Other progress photos

Looking up to the loft landing. This is prior to varnishing or the oiling of the ceiling panels.

The space in the loft storage areas is quite good. Here is a peep into one of them.
The downstairs is looking quite good now but this is prior to the kitchen going in or the ceiling paint...
Outside is looking pretty good with the decks now oiled. I think this photo is prior to the oiling happening. More progress photos would be good but the weather has been pretty miserable at this point.

With a little help from our friends

Painting, painting, painting (and oiling and varnishing)...

With the help of Julie, Sue, Pauly and Nikki we are getting there...

As of 31 December 2009, we have now oiled the decks, oiled the ceiling panels in the loft area, varnishing the balustrades and done some of the painting of the ceilings. There is a fair amount to go though... we're less than half way!

Sue is running away after doing a heap of oiling. I think she claimed a number of posts after smearing herself with decking oil (and of course the posts).

I don't think Batman is helping too much... but is enjoying the kitchen!
Pauly is doing a great job with the fiddly balustrades. She seems to like getting a fake tan courtesy of the varnish.
Ceilings are awful to paint. Now I know why we never did ceilings before. Even harder on plasterboard.
Onto the ceiling panels in the loft area. We're just using decking oil which was recommended by the guys at the local Bristol store. (btw I'd recommend using Bristol over Bunnings just for sheer efficiency. It was quick to get advice and also quick to get in and out of there. No queuing at the paint counter for us!)

Nikki is helping us out with the ceiling panels. Sanding first.. and then the oiling... back to work!!

Kitchen Woes

Damian is a lovely guy, but definitely not organised. Our experience with DIY Australia so far has been pretty disorganised.

Whilst the quote was great and Damian (who runs DIY Australia) is lovely we have had some issues ever since the quote!

When I followed up on the delivery, it turned out that they were missing the doors. They were made... and ready but just couldn't be found! So they have to make them at a later stage (unless I wanted a different colour? No I wanted to stay with the theme.)

The delivery of the kitchen was delayed even after I did a work from home day. At 9pm I called to find out where it was... late shouldn't mean that late... and shouldn't I have had a call before that time? I gave them the benefit of the doubt as maybe they thought they could still do it... but it turned out the delivery would happen the following day when I would try and rush home to be here around 6.50pm to take delivery of the kitchen.

When I got home, Will was helping Damian unload the truck into the garage. All good so far... Damian even showed us how to put together the cabinets with Cabinet one as an example.

I'm glad he did... but I was hoping also for a set of instructions? And what about a list of parts? But no... we had to guess how many handles there are meant to be... and I counted them up and told Damian that there weren't enough!

But the worst things have been:

• When we got to Howes Valley to put the cabinets together we found we didn't have all the pieces to build the two base corner cabinets! It was very very irritating especially since Will then took a day off work to build the cabinets later that week (and Jason had allowed Monday to do the kitchen installation which now could not be done!)
• We found out yesterday that the benchtops were scratched (we don't know to what extent) and more importantly one of the benchtops wasn't the right length :(

This now means that the kitchen is delayed... the plumber is delayed, the tiler is delayed... which this close to Christmas means... we won't be in before then! It was making me physically ill but I think it's my high expectation thing. I just need to resign myself to not being in during the forced xmas break period.

Locked up and almost there

We went up this weekend and were very excited to be able to use the front door! It is fully locked up now and the plasterboard and ceiling lining is in. The french door was a bit of a surprise as I was expecting the glass style one but the doors are solid with frosted glass instead.

Goodness knows what we are going to do with the front door as we'll have to paint it. I'm very tempted to go a radical colour... but how radical can I be! Already there are quite a few timber 'colours' involved with Merbau decking, timber supports, pine lining, Elm flooring... and then the colour scheme we're going for is the same one as at home. It's a Taubman's colour scheme but we won't be getting it in Taubman's paint as it was the worst paint we've used thus far! I think it's back to Bristol or Wattle or Dulux for us.

The front door whilst it is unpainted is a very

unappealing green colour. (I was trying to get awa

y from the photo but Batman had other ideas!)

The interior is looking great with all the plasterboard and the place looks a bit bigger now than it did before. I don't know how that optical illusion works with space and finishing a house. Still not a large house and the ceilings are very low... good thing that we're pretty short people :).

The bathroom is looking fabulous! I'm glad we went and got the 'special' feature tiles as I think it makes the difference. The larger tiles also look good. I can't wait to see what it looks like with the floor tiles which are a milk coffee sort of colour.

The loft floor is almost finished! I suspect we should be able to paint / oil from top down as there isn't much work for this part left... probably just the light fittings.

