In by Christmas

Well, we made it! We managed to cajole our builder into finishing the house by the first weekend in December. We moved in, set up, and had the folks over for Christmas lunch!

With so many delays through the construction, we didn't quite have time to complete the garden, but that's no biggy. The week before Christmas I hired a 'dingo' digger (mini skid-steer loader is the technical name), leveled out the back yard, put in a retaining wall with the help of my brother, Jim (who - being a tradie - is more suited to physical labour than I am!) and wheelbarrowed three cubic metres of gravel into the back yard to make it level enough to sit a garden setting on.

We also have a few outstanding items for the builder to come back and fix this month. Minor things, for the most part. The largest is a timber door that was actually damaged when it left the factory, but the damage wasn't evident until it was stained. So the whole door is getting replaced by the builder, and he's making a claim on the manufacturer's warranty. Other than that, there were a few marks in the paintwork which were fixed the day after we moved in; some brickwork that needs to be cleaned again; a problem with the hot water service (again, a manufacturer problem that apparently takes about 5 minutes for them to fix - basically, the problem is the pressure relief valve spurts out water more often than it should); and there's a small dent in the garage door that happened when it was installed (barely noticeable, but the builder will have the whole section replaced to fix it anyway).

Overall, we can't complain too much. The biggest disappointment has been the delays - and they're largely because our builder told us things would be done at a particular time, raised our expectations and then failed to meet his own deadlines. What he should have done is under promise and over deliver. But we've been wandering around our estate each evening and looking at some of the other houses still under construction... and for most of them, the sites are a terrible mess and there's paint, mud, mortar and mess splattered everywhere, left to be cleaned or covered up at some later stage. Our site - even at the times we were complaining to the builder about the messy painters - was never anywhere near as bad. And from speaking to other people who have recently built or renovated, it seems our hiccups have been relatively minor compared to some of the other stories you hear!

And now that we've moved in, it's just AWESOME. We've set about making it our home... shopping sprees at homewares stores... more trips to Bunnings than I can count.... arranging and rearranging the pictures on the walls... Setting up a home together is an indescribable pleasure.

So what's next? The garden of course! Stay tuned....

Photos: these ones were taken just after our floor was installed, before we moved in.

These ones were taken the day we started moving furniture in.

These photos were taken Christmas Day. As you can see, the blinds are in and look great! Note also the AWESOME retaining wall, built by Lance and Jim...