Stonecutters Ridge is growing quickly and the golf course will be open for play in just a few weeks! As the area starts to mature and come into its own, the community is invited to the official opening of Stonecutters Ridge Neighbourhood Centre on Saturday, 4 August 2012 from 11am to 3pm with a jam packed day of FREE entertainment and family activities.

Bring the entire family along to see what Stonecutters Ridge Neighbourhood Centre has to offer. The day will feature face painting; an animal farm; a jumping castle and a FREE BBQ from 12noon to 2.30pm.

“The Centre features two meeting rooms with kitchen facilities, bathroom amenities and a playground area. The Centre will provide Stonecutters Ridge residents and residents from the Blacktown area the perfect location to host small community events,” Mayor of Blacktown City, Councillor Alan Pendleton said.

“The Stonecutters Ridge Neighbourhood Centre is a fantastic facility where residents can come together, meet, interact with each other, share ideas and enjoy themselves,” Mayor Pendleton said.

“I encourage residents to come along and celebrate the opening of the Stonecutters Ridge Neighbourhood Centre and view this outstanding new suburb, Mayor Pendleton said.

Stonecutters Ridge Neighbourhood Centre is located at Stonecutter Ridge Drive, Stonecutters Ridge. For more information contact Council on 9839 6000.

I’m sure that the majority of existing Stonecutters Ridge residents will be there to see our neighbourhood flourish and to meet our future neighbours, community members, and golf partners.

For weeks, we’ve been wondering what big issue we’d be facing next. No info was being communicated from the builder (please work on this in the future, Metricon!) and frankly, we were starting to freak out. After a number of unreturned phone calls to Metricon, we were contacted out of the blue by Blacktown City Council. It wasn’t Metricon that was causing the hold up – it was Council!

The team leader from the inspection team graciously apologized to Megan and explained the radio silence that we were experiencing was due to changes in the way council approves bushfire protection levels. Instead of a flat 1-5 scale for an entire house, a BAL (Bushfire Attack Level) equation is now used, which can return different requirements for different sides of the house. For example, because the front of our house faces away from the bush, the requirements for bushfire protection measures are significantly less than the back of the house.

So what does this mean? It means the remaining bushfire concerns by council are no longer necessary, and likely much of what we had to do while building is now irrelevant. Issues like screening the french doors on the side of the house would have likely been avoided and we wouldn’t have lost the time and money that was invested to get the house past Council. Ahh…red tape. Gotta love it.

So, we’re finished. No need to deal with Council any further, and our $600 bond is on its way back. I’ve heard Blacktown Council is one of the easier organizations to deal with. Really? We’ve pretty much pulled our hair out from day one with them – I can’t imagine how it could get any worse.

What has your experiences been with Council? What areas of Australia have caused the biggest headaches?

The fence came down.

We no longer live at the end of the road. The fence, which separated Stages 3 & 4 from the rest of Stonecutters Ridge, officially came down as of 4pm yesterday. Our road, which was once a poorly constructed round-a-bout, is now the lifeline to the soon-to-open Stonecutters Ridge clubhouse, and countless new homesites that will quickly become cherished family homes.

It’s fun to see the community grow. Walking around the newest area of the neighbourhood last night, you could already sense the changes that are on the horizon. The vibe, the community, the neighbourhood – it’s all changing. For the better. For those of you that will soon see your new home rise from the ground, congratulations – it’s all starting to happen!

Council’s requirements to get our permanent occupancy certificate were, all in all, pretty reasonable. Fire protection measures needed to be in place, BASIX provisions needed to be in order, and downlights needed to be installed in an acceptable manner. What didnt’ make sense, was the dog door needed to be screened. Yep, the dog door was a fire hazard – despite having a metal cover that closed it off when we weren’t home. Apparently metal isn’t bushfire compliant. Who knew.

