Week 10, day forty-seven

Wednesday,30 March 2011

The slab is curing nicely, apparently (looks like a patchy, dirty floor to me, but I'm assuming-slash-hoping sealing will change all that). Tis nice and smooth, though, and only one real defect to speak of where a small piece of styrofoam must have blown into the slab while it was still soft and left a little dent when it was pulled out again. Warwick reckons we fill it up with resin or something, no worries. I say: keep a clean site, boys!!

Meanwhile, Trent the brickie has made two little garden walls. One continues out and along from the side pergola wall, creating a garden bed-type retaining wall where we had a bit of a difference in ground levels between Peter's place and ours. The other comes out from the carport wall and across the front yard to the verge and forms the side of the driveway. It has a bit of a kink in it (by design) and also tapers down to the street - this caused a bit of discussion between builder, brickie and client. Warwick couldn't quite see the point of tapering when the ground levels were so different to what we'd actually expected (and to what Charlie had drawn in the plans according to the survey) and thought

Charlie's neat boundary solution (and slab)

 the wall should stay the same height all along or it'd disappear into the ground almost. I saw his point, but also felt that the tapering served a purpose, even if I couldn't quite explain what that was yet... In the end it was Trent who helped decide: despite it being much fiddlier, he said the taper would look really good and 'draw the eye' into the house, in his opinion. Yay, Trent! He's an artist, our brickie. Here are the pics: decide for yourselves.

Is that regulation site footwear, mister? And where's your union card?

Shed becomes glasshouse

And sub-project A this week has been the shed. Warwick and offsider Toby, no doubt inspired by big pumps and boofy concreters, whipped together a slab for the shed on Friday, and we've been piecing together what the rest of it will be made from over the last few days. Found some FAB (we think) old fifties style windows on ebay for the bargain (again, we think) price of $100 on Sunday, and Warwick's apprentice Ben did a run to Penrith this arvo to pick them up. We'll see tomorrow whether the interweb lied or if they really are as cute as they look. Still hunting for a similarly styled door solution, then we're fully in shed business. The boys will start framing it up tomorrow - it was supposed to be a cheap whip-together so we'd have somewhere to shove all the stuff that won't fit in the house, but it's starting to look more and more like the studio of the future...


Back to my endlessly fascinating colour-consulting front, met with the lovely Anita on Friday and got to bring home the swatches she is so far suggesting - they look pretty great on the whole, though I'm fairly certain I would never have chosen them if left to my own devices (but that is quite possibly a good thing, given what oddities I sometimes choose to wear together most days). Still waiting for a colour swatch of the ceiling colour to come from the roof panel people, Kingspan, as, believe it or not, this could make a significant difference in which white we choose for the walls... Don't scoff, those who have never picked a white paint - there are ruddy millions of them! Then all back to Anita with final feedback so we can get her last word on it all (and a bill, no doubt - but worth every cent for it not to be my fault).



House framing starts Monday, apparently!

Week 9, day forty-three

Thursday, 24 March 2011

Jeff's Worry, or The Slab (apologies to Mark Seymour et al)

A big day, in pictures:

That's the crane pump...

...it's big...

Truck number one of five

Things are busy on The Block

Starting in the lounge room

Jeff (that's him in the red) discusses tactics with the boys

Leveller? Let's call it a leveller...

The boot shot: Jem very much wanted to play too

This dooby is a helicopter - blades spin at bottom and it smooths out the surface

Inspection

The bathroom and laundry get the
unfinished look because they
have to (so everyone tells me)
be tiled...

They even had time for a couple more footings for garden walls

Da-nah: looks grey here, but it's more a mud brown at the moment...

Warwick and me having a post-slab larf...

All seemed to go pretty smoothly (and very addictive watching it was too). Five concreters, a pump operator, a concrete truck driver and a plumber on site (and at one point two builders and a brickie too - geez, I don't want to know what today alone cost...). There were a couple of panicky moments when it looked like rain was setting in and the big plastic sheets went screaming out - NO rain was allowed until 10pm, according to Jeff, or we get pock-marked concrete and have to grind it back later. The rain held off until 8.30pm - we'll see if that was enough time tomorrow, I guess. But hey, we got floor!

Week 9, day forty-one

Tuesday, 22 March 2011

Here comes the rain again...

A few formwork shots, for those who get a thrill...

Boy has it been raining. Not necessarily that hard - bar last night and when it absolutely bucketed down this morning - but just this constant on and off drizzle and mists. On our way to school this morning, not long after looking hopefully out the window at a patch of perhaps less heavy cloud, it pelted down - we drove past The Block and a few fluoro-vested tradies were huddled in the neighbour's dilapidated garage. Sigh.

