Fully erect

The title of this blog was Derricks idea

Well a lot has happened this week, we have our frame up and some of our windows in.  Can not believe how fast this part of the build has gone. We had  a bit of rain during the week and the builders just worked on regardless. There is a house across the street from us ( started about a month before us) and one around the corner (this one started about 2 months before us) both are knock down re-builds and we have now over taken both of them.  Can not fault Kurmond on the building phase.  Every thing is  running very smoothly.  Michael one of the owners of Kurmond was on site on Friday checking everything and went through any questions we had.

Our main question was about how the stairs are going to look,  we were going to have a door to under the stairs from the hall way, but we think we may have the door open up into the garage.  This should give us a bit more space for things like bikes and camping equipment.  We also had to work out if we wanted our handrail to go to the top of the stairs with a post or have it butt up to the half wall at the top of the stairs, this looks out into a void near the front door.
So on Saturday morning DCQ and I went off to the Oran Park display homes to find inspiration.  (DCQ has no idea on how to visualise)  We think we have come up with a solution, we just have to check it with our site supervisor on Monday.

 It seems as the frame goes up and you can see rooms and different areas appear, the house seems bigger than I thought.
The last bits of the frame should be done by mid week and we are getting the bricks delivered by the end of the week.

Lets hope we don't have too much rain in the next few weeks.
Beck

Frame ready to go up (Thursday afternoon)

This was done by 8.00am Friday morning

Windows delivered

Crane came to put up I beams and top floor frame

End of the Thursday

Study windows in

Back of the house
top floor
Brad's room is on the left Larni's on the right
Walk in robes in the middle
bottom floor
dining/kitchen/family room

Roof on Friday

top floor living area and bedroom 4 to the right

Media room

Dining room

Family room out to alfresco on the right
(from Kitchen)

Kitchen (from family room)

Main bedroom

I've got wood!

Or is it timber? Either way the ground floor frames have arrived, along with the steel beams and first floor joists.  Hopefully the weather will be kind to us, and tomorrow the ground floor frame will be erect.

Floor joists being delivered.

My wood. (Big isn't it ;-) )

Rain!!!!

Well the BOM got it wrong.  It wasn't showers at all, it was a torrential downpour all Saturday night and looks like all day today (Sunday).  Went out to check that our lovely elderly next door neighbour didn't get flooded from our place, and to see if we now have a moat.

Well as it turns out I was very surprised to find that we don't have a moat at all, just a very mudding work site and our neighbours place has no problems at all.

Lets hope tomorrow will just be showers and it will clear up by the end of the week.

The Back Yard

The Front Yard

Poo Pipes!

Well the plumbers have surprised us again with a sneaky weekend assault.  Today as we drove past for our daily visit, more of the external plumbing had been progressed.

Here you can see the trench which runs from the house down to the back right hand corner of our block (where the photo was taken from).  This is the sewerage line to the sewer main in the block behind us.

This image is of the point where I expect our sewer pipe will connect into the Sydney Water Sewer Main.

Here you can see the rain water pipe (green) to the water tank, and the overflow which runs to the sewer main (as far as I can tell??)

 Sadly, my beautiful new concrete slab hasn't been shown the same love and care that I think it deserves, but I have seen this sort of mess at other building sites.  I'm sure it will clean up just fine. Here's a couple of pics of our slab covered in dirt :-(

Of some concern though, is the damage that has been caused to the Slab.  This is an image of the corner of the Water tank Pad.  There is similar damage (not as bad) to other parts of the slab.  I'll talk to the builder on Monday, to see what happens about this.  If anyone can tell me if this is normal or not, please leave a comment.

So this week has been quite productive, and we have been blessed with great weather.  Unfortunately, this is what is forecast for next week...

Lets see what happens!

Dez.

Absolutely Slab-ulous!

True to their word, the Concretors completed our slab yesterday, on schedule.  Everything seemed to go well without any hitches or surprises.  Here's how it happened.... (Click Photos to enlarge)

After pouring the piers the formwork started...