A few certificates were required from our builder stating that all bushfire prevention measures had been completed, and all necessary building inspections had been completed. It seemed pretty straightforward from here. Would you believe it wasn’t?

We had 30 days to complete what was requested by Council. The 30 days have come and gone, and we’ve had to file for an extension. While accomodating our request, we weren’t sure what was taking so long – until we spoke to Metricon.

To ensure the bushfire prevention measures were completed, Metricon sent out an inspector to have a look through the house. What he discovered was that a portion of our roof space did not have the proper sarking underneath the Colorbond. Very little information has been communicated to us since, but it must be a big deal, as the NSW State Building Inspector for Metricon is meeting with Council directly next week. We don’t know what’s being discussed, but it can’t be good. It never has.

Until next week…

So how did it go? To be honest, I’m not sure. He wrote a bunch of stuff down as he meandered through the house – making the occasional comment to Megan and I. Then, he asked about our bushfire protection measures.

“Are these Merbau?”
“Do you have aluminium screens?”
“Are these doors weather sealed?”

I was having flashbacks to our troubles with Council previously and, looking across the room at Megan, I could see her head about to explode. Really? We’re going there again?

Sifting through loads of paperwork, we had to find the receipts and documentation that the bushfire protection measures were completed to spec. Even the gutter guards, which can easily be seen from the front veranda, required documentation. Simply walking out on the veranda, or peering through open windows would suffice. We were even told that our dog door was a fire hazard, as it defeats the purpose of weather-stripping the door. On the side of the house. That doesn’t face the bush. No, seriously.

We were even told that our dog door was a fire hazard, as it defeats the purpose of weather-stripping the door.

A few more comments were made around how our lighting in the bathrooms wasn’t energy-efficient (I don’t have time to wait for lights to warm up in the morning when getting ready for work), and he was gone – out the door without even letting us know what ‘ the next steps’ would be.

Did we pass? Are we good? Hello?

I didn’t expect this would be an enjoyable experience, but it was a necessary evil – one of the last steps to having official sign off on the house and putting the build process behind us. We’re close, but are we done? Your guess is as good as mine.

This won’t be the first time they’ve pushed back the opening date for the golf course. When we originally bought land at Stonecutters Ridge, we were told early 2011. Then late 2011. Then a sign finally went up and we had it in writing – Early 2012. Well, I suppose it shouldn’t be rushed, we’ve waited this long – what’s another three months? After all, we need to be able to actually get to the clubhouse. The road isn’t even in yet (though it IS close). During the major thunderstorm on February 19, half of the road in front of our house was covered in muddy water. Rocks the size of tennis balls were rolling down the road. It’s still pretty messy. But it’s all in the name of progress. I have to keep telling myself that. Dirty, muddy, loud progress.

We raised the issue around scratched glass in our windows and doors and, as of yesterday, all windows and doors have been replaced. All of these were the result of the cleaners that Metricon hired, using dull razors to scrape away the dark oak stain from the glass – something that ended up costing Metricon a pretty penny.  It appears that this is a common issue in new homes too – a neighbour of ours who also built with Metricon had similar issues. He too had to fight to get these replaced. Frustrating, but a worthy battle to fight. We’ve even had a home here at Stonecutters Ridge that had to have ALL their tapware replaced, after the cleaners used an acidic cleaning solution that caused it all to rust.

So with warranty issues more or less behind us, we can start to look at other projects around the house. We’ve recently had retaining walls built in our front yard built (pictures forthcoming), and had plans drawn up for a veranda. There’s a lot to look forward to now!

Over a month later, we still have a lot of the issues we brought up with Metricon outstanding. The Christmas holidays brought things to a screeching halt, and all the rain that Sydney has been getting caused numerous delays. Even a bit of bad luck delayed the replacement of our ensuite mirror (On their way here, the driver went over a speed bump too fast and the mirror broke!). But with that said, a few items have been addressed.

