Week 13, day sixty-three

Thursday, 21 April 2011

First panels going on

Fine people, you ain't gonna believe the difference since I last posted. In less than two days, (one and a half, really, since the first panel went on) we have an almost complete coverage of roof, insulation and ceiling – it's an easter miracle, praise the lord!

That's a lounge room done, sunshine!

After a bit of anxious pacing (by me) while other little jobs were being finished (by the fellas), by late morning on Wednesday the first roofing panel was finally hoisted into place by our team of four. Mat's mum and dad were coming up for lunch, so they arrived in time for a site visit and inspection of a fully roofed lounge room at about 1pm. Bryan (a former builder and roofer) seemed suitably impressed by house, site and roof, thank goodness, and no squeaks were heard from him as the boys tolerated the annoying clients tromping around with visitors for the second time that week. I'm sure there's a clause in the contract about this kinda stuff....

By the end of Wednesday, some of the very long (130kg) sections had been somehow hauled into place over the dining room and bathroom sections as well – and if I must be drawn on the subject, they look bloody awesome!

Dining room roofed, and the adjoining posts for the terrace (lovely work, Ivan)

Some of the scaffolding required for the really big panels

End of first roofing day: lounge, dining and bathroom covered

Once the boys got the hang of things, they cracked on like nobody's business today – by lunchtime, all the bedrooms were roofed and they were moving onto the trickier kitchen areas.

Bedrooms done

From the entrance looking down to bedrooms

Lovely little overlap...

Charlie, if you're out there somewhere, we LOVE it! It is just SO exciting to see this part come together, and so quickly. We can really visualise how it's going to feel to be in this house, and how generous and lovely the spaces are, despite the whole only being 140 square metres.

Terrace roof adjoins main house in a very gorgeous way

Speeding off to drop Rosie to the movies at 3pm (Diary of a Wimpy Kid II, for those who need to know), I saw Ivan packing up for the day and stopped to pass on my spluttering excitement. He said it had all gone a bit faster than they thought and they only had about two more panels still to go onto the main house – 'but I'm a bit sore'. And Ivan's not a small man, poor guys. Hope the Easter Bunny rewards you as you all deserve!

Week 13, day sixty

Monday, 18 April 2011

[For those who have been paying attention, no, this wasn't posted on Monday – I'm back-blogging again. Nasty deadline now fulfilled after a couple of very late nights, so now I'm in catch-up mode...]

Friends currently living in Singapore (Ian, Cindy and the boys) were here last night, so the house has been jumping. Roof panels were due to arrive this morning, but as we set off to do the very gorgeous Braeside Walk about lunchtime, still no sign of them.

After a beautiful (and even HOT – good grief!) walk along the creek to the waterfall and back, we staggered home to feed and drink lots of tea. As the SEA crew packed up for their appointment at Pretty Beach, a very big truck arrived at the block with our anxiously awaited delivery.

BIG, loooooog central beams, ready for roofa

The roof is a bit of a novelty to most (as it was to us, before Charlie educated us in the ways of panel roofing). The top is a steel, Colourbond-like finish, the attached middle is ultra-dense insulation (R5.35, for those who like the stats), and the bottom edge is the flat steel ceiling finish – so this single panel replaces roof framing, Colourbond sheeting, gyprockoing, and painting. Neato, hey?

 

When the kids and I went up for the squiz, the boys were looking a little tense and tired. Seems Kingspan forgot that they were delivering to a residential job (this stuff is usually used in industrial settings, where mini cranes and forklifts abound) so didn't provide a crane with the truck to unload the panels – the really long ones weigh around 130kg. So there was a lot of heaving and hustling going on as we went chirpily up to inspect... Meanwhile, the ever helpful truck driver informed me that we were lucky he was even there (presumably he meant standing on and supervising from his back tray) as he 'only drives'. Warwick didn't seem overly impressed.

A wee portion of the roofing panels

While we were standing around guiltily watching the fellas indulge in a spot of unexpected heavy lifting, the driver proceeded to fill me in on what a fine product we'd selected ('just delivered to Bulla ice-cream's new factory') and that we'd have the toastiest house in the Blue Mountains ('there's no warmth gonna be lost through this ceiling'). Onya Sonya.