So the plan was for James the Plumber to return from hols yesterday and get cracking on the hydronics, finishing the piping and then pressure-testing the whole shebang. He's a stoic sort, but I guess yesterday's constant drizzle put even him off - no action on The Block yesterday. However Charlie, our friend and architect, did turn up on the doorstep for a surprise lunch and site visit though, which was a very good thing. His summation was that all was looking fine, thank goodness. I think he even called our bricks a 'coup', which makes me happy...

The whole shebang, ready to be buried

This morning the concreters were there bright and early (to finish up the formwork for tomorrow's scheduled pour, I guess) but were looking less than long-term as we passed. Turns out they scarpered not long after - wimps! But then, a mountain miracle mid-morning: blue sky and sun, as if from nowhere!

Two new footings...

Tuesday is Jem and my busy day: music class then swimming, then usually a run at the food co-op and Coles. After knocking all this off we drove back to Blackheath, with fingers crossed... Yes! The sun had brought plumbers out of the woodwork. So while James ticked off his jobs, seems tomorrow's concrete pour is in for another delay. When the skies opened up this morning, Chief Concreter was under pressure to make a call on whether or not he wanted the very-expensive-crane-pump-pourer-thingy for tomorrow. I don't really blame him for delaying another day - this morning I would have said it was going to rain for the entire week too.

...for mini garden walls

So stay tuned, peeps: seems that THURSDAY will now be slab day (cue Hunters & Collectors song 'The Slab' - one of my top 50 Aus songs of all time - which is going to run endlessly through my head until this bit is done and dusted). We stand poised with video camera at the ready...

Week 8, day thirty-eight

Thursday, 17 March 2011

As expected, bit of a slow week. The concreters came back from hols and have propped some very well recycled bits of timber around the edges of the steel mesh (I believe this is known as formwork, yes?) that will sometime next week hold masses of wet concrete in place to form a slab - seems kinda hard to believe it'll do the job, but apparently they'd know better than me how to achieve this.


Termite bloke has popped some blue plastic rings around the waste pipes and added some stickers warning one and all that these are now termite proof - again, presumably he is well across how this actually achieves said aim. And I think we have the electrician popping in on the weekend, and perhaps even the brickies back tomorrow to start on the low garden wall that will also form the side of the carport in the front yard.

One of our early Blackheath loves: Romaine St

But the real highlight of the week has been having our colours done, and I'm not talkin' auras. Anita the Colour Consultant came to chat yesterday, and quite fun it was too - made me feel all Mosman. I had done lots of homework in anticipation (with those hourly rates, I didn't want to be hunting around looking for anything) and had plans, concrete and roof colour catalogues, garden designs, my scrapbook of ideas, print-outs of houses that inspired us and more all laid out for her to peruse. As I whizzed through them at the speed of light, Anita took the lot in with aplomb, making all the right noises about our fifties/sixties influences, favourite colours (there's this particular shade of green that I seem to be mildly obsessed with) and a million other details. We did a quick site visit, and she even packed a brick to take home with her.

And the other wannabe: Murcutt's Zac's House

Just as I thought we couldn't agree any more (she liked our floor colour, I liked her roof choice, she loved Charlie's idea re the internal doors being a gloss splash of bright colour against an otherwise mostly neutral background of wall and floor), she hit me with her suggestion for the main external colour... I'm sure this won't be the last time I compare building a house to having a baby, but for some reason I'm reluctant to even mention the proposed external colours here now (much as we kept our ideas for kids' names to ourselves before they unleashed themselves on the world, just in case someone said, 'Jem? You can't call the poor kid Jem...').


Suffice to say, the main colour wasn't what I was expecting. But Anita talked me through her reasons and, given how much I liked just about everything else she'd suggested in our little mutual appreciation society meeting, I decided to take it on board, have a look at the couple of houses she could remember recommending something similar for, and letting it simmer...


So that was today's homework. I spent an hour stalking houses in the Upper Mountains and taking snaps (no arrests yet), and I have to say I'm almost coming around to the idea. And with that titillation, I'll leave someone else to kick off the online bets.


James the Plumber should be back from his spa treatments Monday, then maybe we have a slab Tuesday or Wednesday! Our friend A-L came to stay on the weekend and, having recently been through her own renovation hell, told us that the slab being poured is definitely one of the better bits of fun to be had in the whole process.


Remember the tree destumper? Still hasn't shown up!

Week 7, day thirty-three

Thursday, 10 March 2011


So, the sixty-four thousand dollar question: did they get it done??
...
....
.....
.......


Naaah...


Oh well, let's just think of it as more time to make sure everything is juuuuust right...
Might be a slow week here, people. (Although I did book the services of a colour consultant who will visit next Wednesday - when asked by Warwick to choose a roof colour, I suddenly lost all confidence and panicked.)

We're getting one of these for time out...maybe on the pergola...

