Day 74 (Mon 12th July) - Termimesh put around house...
The Termimeshproduct gets applied all around the house - on top of the existing bricks (two bricks deep)... After this application the remaining brick layers are built up on top.
ThePlasteringinside the house is continuing...
This is Bill the Plasterer :) who did a fantastic job!
He seemed to work really hard with a high attention to detail... His job was patching all the nail spots and joins of the plaster-boards.
Bill was also friendly - something I appreciate when we are constantly dropping past looking around on site...
He had a heck of a job too - as previous workers (who put up the plaster-boards) did not do a great job apparently... Instead of using glue to the middle sections of boards to hold them in place - they used a multitude of nails (or screws not sure) instead...
This gave Bill a million and one extra spotsto patch - as can be seen in the photo below...
Bill also picked up that the front entry ceiling did not look quite right.
The line of the raised ceiling** seemed to reach the edge of the niche in an ugly way... So Bill spoke up and therefore it will get 'fixed' and plastered later when they come back to do any further patching needed...
(**"coffered" ceiling I think it is called - not sure of the spelling though)
In this photo (taken later on Day 81) you can see the beam of wood added (the "fixed line") - that while it shortens the raised area **, overall it will make the raised ceiling look better when its finished (hopefully)...
... hmmm... I don't know if that explaination makes sense... its hard to describe this stuff esp as I am not a tradie :P
Here are a few more pics...
The front entry way (showing the niche and a small bit at the top is the area I just attempted to describe that needed fixing)...
Looking into the media room...
This is the steel corner angles that is attached to the wall edges
(by Bill the plasterer :)
Lastly here is my 'arty' photo for this post - I think I will call it "workbench perspective"...
More posts soon.... Huge thank you for stopping by and following our progress... :)
Catch Up Post #11 - Day 70 (Thurs 8th July) - Its PLASTERBOARD time :)
This is the ceiling of the Media Room being put into place...
The laundry door was delivered...
A huge pile of dirt also arrived at the front of the house (to be used for bricking maybe?)
The kids were getting into mischief in the various dirt mountains so we went for a walk through the estates walking paths...
or rather, for a scooter...
As we went through the nature reserve, their goal was to find interesting items for me to photograph... such fun!!!
We also names the unusual tree trunks eg. "the monster alien crocodile tree"... (Don't you love kids' imaginations)
Here are the two pumpkins (minus jumpers and a pair of shoes - guess who has to carry them?!) finally making it back to the street... we were all thoroughly exercised.... :)))
To finish Day 70 - Here is one fav pic from our afternoon's adventure..
Catch Up Post #5 - Day 58 (Sat 26th June)
saw the BRICKS delivered to site!
The construction progress has the blue lines of the roof battons all over the roof, added to the green lines of the wall frames... the house is looking very colourful and stripey :)
The kids have lots of fun scootering on the street... Its such a nice break from the confined space of the rental unit - bringing much hope / longing for when we finally move into the new place...
Otherwise if there are no workmen in the house, the kids like scootering (or rip-sticking) through the house. I've told them to get 'it all out of their system - coz there won't be any such scootering inside the house soon enough' :)
It's nice to see the kids getting more and more excited about the new house with us... They absolutely can't wait to finally be living our new life in OUR place either :)
Whew I never thought it would be this long between posts - my apologies to all you who have been asking and waiting patiently for more pics ...
Catch Up Post #1 -
So quick summary... Slab was finished on Day 40
(Tues 8th June)
Of course it required toasting this huge step towards our dream with a great friend and soon-to-be neighbour ...
The Frames were delivered the next day and before we knew it - our house had 3D shape!!!
Then Day 44/45/46 was the long weekend in June - which meant we had visitors and got to celebrate the slab (and frame) with some friends and family. Sooo good to show it off and at the same time pinch ourselves that it was finally looking substancial :)))
Big weekend :)))
Thank you to those who made the long trip to visit us :)))
It made it even more real to be onsite celebrating with those who have supported us so much on this journey!
We got to walk through the site with our friends... Having frames up meant it was easier to describe our thoughts for each space etc...