Week 12, day fifty-five

Monday, 11 April 2011

Winter has arrived, halfway through autumn – the air has a touch of snow about it, like it's falling somewhere not too far away, if not here. So the fire is on 24/7 and I sit at my desk in jumper, scarf, beanie and uggies, day or night. I love this old house, but I really can't wait to crank that underfloor heating...

Meanwhile, up on The Block, Toby hammers together the last sections of framing in a singlet. Have I mentioned they breed 'em tough up here? I felt like a complete wuss in my woolies as the kids and I delivered a container of sweet treats leftover from a nanna visit on the weekend. He glanced skywards as if wondering whether he might need to don a t-shirt soon when I mentioned his remarkable state of undress, but didn't seem too convinced.

Lounge room from NW corner

So the lounge room framing was pretty much finished today, the only problematic part (that I heard about, anyway) being the high, western raked windows, that needed to be made a bit smaller to fit the wall width. Luckily Warwick had anticipated that this would be the case, depending on how all the other sections ended up, so David the Window Man had been told not to start on these until they were framed up. Whew.

Dining and lounge windows

Amazing to walk through the whole skeleton of house now and get a real sense of how it all fits together – makes me appreciate Charlie's vision all over again and be utterly grateful that he has got us to this point. Can't wait to see some handcrafted windows filling these holes...

Skeleton from street

Next they brace and bolt the frame, then the roof goes on. With a bit (lot?) of luck the roofing panels might arrive before everyone toddles off for Easter. Starting to think about landscaping the now-safe back corner and getting a couple of apple and apricot trees in before it's too late, but that would involve going outside, I guess, and my bear tendencies have officially kicked in...

Week 11, day fifty-four

Friday, 8 April 2011

Too much posting this week, I imagine, but it's moving so fast in our eyes that I feel I have to document it... Day three of the framing, which was dining and lounge. Toby had to be elsewhere today, so the boys didn't get quite as much done as the last two days, but it's amazing to see the super-monster window of all time in the dining room framed up - this is the highest point in the house, and it's the window that every tradie involved has gone 'oh my god' about... Now we just have to plant something nice outside it to make it worth looking through! There's going to be a windowseat under this one and the dining table alongside that, so that it will probably be a favourite spot.

Dining window from inside...

...and out. Yep, that baby's all glass (in two sections).

Lounge windows almost framed up

Had a small problem with one set of lounge room windows as it seems the dimensions were a little out on the window schedule - the windows would have been about 200mm longer than the wall they are to be set into! (Builders and I considered an overhang on one side with a glass floor, but then decided it could be a little bit much in order to view the dirt 30cm below...) Had a slightly tight-lipped call from Warwick about this as I was attempting to wrestle Jem off the car ride outside Franklins (which, funnily enough, always seems to be broken so no, we can't put any money in it). Having not too much of an idea what he was talking about or why this would be the case, we decided it best if he call Charlie to check. Seems it was one of those 'computer says no' accidents of technology, which is bound to happen given the number of bibs and bobs involved all told. Unfortunately, the window makers had already made the frame and ordered the glass to fit, so making one window smaller to fit will cost a few hundred buckeroos. Dang.

Dining left, big sliding door right

Picked up Anita's final colour recommendations this morning and I think I love them, now that there's been time for the shocking initial suggestion to sink in (puce? silver? poo brown? Keep guessing...)

Most of a skeleton

 

Current front runner (without faux marble)

And while half-heartedly looking into double-sided fireplaces, I discovered that the model we had previously decided on (the rather gorgeous, curved-glass fronted Jotul Panorama) HAS to be bought first, and the chimney constructed around it – we were vaguely relying on the idea that we could just have a great gaping hole in the hearth and fill it in much later when we come into masses of money from an unexpected source. So I guess that means I'd better get back to some editing now (as Mat tells me when he toddles off to bed and I'm burning the midnight oil hunched over my desk, 'Just think of the fireplace'...).

