TIMBER

No the house didn't fall down.

On Sunday, we noticed a load of timber had been dropped off at the block. So framing should start this week.

Building a house is like a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece put into place completes the picture.

Hopefully we should have lots of interesting pictures in the coming week.

Not Lock Up but Lock Out

The security fencing has been erected prior to frame construction beginning. This fence goes down our left boundary.

Just about the whole block is fenced off. Considering that the block dimensions are 22m x 38m, thats a lot of security fencing - well more than usual.

Looks as though they pushed the earth back up to slab. Seems as though they have used the topsoil that was removed when excavating for the slab. Thats good as it will make establishing a garden a lot easier than if they had used the clay from lower down.

Those pipes looking like white worms around the slab are guides for the downpipes.

The Slab (concrete not cans)

Here are some pictures of the slab. From the garage

Looking over the multipurpose room. If you are wondering why the slab has a lip, its where the bricks are laid. Just found that out :-)

And then from the back of the house.

The weekend we will check the slab and make sure its the right size and dimensions seem to be correct. Authorise the payment for this first stage and then the framing will begin. Seems they don't even need to wait a couple of weeks. So we could see some real action when the framing begins.

The Pour

Today, the slab was poured. Unfortunately we don't have any photos as Ang didn't want to take pictures of the concreters.

I'm not sure how long it will take before they build on the slab but I've heard about two weeks.

On Monday, I had to chase up our Site Supervisor as the meter box wasn't in the spot where it was on the plan. We put it on the plan as the estate guidelines state that the meter box is to be unobtrusive and it was sitting in the middle of the wall and not in the corner of the Multipurpose room. Apparently electical regulations state that it has to be <1.5m from the front of the building. So regulations win over estate guidelines. We will end up painting it to the same colour as the bricks so the currently yellow coloured box will be a brown colour and blend in. Hopefully that will keep us onside with the developer.

Slab preparation

The builders are wasting no time. The preparation is nearly complete to lay the slab. The rio is in place and looks as though the formwork just needs to be completed. Impressive considering how wet it has been. I don't think we have a had a day without rain for the last two weeks. At least we can now get an idea of the size of the house. It's always a bit of guesswork when working off paper.

This is from the front left of the house. The garage is in the foreground. You can still see some of the groundwater in the front.

This is the front from the other side looking at the multipurpose room. The holes in the foreground are for the verandah posts. Sorry about the blurriness but was trying not to shiver too much when I took the photo.

From the rear of the house overlooking the kitchen and pantry. The soil looks good for growing a decent garden

Looks as though we should get a slab next week.

Electricity and Plumbing

Now we have electricity connected and a meter box on the block. Its not attached to anything, just sitting on a pole about where the house is going to be.

I'm not sure what the red topped pegs show. Perhaps the limit of the house and veranda, although they do appear to go a lot further down the block so they could be guides for the sewerage and storm water system.



The first of the plumbing going in for the storm water and sewerage pipes. The weather actually looks good in the photos but the temperature was only a max of 13. With the amount of rain and the cold, I'm not sure I would want to be playing in the mud.

Things are steadily moving as each piece comes together.

Tapping and Skipping

Angela turned up to the land and couldn't see any difference at first. But then on closer inspection realised that a tap had been added. So now we have water connected to the block.

While there a truck pulled up to deliver a mini-skip. Patrick and Alex were very interested in the bin coming off the back of the truck So another piece of the building puzzle comes together.

We are hoping that in coming week that the site cut will happen.

We have a start

We have action happening at the block. It seems that Kenny came and made a delivery to the block. You can see the workers toilet in the background.

The land looks a bit chopped up as the house next door had concrete trucks use our block as an access way to pour concrete in the rear of their property. Patrick is having a good look at it.

The pipe in the foreground is the sewerage outlet for our block.

More posts and pictures soon as things move a long

Kev

The Intro and the plans

We decided about 4 years ago to do something about the house that was going to be too small for us. We looked at renovating but the council zoning our area as medium density living meant that a 5 bedroom family home was going to be out of character for the area.

We then looked at buying established but it was hard to get a suitable house close to a train station. The only thing left was to build. So thats what we decided to do.

Lots of people have expressed interest in following the build process so we have created this blog rather than spam everyone's inbox with photos and emails.

We found a company that could create the house we wanted and also meet the estate developers guidelines. At the time we started, New Dimension Homes only had two double storey designs. We started with the design on the right.

We ended up changing it to this.

It seems the only thing that was left unchanged was master bedroom, WIR and ensuite.

Kev