The main thing to go in is the kitchen which I'll have to chase up. Thank goodness we now have the means to get the kitchen up to Howes Valley. In it's first test run it did pretty good with Batman and me sharing the passenger seat! I am not sure if he'll be a good "ute" dog!

Almost at lock up

We've been up a couple of times so the photos here are across a couple of trips!

The transition has been from this:

Majority of the frame up... except for the top floor/loft area

To this:

Frames including roof up and even the cladding is on! The zinculume doesn't look too bad and I think it'll help reflect the heat from the sun. It's looking pretty good now!

To this:

Railings for the balustrade are in and even the decking should be in at this stage. Just missing a couple of doors (front and the french doors) otherwise it'd be considered lock up.

Some other photos:

This is the South facing decking looking out towards the view. At the moment the balustrades aren't in so we can see quite a lot... I think the veradahs are going to keep the downstairs area pretty cool in summer!

After our trip to Canada I wanted to build some little statues of people from the rock we had (Inukshuk) so I started doing so with Will letting me know how silly and lopsided they were...

There is plenty of room under the house for... something!

I particularly like the supporting post that Jason chose to put in which has a bit of character... the problem is how are we going to install floorboards around this post?

Most of the frame is up!

We again went out to the property on Sunday to see the progress of the build. Jason (builder) had gotten most of the frames up which was pretty cool as we got to walk around the 'rooms'. The really really cool bit was the supporting post in the middle of the house. He chose a rough looking one which gives it a lot of character. We also scored a lovely dressed beam he put in (as he no longer needed it for his own house).
Will and I braved the climb up to the top to enjoy the view from the "top floor". The floor is down for the loft but the frames for the roof line has yet to go up. It'll be a bit of a shame that the roof will hide the view from the second story. I had a bit of sunbake on the top floor to warm myself up (it was < 1 degree celcius at home the morning... and I can only imagine how cold it would have been on-site!)

Level of Dam

Just saw the old post with Will standing in the empty/dry dam... and thought I'd post a current photo of the dam (as of today):

Building progress

Well it's been a while since I have posted anything to this blog but that doesn't mean there hasn't been progress... cos there has!

On the 12th June, groundworks started with holes being dug into the ground for each of the footings... and unfortunately the guys kept hitting rocks so the holes got bigger and bigger and bigger... which meant that a whole extra lot of concrete needed to be ordered in even despite the best effort of the team to throw extra rocks back into the hole to make them smaller in volume.


Will then installed a gate on the 15th June so that the builders could leave some of the materials on site without too many dramas. But putting the gate in was not an easy feat when we were in a rush and had poor materials to work with. We dug out the holes (experienced similar problems as the excavator where we kept hitting rocks so ended up with much wider holes than we wanted) and put the posts in and poured in a bag of quick set concrete (and hauled water from the dam). The gate looked good... until someone used it a few days later! We did a return trip and fixed the gate on the 20th June and it's been good ever since!

There was work being done on the 20th with the brickie putting in the brick piers. I was very happy as the brick piers were quite tall... which meant the floor of the house was going to be higher than I first thought.

After a few mishaps and a strangely silent supplier, the A&A Worm Farm Waste System was installed on the 16th July. We're very excited about it and can't wait till the house is completed so it can be used. It's a strange little set up with a compost bin sitting on top of the tank and a tall vent spinning in the wind. Whilst a bit nonplussed about the lack of communication when it was being installed the stated 'passion' that the CEO has given me hope that the hype of the system will live up to expectations.

Anyway today we went up and saw the floor was down! (And as usual walking around the footprint of the house it seems very small. But the decks seem huge in comparison!) Will was pretty impressed with the corrugated sheeting which was under the house to provide extra protection / insulation... I think he was particuarly impressed with the additional storage space that height of the floor would give him!

Approved!

We now have approval to build!!
A package dated 22 May 2009 arrived in the post with the Notice of Determination of Development Application (which according to our builder means it's approved!)

Will has managed to detach one of the gates and is working out a way to place it strategically to protect any building materials on the block.

Council Approval?

We sent our plans in late December to Singleton council for approval. And received early February a letter requesting some changes... changes which are going to cost over $12k! Mainly for fire hazard reduction. I suppose we are getting better materials.

Jason is a real gem and has been handling all the changes, so hopefully we'll get council approval soon.

So at the moment the house is going to be on the ridge, it will be clad in zinculum (yep it will likely look like a tin shed!), be a loft design and hopefully have great views of the valley below.

When we went their last, the dam was teeming with little frogs. I hope that means the water is very healthy!