Internal plumbing was installed...

Waffle pods and re-o placed...

Pumper and concrete arrives (early start at 0645)...

The Little Fella keeps an eye on the Concretors while the pour begins...

The first load of concrete (in our Dining Room) is laid...

The finished product.

Next step will be to put in the external drainage, which is scheduled for completion by the end of the week.  Then we hand over a bucket load of cash and the frames, windows, roof tiles and bricks begin.
Dez.

Construction Begins

On Monday 22 August we received the final piece of paperwork to start construction, the Construction Certificate.  From that day the builder had 20 working days to start construction, and they advised us that they would start three days early which is today.
Yesterday however, we finally saw the beginning of construction for our new home!  A day ahead of schedule, the excavators and surveyors were on sight and levelled off the site for the Slab.

Turning this...

into this...

Today the concretors dug out and poured the piers, 52 in total, ranging in depth from 1100mm to 1800mm.  They also started forming up, and they are expecting to have the slab poured by Wednesday next week.

So we're off to a cracking start, and hopefully this is a sign of things to come.  Here's some pics of today's action.

Dez.

Digging the Piers.

The Piers, all dug and waiting for concrete.

The Pumper and Aggie start pouring.

Pouring the Piers.

Demo done - DA approved

We would have to be the wolds worst bloggers.  Have not posted anything in about a month.

The Demo is now finished after a whole lot of problems.  We bought a dump,  it was just buried under the ground.  They found a 22m driveway under 30cm of soil, lots of bathroom tiles that i don't think all belonged to the house we knocked down and assorted bits of household crap.  The demo ended up costing double what we were expecting, but considering we ended up having to get rid of two houses, one that we knew about and the one under the ground, it didn't end up too bad.

From the bricks you can see on the right, up to the truck

there is a driveway under the ground

Out empty block.

We had to get AHD (Australian Height Datum) flood  levels done, before we could put our plans into council.  We are fine, just had to make sure our nice new house didn't end up under water.  The DA was put into council on the 6th July 2011.  Lets hope it all goes through with no major issues.

On the 19th July we went into Kurmond to do all of our internal colours and fixtures.  We had a pretty good idea of what we wanted, but it is very stressful trying to think how all of these things you are picking will all look like in real life in your new house.  We also had to do our electrical layout.  We had done a lot of this at home.  We had worked out where we wanted out light fittings, down lights and power points, but forgot to work out where to put the light switches.  After we left out 4hour meeting we realised we forgot the light under the stairs. (we have now fixed the missing light).

So this is what we have picked for our externals.

This is what will go where

Garage doors
Caoba timergrain

Roof tile profile

Dune - Window frame, Fascia, Downpipes and Water tank
Monument - Gutters and external Balustrade

Zelda - around garage doors
Silkworm - cladding and around front door

Austral Metropolis Topaz

Roof tile Ebony

The Drive way will be a Cove finish in Gunmetal.  The front door, and post on the balcony will be stained Jarrah.

This is the 1200mm pivot door we picked

Internal colours
Main Colour Portland Stone
Feature wall Athena

Internal Doors

Counter tops in Kitchen and Bathrooms
Kitchen - Crisp White

Internal door handle

Kids Bathroom and Powder Room
Ensuite - same wall tile.  Darker floor tile and different
Feature tile.

Checking the DA's on Friday 22nd and found that we had issues with the DA.  Rang the council and we were told that the house did not fit into the building envelope.  Kurmond had addressed this in the application.  The only other issue was a large tree in the front of the house, we did want a double driveway to the gutter, but council will not let us remove it.  Rang council on Monday to find out what we needed to do, but by then they had looked at the application properly and everything was fine.
Council will not let us remove the tree, so we will have to have a single layback that opens up to the double driveway.

This is the tree that we have to keep.
At least it's a nice looking tree

We got the Consent Approved on the DA on the 28th July 2011.  Next step Construction certificate.  We have been told this should take around 2 weeks.  It would be great if we could see things happening by the end of August.  Fingers crossed.