Needless to say the kids had a ball seeing their friends also...
HORRAY!!!!
What are pipes for but yelling into? haha
(the kids discovered they could speak to each other from the pipes in different parts of the house)
What a highlight of the construction process. Well the first time we had decent visual evidence!!!!
A weekend full of celebrating, coffees, chats over our plans, and catch ups...
So, I expected maybe a day or two of concrete drying before the next step... but no there was not a day's rest - with the timber wall frames being delivered to our site this morning.
I took these photos earlier today...
Our Site Supervisor said the carpenters would have been on-site working this afternoon. The walls are beginning to go up as I write... The roof trusses are being delivered on Friday... And we can apparently expect that the roof will begin to be put up by the end of next week...
Here are some pics :)
DAY 41 ~ timber delivery
- these will be the walls of our home very soon :)
the wonderful Slab...
the colourful reflection...
...greys, greens, blue and fluffy white...
What a glorious sky today :)
We have also been busy talking light fittings and fans and electrical stuff.
The electrician officially doesn't come on board until after the roof is up. That said, we instigated an early meeting with him yesterday. I find it an interesting challenge to decide on elements of our house (that we will have to live with for a very long time) but not actually have a full concept of what it will all look like... He was a great guy and took all my questions really well...
Have to leave this post there... I feel like there are heaps of details that I will have to either just leave out or come back at a later stage to fill in... There is just not enough time to blog it all (and still get sleep :)
Thanks for reading :) Let me know if you've stopped by... Cheers :)))
Thanks to our wonderful iphones (guess who is dreaming of the iphone 4 already) I have some footage of the digging / concreting work on site...
The Slab Work
Drilling and digging the trenches...
Concreting the trenches...
So awesome to watch this work happening... I don't expect everyone to find it riveting viewing - but for us it is such a relief that tangible progress is being made on this dream of building our home! No longer is it "yet more delays" that had us watching our block of land sitting untouched while we waited and waited for action...
Looking ahead, the actual build may have more delays yet. (hmmm do I be realistic or optimistic!?) However, at least WE CAN FINALLY SEE PROGRESS!!!! Horray!!!! Its hard to believe that its actually happening - the ground floor of the house is nearly in place and we can walk around the slab perimeter and start to get a perspective of the space...
Hello to all the wonderful friends, family and visitors who are stopping by to read this blog... I want to start by saying how much it means to me to have your presence beside me (in the virtual world :) on this journey. Building Sanctuary
The past week has seen the Building Sanctuary facebook page reach over 100 'fans'. This is so encouraging. Now I don't expect everyone to understand my facination with Social Media lol - but it goes hand-in-hand with gratitude for those who support me. That said - a big THANK YOU to HG for officially being the momentus '100th fan' on facebook.
I've had quite a busy week. Work and family commitments has meant that I am only just now uploading and sharing the exciting construction photos of the past several days.
So posts from here will be a 'feast of photos' to catch up... YAY!
To catch up - 1st June 2010 was DAY 33 on the construction timeline.
Up to then, our site had been continually rained on... The extremely wet soil and pooling of water around the plumbing meant that the construction work completely stalled. There were ditches of water everywhere...
By Day 33, our wonderful builders stepped in and dug trenches to help drain out the crazy pooling of water... I think a pump was even involved to get rid of the water...
The result was the soil drying out enough for the next stage of the slab to happen... What a relief!
DAY 36 (4th June 2010)
This Friday was one of the most exciting for a while. I turned up early to visit the site and what do I see but trucks and men on site working away... Soooo good to see. I walked around taking photo after photo - who knows what they thought? But I was not going to miss capturing this wonderful wonderful step :) Here is a few of the many I took...
They were digging the 2m deep holes for the piering and also trenches all across the house site. The drilling machines were awesome to watch...
The other part they were digging out was the trenches. These trenches ran around the edge of the house plot and also across the site. The long mesh pieces (that had been delivered to site way back on DAY 11) were placed in these trenches.
I will continue this story soon... can only do this post in bits and pieces ahhh...
