We have been given the keys to our house on Friday 27th October 2017 at about 5:15pm
Everything was getting quite tight with regard to timeframe because the settlement for our existing house was due 31st Oct 2017 but we made it.
We had lots of things organized for the weekend with handover expected on the Friday at some stage.
Our first furniture deliver arriver at 7:15PM on Friday evening and the first deliver truck with our belonging arrived at our new house at about 10:30AM saturday morning. In between we had the curtain installer arrive at a few minutes after 7AM Saturday morning to install the curtains.
Yes, it was running on a very tight timeline and fortunately it all worked out fairly smoothly.
Anyway, more to come!
For those of you that are interested in what the basic privacy screening looks like in the upper terrace here you go. We had overlook privacy concerns on the Terrace/Lounge side of our house. Our house upper bedrooms and terrace overlooks our neighbours windows/rooms and this isn't allowed.
Late last week the external tiles were layed. The external area where tiles go are just the standard areas - front Balcony and rear Terrace, When going through the colour selections at World of Style you get the option to add tiling to the other outdoor areas if you would like too.
This should be a quick post. Our carpet was installed over the last couple of days. They still have the carpet on the stairs and 1 bedroom to go. Apparently they will come back to finish of in a week or so.
After a long process our bricks are actually done. They have completed all of the brickwork including finishing window sills, patching mortar and all of the garage. 
Our brickwork has been a lengthy process so it was good to see the render applied to the bricks. The renderers came by a few weeks ago and did the first coat of render getting it ready for the final colour coating.
Yeah, Nah. Not much to say here. Our scaffolding came down today. 1 Day to disassemble all of the scaffold and pack it for collection. Not bad going I reckon. It is fast approaching completion.
The fit off plumbers have returned to complete the fit off of taps and basins. Over the last week or so there have been a couple of visits to complete the various plumbing tasks. They still haven't completed the taps in the master ensuite because there was an alignment issue that was fixed. All of the toilets, basins, sinks and external taps have been plumbed and are now operational.
So, yeah the mirrors got installed.
For our security system we chose to have it mostly installed as part of the build. I looked at options to install after handover but everything offered was wireless. I didn't like the idea of replacing batteries on all of the sensors every year or so. Or not getting around to it and the alarm has a bypassed sensor zone while the battery is flat. Getting it installed with Porter Davis meant that all of the sensors would be wired, it would be operational from day 1 and I wouldn't have to worry about flat batteries. It seemed the better choice.
It seems that things get finished to about 90% or so and then there is some sort of delay or reason it can't be finished. The brickwork took some time to get moving and started and stopped several times along the way. The main issue was with colour matching and but now we are complete... Actually we're not complete. The brickies can't complete the brickwork because there is scaffolding on the house and the garage space is covered with materials required to build our house. Ohh well, progress is still moving fairly quickly so we are happy either way.
There are several suppliers of similar items when you build. For example; Electrical, Data, Alarm & TV/Phone prewire were done by 3 different teams on our build at 4 different times. Then, I assume, they will all come back at similar but different times to complete their fitoff.
I still find it really interesting that it seems like nothing much happens to a certain part then in the blink of an eye painting if finished - well almost. It's about a month ago that our painting first started and after a few hold ups because of other things going on, 
So its been a bit over a week but the tiles are mostly finished. The tilers came and went a couple of times finishing and fixing a few areas. Our master bathroom had the taps placed in the wrong position so the tillers have to wait until that gets fixed. Our feature tiles have been installed in the shower niches and powder room. Wall tiles in the kitchen and other areas.
I am constantly amazed how quickly things are done. The frame takes no time, plaster was only a day to hang and the floor and wall tiles will be about 3 days start to finish. The tilers arrived, cleaned up and set out for a few hours one afternoon. The next day they layed pretty much all of the full floor tile (no cut tiles). Then followed that up with a day filling all the cut tiles space and installed most of the wall tiles. Another day with a few hours of grouting and they are mostly done. They will be finished with about another half day completing our feature tiles kitchen splashback and the remaining grout.
So something that has been on my mind during the build preparation was waterproofing. I read about various water proofing worries/problems people have had. Having wooden floor construction under the tiles for the upper level it seemed like a legitimate concern for me to be thinking about.