Note the massive puddles everywhere on the building site. It's wet.

This shot shows where the walk in robe will be. We were quite stoked to have a walk in robe, which I thought was a mega luxury. Unfortunately, I've since estimated that Dana's clothes will take up at least an additional wardrobe. On the bright side, at least there will be a place to put the chronically overflowing dirty clothes hamper(s).

As you can see from the two side on (ish) shots above, the front part of the frame still hasn't gone up. If you look closely at the first of the two, you can see the windows piled up in what will be the courtyard. Never fear poor windows, you'll have a home soon!

This is another unit on the site that has the same floor plan as ours (but mirrored). This one is quite a bit further on than ours. I've included it just to show what ours will look like a bit further down the track.

This is the house next door to the one with the same floor plan as ours. I've included it because it's the first indication of the sort of height the end product is going to be.

One thing I haven't included, which I will have to in the next blog post, is a picture of some of the external walls on the other units that are already along. It's good to finally see the colour and texture of the brick in the flesh - it's been a long time since we looked at the sample board. It's a fairly dark neutral tone, nothing fancy, but inoffensive.

I can't wait until the rest of the frame is up and things have dried out a little! I really want to jump the fence again and look around the unit.

Until that time, I shall bide my time and wait.

Today's blog is brought to you by the Chemical Brothers "Where do I begin". My mate Shanwise helped me share his appreciation of the Chemical Brothers back in high school, and they're still excellent. This track in particular is pretty much the quintessential Monday morning track. A quick heads up to any of the kids planning to watch the clip embedded below - it's got a few visal drug references in it. It gave me a bit of a shock while sitting at my desk at work, as it is quite possibly not something you'd want your supervisor seeing over your shoulder (innocent as it may be).

Edit: It occurs to me that it is a singular frame, and not frames. Have edited the post accordingly.

Week 15 (ish)

As promised, here is a picture of the slab...

Ha! Ok really, here are some pictures of the slab.

Above is the view from the kerb

Here's a picture over the fence...

And here's a picture of the unit next door. The one next door already has a frame up and the other units on the north edge of the complex were going up on the weekend. That means we're next! We pretty much have to be next anyway, we're one of the only sites left without frames (grumble grumble).

It still looks kind of small from where these pictures are taken, outside the site fence line. However, from the inside, they look pretty good! I'll blog further impressions when the frames are up - will probably jump the fence then and have my first wander around inside my new place!

NOTE: the blogger post editor has removed the spell check for some reason. I'll try and proof read, but expect the number of speeeeling mistakes to go up.

Week....10?

It's been a long time between drinks on the weekly updates, what with there not being much process since the first part of the foundation was laid.

However, that all changed last week! There are now bricks piled around the foot print of the house, which have hopefully now been laid onto the concrete that was poured like 6 weeks ago. Hopefully I'll manage to pop up and check it out tonight after work. To tide things over until then, I've got some pictures of the different steps that will happen before the slab gets poured.

This is our lot, resplendent with piles of bricks around it.

The next step involves putting up these pole things, which presumably aid in the brick laying. I hope they're not being used as a guide, because half of them are wonky. Maybe they're actually temporary clotheslines for more domestically inclined brickies. Who knows? Certainly not me.

After the "pole" stage, the bricks that were previously sitting around the footprint are..(drum roll please)...laid onto the footprint. My understanding is that the final floor level of the unit will be level with the top of the bricks you can see in the picture below.

Bonus brick laying shot!

The next step is for all the plumbing lines and I think the first bits and bobs of the electrical lines to be sunk into the earth that will be under the slab. My guess is that the bit with all the pipes sticking up in the picture below will be where the kitchen, laundry and at least one of the bathrooms will be.

After all the pipes are in, the ground inside is levelled off and topped with this grey gravel (I think it might be called gun metal or something). The units below have been finished to this stage for a while now while they wait for the rest of the units (including mine) to be completed so they can pour the concrete. I don't know how they stop the concrete from pouring straight off the edge of the unit as the gunmetal is flush with the top of the brick line, but I'm sure those zany builders have an answer for that.

So that's it. Hopefully there will be some more progress this week!

In other more interesting news, I'm going to Sydney for an extended long weekend next week, and catching Them Crooked Vultures play on Australia Day. I'm really looking forward to it, will be good to catch up with some Sydney peeps, hit the beach and play drink the beer (I'm going for the high score!).

To close, here's my fave TCV tune at the moment: