Up goes the frame

Last Thursday we came home to find the frame laying near the slab and in the paddock. So much blue steel in so many places!

We thought that maybe on Friday they would start - as luck would have it, we received close on 6 inches of rain on Friday. As it turned out, it was a down day and Tuesday 27/1 was always start date for the frame. We were also meant to have our power switched over today, however for some reason this was not done, as such we received a call from the SS asking if they could run power from our current house.

By the time I was home from work, two men had nearly finished the outside of the frame. Between 4pm and 5:30pm, they all but finished the basic frame. At the rate they are going, we should start to see the roof taking shape tomorrow.

This afternoon was the first real moment that the actual build hit home. There is a photo below where Donna and I walked from the front door and looked through the back where the French doors will open up to that view. It looks amazing! It was a real 'wow' moment for both of us!

 Frames in the paddock!

 

Frames near the slab

 More Frames!

 

Even more frames!

 

At 4pm today

 

 

Looking down the hall from the garage!

At the front door

With the view behind us!

 

The view without us in the way!

 

View from the family room

Chloe sitting on the ensuite toilet.

Yes, I can see you down the other end!

 

The girls 'kicking back' in the bedroom!

 

 

 The frame as of 6pm today! 

Slab Down

After all the work to get the stormwater into place had wrapped up, the site was looking rather bumpy and rocky and certainly not ready for laying concrete. Last Wednesday saw drillers come in to ready the foundations for the pillars - one of the holes went straight down through one of the storm water pipes - to date no one has seemed to care about it. Luckily I do have photos of it before and after the drilling.

Thursday saw the sweeping gang arrive to smooth out the site with a bobcat and then with brooms. They then laid a screed over the entire site in preparation for the slab.

On Friday we saw all of the waffle foam, the steel rio and all of the shoes arrive.  The truckie initially baulked at putting the load down the driveway (becoming a common concern - but  more on that another day!) however after coming back from the pool, we noticed that the load had been successfully dumped inside the block.

Back to work Monday for me and the first really BIG day for the house! Teams of tradies arrived to start remarking out the slab, laying black plastic, boxing it up with timber and then waffles and rio. By the time I got home, it was a site to behold!

This morning (Tuesday), a shade before six o'clock (try 5:40am) the concrete pumper arrived to set up. I left for work and a little before 7am, they started pouring. After 7 loads Donna gave up counting, however by this stage they had only done the verandah foundations about 1 fifth of the house slab.

The concrete delivery was a finely tuned process as one trucked emptied the next one on the street pulled into position, no sooner had that occurred that the next truck parked out the front of the house.

Again, by the time I got home, all the work had been done. I looks amazing! It is still hard to imagine living in this space - as huge as it looks, some parts look overly small without walls and doors to partition the spaces.

Apparently, the frame arrives tomorrow and should start going up on Thursday. Only thing stopping this will the threat of massive amounts of rain of the coming week (what's with the 3rd week of January in Brisbane??).

 

 

The concrete truck line up

7 truck loads in!

 2 trucks later!

 The finished product!

 From the top of the driveway

 From where the verandah will be

 From the future driveway

Back from Holidays

It was a morning very akin to Christmas today! My last (only) conversation with our Site Supervisor suggested that work would finish up before Christmas and then start up on the 12th of January. With that in mind, we went to bed last night wondering what may happen the next day.

Getting up this morning and gazing out the bedroom window as I have been doing every morning since the site was cut, I saw three men in High Vis workwear and a ute parked on the site. The plumbers/drainers were on site - it was going to be a big Day 1 for 2015!

All day showers threatened to halt work. In fact the Gold Coast copped flooding last night and yet we didn't have a drop. Today, many showers went past us (very close) but unfortunately, the luck ran out at about 3:45pm! With all due credit, the plumbers stayed on the longest, working through the storm, however eventually they called it quits and left.

So after Day 6, we had:

• Drainage (sewerage & grey water - stormwater still to come) installed, approved by council and backfilled.
• A new property pole to run electricity directly to the new house. (Apparently you are only allowed one access point for electricity, we are losing the connection to our existing house. As such we have had to run cable from the new house to our existing house - at our expense - $5k - and dig a trench 600mm deep between houses which worked out about 50 metres - thankfully for $300 I could hire a dingo and get the job done relatively cheap as quotes were coming in from $1500+. In short there's $5300 that we hadn't budgeted for!      
• Conduit was connected (no wire yet) and runs from the new property pole.
• Some debris at the back of the cut site was removed and pulled to one side as promised by the SS.
• Rubble pits were marked out ready to be dug out tomorrow.

One drama popped up today and it makes me wonder what would have happened if I wasn't on site. One of the plumbers called out to my on the verandah to confirm that a dodgy piece of poly pipe (which was uncovered during the excavation works and was running water so we put a tap on it to stop the flow) was the hook up point to the new house. I said no and was told that they cannot run from the street as there was no allowance for this and that a connection needed to be found within 12 metres of the house. A quick look through our contract and then a call to Metricon quickly revealed that the plumber was wrong (thankfully). I went out and explained this information to the plumber and then we roughly marked out where the trench from the meter box would have to go.

 The boy on his toy!

 First sight out the window!

 The first cut of the soil

 Almost finished the backfilling - hurry the rain is coming!

 The conduit for the trenches!

 Every day seems to end in puddles!

 So many pipes!

Our new property pole!