Things ARE moving ahead. I have to credit Metricon with their attentiveness. Ever since their State Building Manager got involved, we’ve received consistent updates from the head office, regardless of the actual progress around the home. We’ve had a few of the creaks in the floor boards upstairs fixed, the scratched glass in the front door replaced, and a few odds and ends around the house repaired, repainted, and redone. We even got the refund check to cover the extra cost of the CAT6 cabling that was made redundant due to the “street-to-hub” cabling be installed as CAT5. Unfortunately, we had to send it back, as Metricon spelled both of our names wrong, and even used Megan’s maiden name instead of mine (we’ve been married since before we even started building).

While we’ve been a little frustrated about the slower than expected speeds, Metricon’s approach to the remaining warranty issues has been more proactive than usual. The tradesmen that were replacing the scratched glass in the front door inspected our bifold doors in the rear of the house, and noticed additional scratches that we’d missed. An unusual experience, but nevertheless welcomed!

So, it continues. We’re closer to the finish line and, while it IS slow going at best, at least the lines of communication are well and truly open with Metricon.

Finally.

Metricon’s Building Manager showed up early on a Tuesday morning and quickly got down to business, sympathetically addressing our concerns in a way we hadn’t seen from their office staff yet. Systematically moving through our outstanding issues, we explained why we believed these issues needed to be fixed, and how each affected our view on Metricon’s quality control. The entire inspection took about twenty minutes, and by the end, we felt oddly comfortable that our concerns were, at the very least, finally being acknowledged by Metricon. Were they, or were we being lured into a false sense of security?

A week later, we received an email from Metricon’s head office. All of the outstanding issues we addressed with the NSW Building Manager were going to be fixed. Well, all but one – the upgraded Ethernet wiring (CAT5 -> CAT6 for you tech-heads) can’t be fixed, so we’ll be receiving a refund for the amount we initially paid.

So finally, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, as Metricon’s office staff has come through and agreed to fix the outstanding issues. These included scratched doors (scratched during the initial clean by the builder), squeaking floorboards, and corroded mirrors (among others).

It may be almost a year late, but our persistance has paid off. Despite being told by the initial 90 day building inspector that some issues (like the scratches on the door) wouldn’t be covered, we will soon be able to confidently say that we’re happy with our home. I guess it just goes to show that social media channels, such as Twitter, Facebook, or blogs like this one help “motivate” the builder to address issues that may otherwise get clogged up in the red tape of office “guidelines”.

In a nutshell, one year on, and we’re still waiting for over half of our concerns from our 90 day inspection to be addressed. What’s worse, is that we haven’t heard from Metricon in over a month, despite regular emails and calls to the head office.

It hardly feels like we’ve been in the house for a year. We’ve done a lot in year – painted a number of feature walls, moved over 30 tons of soil, laid turf and planted dozens of plants in our backyard. We even added to the family just recently! Welcoming Bryce into the home made the house feel more like a home than everything else combined, but I suppose that’s to be expected. We love this home that we’ve created.

But there’s a dark cloud that seems to hang over the whole experience, and that cloud is starting to become much more prominent. 365 days later, items that should have been resolved 275 days ago are still withstanding.

To say it’s frustrating would be wrong – we’re way beyond that.

Items such as warped doors, creaky floorboards, corroding mirrors and scratched window panes still remained unaddressed, despite numerous promises by Metricon’s head office that they will be fixed. We’ve been told doors will be delivered on certain days and we try to make ourselves available only to have no one show up all day long. But that’s only when the office team respond to our emails and calls. Admittedly, they’ve been very good about not disturbing Bryce when he’s sleeping.

It’s easy to sleep when nothing is happening.

So one year on, and we’ll continue trying to have the remaining issues fixed. Our one single home may not be as important to Metricon as the seemingly hundreds of others being built around Sydney at the moment, or the ones that are about to be build – after all, they already have our money. But that shouldn’t matter. This is our home. It’s the home in which Bryce was born into and we became a family.

It’s important to us.