Finishing Update #1 - Skirts, Laundry and more

It's been a few weeks since my last post, so I thought I would give a quick update on where things are at post hand-over.  We have not moved in just yet as there are a number of finishing projects that we ideally want to get prior to moving in.  Here is an update on a couple of them.

Skirts
When we negotiated our contract with Porter Davis, we agreed with Porter Davis to have our skirts delivered, but not installed, so that we did not have to have quad all around our downstairs floorboards.

Last weekend, I spent most of the weekend working on installing the skirts.  Partly due to the fact that I am working alone and it is ideally a 2-man job, and mainly due to the fact that I am pretty incompetent at mitre cuts, it has been slow going and I am only about halfway through.  Even so, I am pleased with how it looks and I am still glad we made the decision to install the skirts ourselves and avoid the standard quad edging.  One more weekend should see it done.

Skirts - A bit of touch-up paintwork required, I happen to think this looks nicer
that quad

I hadn't paid attention to just how fiddly some of the corners are in
the Wembley 35.  All these little corners take a lot of time.



But I happen to be a snob and I think this ends up looking really nice.

Laundry Fitout
As with the other cabinetry and wardrobes, we decided not to include any fit-out of the laundry other than what came as 'standard', plus a various package upgrades.  So we have a laundry trough and nothing else.  Our reasoning for this is that it is the sort of thing that we can do ourselves, hopefully a bit cheaper than what Porter Davis will have charged.

We decided early on to fill out the wall opposite the trough with cupboards and benches.  However, the probem we have hit is that none of the spacings match up with standard off-the-shelf cabinet sizes.  The standard depth of a floor cabinet is 600mm.  However, the distance between the wall and the edge of the architraves for the internal and external doors is 484mm and 564mm respectively.  Basically, standard cabinets will protrude into the doorways.



The problem of non-standard spaces for cupboards and cabinets...

So our original plan of fitting out the laundry with flat-pack cabinets and cupboards went a bit off the rails.  We have had quotes prepared by professionals to accommodate our sizings, but these have come in very expensive (as in it would have been cheaper to get PD to do the fit-out as part of the build).

Following the quotes, we have gone back to our original idea of doing it ourselves, but this time by modifying flat-pack cabinets bought from Ikea or Bunnings (or wherever).

I will post more on this as this little project continues.


Finally, I never posted a picture of our house when we picked up the keys.  So here it is!  You might note that there are a couple of palettes of bricks out the front.  These were left-over from the build and were left with us by Porter Davis, so we can use them when we build our front fence with matching bricks.

Our house!

Over the next few months,  will share progress and the additional costs we incur, which may be useful for those who come after us on this house-building journey.

Post-handover additional costs so far
Skirts
- Paint $42.00
- Tools $20.28
------------------
Total = $62.28