Yay! We have a frame started!

Happily, the frame has started to go up. So now we can really get a feel for the sizes of the rooms and how things will look :)

We have made some progress this week despite being away in QLD for four days. The water tanks are in and we have got most of the floor down (yellowtongue). Later on we will be covering the floor with Jarrah timber floor boards.

The next stage will be frame going up. I can't wait for that. It will really start to look like a house then.

We have also decided to make some amendments to the plan - which will mean going back to council but should be a fairly simple process (lets hope!). We are going to go up over the garage as well and have a large studio there. Eventually it may become self contained accommodation or perhaps we will make it into a master bedroom suite one day. For now, it will just create a lot of extra space and will be much cheaper to do now rather than in 5-10 years.

November

Here is the concrete slab for the water tanks under the house...















We have made more progress. We have now got the steel bearers in place, some of our timber for the frame has been delivered, our water tanks have arrived and we have some of the timber joists in place. So going well so far!



Two tanks - both 4700L which is great.

Its been a while since the last update and I apologise but we have been a little busy. However, we have the slab down - yay! it went down last weekend despite an incredible amount of rain. Our poor concreter was there till 9pm on Saturday night making sure it was ok. So far it looks great.

We have filled in all the trenches around the sub floor and the next step is the order the steel (tomorrow) for the bearers and joists for the lower levels. As you can see, Chris has been busy measuring up - unfortunately due to the rain, we have a bit of a swimming pool.

The orange around the perimeters is Kordon, our termite protection and the black paint on the walls is our water proofing.

There has been a bit of rain recently so things have slowed a little, but I am still most impressed with the progress. Here are some pics of our lovely creek on our block. And of our progress.

We have now got more walls and are just about ready to pour the concrete slab for the garage (where the orange plastic is now). The slab will be part suspended. The rest of the house (to the left) will be bearers and joist.

We are still aiming to have our roof on by Xmas! Cross fingers.

We have walls!

Well, we are pretty excited. After a tough week in reasonably hot weather, we have got the walls up for the lower level (ie sub floor). Our brickies are amazing. They have worked extra hard, they are fast and their work impeccable. Our engineer is so impressed he is going to start recommending them to his other clients. Sometimes it really pays to go with your gut feeling and not just who comes in with the cheapest quote.

The next stage is the pouring of the slab for the garage and laying the steel bearers and joist for the first floor.

Here are some pics from the last few days. Me in the rain - our first rain since starting!

We have had our bricks delivered - yes they are bright red! BUT they are commons and will be rendered so all is good.

Can you see how much dirt has been removed? compare these pics to the earlier ones - good $10k worth of earth moving there - and that is cheap!

AND MORE.........

Here are some more progress pics...steadily getting there...


and we are hoping that the brickies can start next week to get the brick work up to floor level. we are in the process of deciding between two quotes. I am so proud of all the incredible work chris has done :)

Progress

So here are some progress pics - just over a week since we started. Not bad!! Amazing to actually see it in person and to actually visualise it and think "this is real!".





Looking back towards the drive - excavating where there dining room will be




Our formwork going up. This is the front of the formal lounge where the french doors will open out onto lawn (which will need to be built up and retained)







The completed concrete footings!







The concrete truck pouring the footings.

















The trenches dug by chris ready for the concrete.

Day 1

So we have kicked off! Yay!! Very very happy. Here are some pics of the trenches we (ahem...Chris) has dug.

Check out the rock!! This is what we will be building the garage on top of - it won't be going anywhere!

and here is our friendly neighbourhood kookaburra - Karl!!



He was super happy with us for digging up the worms for him.


Tomorrow will be more digging in anticipation of the footings being poured on wednesday.

AUGUST

Well, it has been an eventful month i guess and has felt like a very slow one!

However, we are there! YAY!

We are kicking off tomorrow which is super exciting :)

Getting the construction certificate was a pain in the backside mostly due to getting the landscape plan as well as other bits and pieces the private certifier needed.

So tomorrow is the big day with chris meeting all of the relevant people on site to start the digging process. We have scraped the site and erected a shed for the workers.