Monday, February 14, 2011

We are wired - and not in the caffeine type of way!

Things are moving along quickly at the moment so you can all expect fairly regular updates at this stage.


House visit happened on Friday night. It had been raining so it was really muddy all round. I always somehow manage to wear the most inappropriate footwear to the site - thongs. Needless to say it was difficult trying to enter the house with out getting my feet dirty. Del always seems to have his white shoes on too!  *mental note - get gumboots and leave them in the car.*


So after negotiating our way through the mud and scaffolding we entered the house. We were thrilled to find wires wires ever where, wires wires up and down the stairs! Power point brackets all over the place. It looks as though we did well on putting in loads, although I am sure we will need more!


Heating and cooling ducts have been installed along with the evaporative cooling unit and the solar panel for the hot water is on the roof. 
Plaster board is laying in wait for installation and we have a bath frame which Del tested out! See below pictures for that one - classic!
There was one thing we couldn't believe - for all of you who are building and are about to do your electrical appointment take notes here. 
Knowing that we wanted to put some heavy chandelier type lighting in some areas of the house we had told the lady at electrical that that was what we wanted. She advised us that we should put a reinforced bracket in the roof for it so when attaching our lighting it would not pull out the plaster and fall from the weight of it. "Good idea" we say and "how much"? This cost somewhere over the $100 mark for a "reinforced chandelier provision" AKA a block of wood banged in between two beams using 4 long nails. OUCH! Had we have know this we would have "banged in" our own bit of wood and saved ourselves about $400! Ahh you live, you learn, you teach!
Next problem - How is it that one "reinforced chandelier provision" is missing from the most difficult to get to spot - directly about the staircase? Why? Its not like we are going to be able to bang that one in ourselves! Dang it!


Oh yes, lastly but not leastly pretty much all of our bricking is up. Only a little bit left to go down the left side of the house!


Peace out


Ax










Wednesday, February 9, 2011

A New Year a Bricked up House..



Its the new year and already we are into February.
I apologise for not having up loaded any posts since before Christmas, but not many things have happened at the house in the first few weeks of January and we were busy with holidays and enjoying ourselves across the ditch in NZ and up in QLD for a my lovely Sister in-law's big "4-0".
There is good news in the last few weeks though:
THE BRICKIES ARE HERE!
Yes you read correctly! We have brick work. They started back around the 20th January and seem to be working pretty hard really. This weekend when Del and I went passed, we were surprised to find the brick work up to the second story and the garage bricked in. The scaffolding has also been put up in preparation for the second story bricking and the second story has been wrapped up like a neat little pressie!
It is really coming together now.
I also noticed that the waste point that had been missed in the slab laying has amazingly appeared!

Our plasterboard has been delivered and is waiting to be put up, it will look so different when that is in I am sure!

In Melbourne over the last weekend we had massive storms and torrents of water flooding areas across the Melbourne Metro area. I was nervous about how the house had held up through all the rain and whether the lake nearby to us had over flowed or anything. So on our visit this weekend we were curious to see if there was any cause for concern. Turns out it was fine and we have our moat back again, it had dried up with all the heat we had had, but its back!

I have spoken with our Site Supervisor and he has let me know that things are about to get even more exciting and will move along quickly, lets hope he is right!

Stay tuned for more developments ;)

Cheers
Ax




Relaxing in QLD
New Zealand






The Moat
Scaffolding in place for bricking up of second story