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).