Saturday, December 19, 2009

Meeting arranged with tiles for monday 21st Dec

We received a call from tiles to make a meeting with them to go through tile colours and selections.
We set an appointment for Monday 21st Dec.
Sadly electrical didn't ring so I got the number off the Clarendon CSO and rang them direct. They said they were booked out till Christmas.
So I asked the person doing the appointment to ring first thing Monday so I could ask that if any cancellations could they ring us, or to have the earliest meeting in Jan. Otherwise we are being pushed back and back on the start date for building.
The reason for the late phone call re Tiles and Electrical is merely because of Slowness of Clarendon in contacting us when they needed something. Pretty poor.

Gary

Monday, December 14, 2009

Rang CSO to find out when receive appointment with elec and tiles

Tuesday 15th December

I rang our CSO to find out what was happening and she said she hadn't received the paperwork from Colours yet. She rang back to say she couldn't open my attachments of signed documents so I had to resend them again,with 2 pictures per email as they were large jpegs.

We will be lucky to get an appointment with elect and tiles before Christmas! So much wasted time, i should have phoned the Colour Lady after i sent the emails. Always follow up!

Our aim was to have all meeting done and paper work left with them so they could raise a proper priced contact by mid jan and we give to our bank for finance and they get it back so Clarendon could plan to start on site Feb 1st. We will see.

Overall this has been most disatisfying as the time to get to this point has been far too long. Too many mistakes by clarendon such as with the architect and the people we were dealing with should have followed up on changes by phone call and informed us immediately of any failure to change things.

Of course I am learning that emails are not enough, you need to follow up the next day by phone to see they have received them and that there are no problems.

Rang CSO to say I'd recieved copy of DA today

Friday 4th Dec

Today in the post I received a copy of our DA from Council saying it had been approved. I rang our CSO to see if they had recieved it, "just that moment", and asked if the colur lady had received our email of signed documents.

I was told that she would speak to the colour lady and find out.

What a different brick colour costs!

Part of the colour ladies job is to send a costing for the non-standard brick colr range you might have selected.
Of course we chose a different non-stand brick didn't we and though it was only 'D' going from standard of 'A' to B C D E F G the increase in cost was considerable.

For a two story house it cost us an extra $5800 just for a different brick.

So beware.

Colur meeting variations to be signed off

Friday 4th December

On friday the 4th we received the variations by email that we to sign off on and fax back.
I received a kitchen variation cost to sign off on as well and as we didn't have a fax machine i scanned the sheets and emailed them back on Dec 10th.

Colour Meeting with Clarendon

November 27th Meeting with Colour Girls

On Friday 27th we had a long meeting with the Colour lady whose advice was really helpful. It took 3 hours even though we were prepared with colour for kitchen cupboards, benchtop, walls, skirting boards, ceiling and other things.
It takes a long time and choices about handles etc for cupboards are made here.
We had also wanted slight changes made to our kitchen as the only drawers were 4 drawers for cultery etc. so we added one two drawer instead of a cupboard for pots and pans and that meant clarifying on drawing and detailing the change for the kitchen people. At extra cost mind you.
Normally you need to see the kitchen people about this but it was a minor change and we were assured by sales rep that the colour lady could do it.

The next step we were told is that plans come out of Council and color variations written up and signed off by us and then we get a call from electrical and tiles people for an interview.
I thought 3 or 4 days - not likely.

November 16th Plans finally submitted for DA

November 16th plans finally submitted to Council for DA.

Speaking to council I found that although they say 5-6 weeks for the DA it should only take a little over 2 weeks, our Council works well on such DA's. It takes just over 2 weeks because it's a two storey house which requires them to send letters to surrounding properties, whereas a one story house would only take 1 week as doesn't need to normally inform neighbors.

During this time we hope the color people will contact us for that appointment and we can get that out of the way.