She's a brick and it's building slowly....

YES! The brickies have finally started! We were phone this morning on the way around to our house (prior to work) when we were notified that the brickies were onsite. Sure enough, 2mins later when we arrived there were 2 guys out the back putting down the first row of bricks! We were in a hurry so we didn't get out, and we didn't want to be too nosey so we only drove by - so couldn't see the actual bricks.

May begged and pleaded for me to not go to the house before he got home, so I patiently waited and we went around at about 6:20pm. Here is what we found:

So we now have a bit over 1/2 of one wall... at this rate I wonder if they will be done by Christmas?

On the birck colour issue - I don't think they look bad, but they are definitely different to BOTH display walls and all the houses we saw. At least they seem to be doing a good job of blending the bricks so that the darker ones are spaced evenly.

But Wait... (we are)

We have had our bricks sitting on the block since I last posted (14th November) and now (27th November) we still have not had one single brick laid! We were told early last week that they would start "Wednesday", which we took to be the next Wednesday according to the calendar - but alas, no. Wednesday it rained all day, so fair enough they couldn't start. We thought for sure that they would start the following day, and it did look very overcast early on, but not one drop fell, so they could have been working all day. Friday - same thing. Saturday was fine so we thought they might make a start, but no. Didn't expect anything Sunday, so we drove by 8am Monday expecting a bricky to be started/starting but nothing. Everything was "locked" up and the only difference we could see was some lintels had been delivered - but the bricking wouldn't have been held up by them not being there! May rang the CSC to find out what was the hold up, but she was conveniently on holiday until today, and today she rang, but as she had been away she didn't know anything about it, and our SS was at an OHS meeting all day.
We noticed tonight that some of the pallets at the rear of the house have been unwrapped and the bricks stacked next to the house - but we are unsure how long they have been like that as we have been mostly driving past without going to the back.
Hopefully we see some action tomorrow - "Wednesday", or at least find out what the heck the hold up is...
Fingers crossed for some bricklaying tomorrow... but showers are forecast :(

The long awaited arrival!

Monday our bricks finally arrived - hooray! I didn't realise that they had been delivered (thinking that they wouldn't be packaged yet) so I didn't bother driving past - then after finding out, we drove past in the dark to find that there were 24(?) pallets of bricks dotted around the outside of our house.
Tuesday I drove past early (8am) to check them out in the daylight (and take some pics) and was a bit shocked to see that the majority of them seemed to be orange in colour (mixed with brown, but definitely orange tones).

I visited again after work, and was not convinced that they were the shade of brick we had chosen. I knicked 4 bricks out of 4 different pallets that seemed like a fairly overall representation of the colours of the bricks (as below)

After considering them and the photos we had taken at the Austral display (see below)





we decided to take the bricks to the Austral display not too far away. Despite the fading light, the bricks seemed to match fairly closely with the display wall. It was now a matter of the 2 display walls not matching.

I rang the CSC, left a message and mentioned that I didn't think that the bricks looked like the ones we had picked, as the ones we chose were mid browns with some sandy coloured lighter ones, but that the delivered bricks had mostly oranges. I got a message back saying that they had checked the paperwork and it indicates that the Cotham bricks were delivered (which we knew as it said so on the pallets), and that our site supervisor had been and looked at them and to his eye they looked like the right colours for the Cotham bricks. They had also contacted Austral to see that there was no mistake.

We knew that the response would probably be that each batch is different, and that they are the right brick. And sure enough it has been blamed on the plant moving, and them hitting a "different pocket" in the quarry which would account for the colour variation. It looks like we are not going to get any resolution, so we are trying to like them and have our fingers crossed that they look ok once they go up and are blended.

My gripe is that we have been waiting over 4 weeks for these bricks, as well as paying $1300 in upgrade for them, and now that they have arrived they don't match what we based our selections on. I don't want mostly orange bricks, I want brown bricks that maybe have a bit of orange in them. (Please look different laid... fingers crossed... breathe in, and out. In, and out).

Our bricking is scheduled to start Wednesday, and according to the Site Supervisor today, we have been allocated his best brickie, that is "not the fastest, but he's the best" and is very particular with blending - so hopefully he makes it look good... According to SS it may take 3 weeks to fully brick, but as soon as about half of the bricks are up we will have the electricals fitted, and once it's bricked the plasterers will be straight in to plaster internals. Hopefully it's plain sailing from here on.. (not holding breath).

Raise the Roof!

Our roof has been on for a bit over a week now. They go delivered and went up in a matter of a couple of days. Probably 70% of the roof was done in one day, then the next they had all the rest of the tiles and capping on. It hasn't had the pointing done yet, but I'm guessing they'll wait til our bricks are done. We had a walk inside (shhh) and looking up we've spotted a few "broken" tiles - corners broken off, etc so we will see if they get replaced when the bricking has been done - if not we might have to mention it to the CSR. Last thing we want is water damaged plaster!

Here's a pic:

When I drove past yesterday there was a big sand pile in our driveway (inside the fence) so I'm guessing that's the bricking sand - but they're a bit early... we don't get the bricks for probably 2 or more weeks yet. To top that off Mebourne has had the most rainfall in the last 24hrs that it's had in the last 2 years, so how much of the sand will still be there is yet to be seen.