Week 11, day fifty-three

Thursday, 7 April 2011

Day two of the framing festival: bathroom, laundry and kitchen. Also a surprise discovery that the concreters had neglected to slab the full width of the lounge room... It's only a 100mm strip along the fireplace/hallway divide, but Warwick was a little annoyed (and mortified that he had to confess to me). But we've fixed it, and the entrance will be a tiny bit roomier, which is probably a good thing, considering the number of shoes in this household. It also provoked a discussion about the fireplace, and Ivan threw in that he thought a two-sided firebox would look neato in the wall between lounge and hallway/kitchen. So back to the drawing board on that decision to see if it's even remotely possible or advisable...

That's the front door on the right...

Half a house (and a bit)

Through the kitchen window

Week 11, day fifty-two

Wednesday, 6 April 2011

Well! Nobody told me framing up was going to be this exciting...

More drizzle and utterly freezing this morning as I popped in to see the boys on the way to school, but again, they breed 'em tough up here. Warwick and I have been having discussions about how we should protect the slab while they build on it – turns out we both knew much less than we needed to on this front. From some enquiries I managed to make yesterday (after being utterly without internet for FOUR whole days due to dead laptop – we are now proud owners of a gorgeous new iMac and no, that wasn't an expense we really needed right now...) I managed to ascertain that the slab needs to cure for 28 to, say, 50 days before it can be sealed, or before it should even have anything laid down on it in any long-term way! Warwick had ideas of sealing it asap and then putting old carpets down to protect it from tradies and their sloppy ways, but seems that our slab is a living thing and must breathe... The unevenness and white spots (effloresence – caused by salts coming out of the slab) will go on until it is damn well ready and finished curing, dependent on weather and any number of other variables. Excellent.

So after some more discussion, we decided that all we can do is put carpets down wherever anyone needs to work on it, then roll these up at the end of the day to let the slab inhale and exhale again, in its own little Byron Bay way. Tradies must be SUPER careful, and with a lot of luck it wil be in half-decent condition by the end of construction and won't require grinding before we finally seal it (and the bloody thing can just hold its breath from then on). All wonderful in theory, as Waz and I yesterday sat (carefully) on the slab and decided how to approach our diva – meanwhile directly behind us, our first post-slab tradie, the termite dude, despite being instructed to 'please be careful' on arrival, throws his sharp metal toolie down on the slab with a ding and a scrape...

Onwards. Today is framing day and we shall rejoice. Snuck up once at lunchtime to see what had been happening but only saw a pile of blue timber, so snuck back home again before I could be accused of spying. On my way to pick up Jem from preschool not a whole lot more seemed to have changed – what were these four grown men doing up there, anyway? Warwick had taken Ben the Apprentice out of Tafe this week so he could gain some valuable life lessons in real, proper-like framing – I overheard him saying on the phone to Ben's supervisor that they probably won't do anything like this job for a couple of years, so it would be well worth his while, and the supervisor seemed to agree. (Really??)

But driving back from school not half an hour later and it was a whole different kettle of fish – suddenly we had bedroom walls! Great big, gorgeous walls, with the biggest window frames I'd ever imagined... I walked around and snapped pics (in socks on the slab) with a big goofy grin on my face – I guess the boys have seen that look before on other framing days! Can't wait to see some more tomorrow. Have I mentioned how much fun this bit is?

(PS Any advice, anecdotes, third-hand recollections on the slab front gratefully received at this point...)

 

Waz through hallway wall, on the blower to the roofers – multi-task it!

Week 11, day fifty-one

Tuesday, 5 April 2011

Birth of a shed

So, from a young slip of a slab on Friday, the shed has now emerged in (almost) all it's wonderful glory – stroke of genius, Warwick and fellas! Here's how it happened...

The frame was knocked together on Monday, once we finally decided how to position the monster window...

At the eleventh hour the slope of the roof was reversed so that the peak is on the door/monster window southern side, which made much more sense really, but just involved dealing with the run-off – nothing that a bit of guttering couldn't fix!

Tuesday was supposed to be the first day of main house framing-up, but another delay on the timber delivery (which drew the strongest words from Warwick thus far – directed at timber rep, not me!) meant the shed got a bit more attention lavished on it while they were waiting:

Windows in, frame for door, zincalume roof and gutter...

...a bit of lining and we're getting close!

Cute, hey? A mini house, Warwick calls it...

View through the monster window to Rosie's 'climbing tree' (and large pile of mulch)