In other news of our over-committed lives, I managed to offload P&C secretary at the AGM last night...and came home with P&C vice pres. How did that happen? Meanwhile, this manuscript on the evolution of fossil-fish sex is eating me alive, so all over the shop is it. Mat is tutoring at uni again this semester, this time in a communications theory course that he can barely understand the course outline of, let alone work out what to instill in impressionable young first-years. Luckily, they spend most of their time on facebook so probably haven't noticed him fluffing his way through the cultural ramifications of the invention of the Gutenberg printing press. Rosie has words on her spelling list that I have to look up to explain what they mean (tarsals, anyone?), and Jem has somehow slipped from gorgeous golden child to testosterone-fuelled Captain No (we're hoping it's temporary).


What's new with you?

Week 7, day thirty-one

Tuesday, 8 March 2011


Happy international women's day, blog folk! And happy big four-oh to Melly, if you're out there...


Well, the race is on: the concreters finally turned up again this morning after being absent since mid last week. The boss man is off on holidays after today, and James the plumber is off from Thursday - if we want to pour the slab next week as per Warwick's schedule, both of them have to finish their prep work before they vamoose.

For the concreters, turned out that was simple enough. They kicked off on the dot of 7am and by midday had the foam underslab insulation down, the plastic sheeting on top of that, and the steel mesh the icing on the fairly unattractive cake (see right). Pretty walls now hidden underneath.

Manifold: heating heart and brain

For James, who was anxiously waiting to get going long before midday, it's not quite so simple. He needs to get all the bibs and bobs in place for the underfloor hydronic heating, which is a fair bit of fiddle work. First they map out the circuits in a spiral shape in each room space (with fabulously hot-pink piping), tying it on to the steel mesh underneath as they go. Each circuit has to start and finish at the manifold, which is the brains unit that will control the whole system. Once he does that (and he didn't even manage this much by the end of today), another layer of steel mesh goes on top, separated by these little plastic cap thingies (which Jem has stolen three of to use as a rocketship - hm, must give those back before tomorrow). James then has to untie the piping from the bottom mesh and retie it to the top mesh, before doing pressure testing and whatever other checks are needed to make sure it will all work once it's forever encased in concrete.

Our bedroom: SO big it needs two circuits (ha!).

Hallway, left; bedrooms, right - all snake back to the brain

I turned up all cheery this afternoon thinking it looked like it was all on track, but James isn't quite so optimistic. If he gets it all done, we pour the slab mid next week. If he doesn't, more like Tuesday the week after when he's back on deck. Howsabout a raincheck on those hols, fellas? Easter's just around the corner...


Meanwhile, the brickies finished up on the truly massive carport wall today - without a roof or anything else to give it perspective, the neighbours must be wondering what the hell it's for (one has indeed had to ask). Quite amazing to stand with Charlie's gorgeous plans in one hand and the beginnings of a house in front of you, and see how it's all actually going to be something three-dimensional one day...

Carport wall from side - a little terrace will be tucked in here

Carport wall from the street - handball practice?

Week 6, day twenty-eight

Thursday, 3 March 2011

Slacking off, aren't I? Now I'm retro-blogging - trying to remember what happened last week because I didn't quite get to posting anything... I blame Mat - what's a post without pics? They're still on his fancy Rupert Murdoch-sponsored camera somewhere, I think. We'll just have to catch them up later. [[Ah, here's a couple...10/3]]

Pop-up pipes

So week 6 started out strong with the plumber and the concreters back on The Block along with the brickies - twas a hive of activity on Monday. Or was that Tuesday? Anyway, first the plumber had to dig through the fill and find his waste pipes, and pop them out the top again. See exhibit.

Back in the trenches

Then concreters were preparing things by digging trenches through the dirt fill where all the internal brick walls will be (these need extra concrete footings under the slab floor) and putting a neat layer of sand on top of the rest - don't ask me why, I've given up trying to figure out every detail (The Client Who Asked Too Much). It was kinda fun seeing where all the walls would be (still looked small, but not quite as small). The brickies were still working on the northern pergola wall, which meant that concreters decided to get around them via the neighbour's driveway as an access point to the back of our block for their digger.

Pergola wall in progress

It wasn't until I trudged up at the end of the day that I noticed that Peter's driveway, though never a masterpiece in landscaping, had now turned into something resembling our own mudpit.Hoping we weren't approaching a lawsuit yet, I sent a late-night email to Warwick checking that Peter was all good with this, in a hopeful kind of tone. Warwick was at the door early the next morning, assuring me that he and Peter have an understanding of sorts and that it's time to for me to take another deep breath. I think I used the term 'taking liberties' and he laughed jovially, saying that that's nothing in the world of builders taking liberties. Luckily I know Warwick is a nice, considerate, responsible type... I'd hate to have to reveal my clearly overly uptight tendencies to someone with more testosterone!

On Thursday we found out that both the concreter and the plumber are going on hols next week - which is slightly painful timing, as far as getting the slab down goes. We're hoping for excellent weather and a miracle or two before they disappear.