Bricks

Coming home from the shops yesterday I took a detour and drove down the street near our build. I could see a car at our block but not what anyone was doing there so last night G and I went for a drive to check out what had happened. I was wondering if the roofer had had a sudden urge to start. Seemed unlikely but you never can tell. When we arrived we realised that all the bricklayers tools were gone so that was obviously what the car/s were doing there. Since we were there we took ano0ther look around. Any excuse for photos. :)




Had a closer look at the brickwork. We were already aware of the slightly crooked solider bricks at the front of the house under the windows. My first comment on seeing them laid was, "Those bricks are crooked".
We've now found some brick damage that we hadn't notice before. We assume it's happened when the bricklayers were packing up. Where the bricklayers had a wooden plank balanced on the brickwork going through the doorframe of the slider into our meals area a brick has been damaged. We are not happy. It's right below the fixed glass section of the slider. We will be asking that it be replaced.
Hopefully it's a fairly easy job.




One thing we will be needing to do is some retaining walls at some stage.
This photo shows the rise from road ground level on the main street side of the house.
We have around a 1.2 m drop. We hope to retain about 300-400 mm up the slope.

Comparison

A while back I made a mockup of what I thought the house would look like. I used a photo of a house in a neighbouring town that had similar features and played with it a bit. Ours will have dark window trim and a dark blue-grey roof. But I am quite pleased with how it's going. here is a comparison between our house and the mockup.
The 3rd picture is from our design drawings provided by the builders themselves.

What the house looks like as of Saturday the 20th of December

Title says it all.

Brickwork Finished

Well they've finished.
I rushed down to the site just after 8 this morning to talk to the head Brickie M. Since our S.S. is on leave I figured it was the only way to get an idea about the concern.
M assured me this morning that the slider door frame was correct. phew

I returned just after 11 and left a slab of mid strength beers in appreciation.
Thanks guys. They were still working when I arrived. Cleaning up the site. All the brickwork was finished by this stage.

G told me he thinks the roofie is planning on making a start before he breaks for xmas.
yippee!


BY 3 this afternoon they were well and truely departed and we could have a wander.


Hallway from entry area to family.

Had a bit of a panic last night that the main passageway from the front door heading to the main living/family room areas was too narrow but it's fine. It's because it's so long it looks narrow.
I was hoping to put pictures on the walls there. I think it will still work.

Almost done

House is looking great. brickwork is almost complete. We are very relieved as we've built the house without being able to see a display and did quite a few mod's to the plan.


Anyway We have one slight immediate panic. Anyone know what a metal frame sliding door frame should look like?
The frame at the beginning of the minor passageway is for a sliding door. It's labeled something like "multipurpose frame" but it looks like it sticks out heaps on both sides with the same profile as the other doors in the house. it looks just exactly the same without the hinges. I'm worried that on the side the slider should be it should be less "stick out". Anyone got any idea?
Our S.S. is on holidays until the 5th of Jan. The brickies are about 1/2 a day max from finishing. and all the roofing timbers are on site. will they start roofing without us signing off on the brickwork? I'm a bit worried that if this door frame is wrong and they start roofing before we can get hold of the S.S. we'll have a problem.
We plan to go and talk to the brickies tomorrow morning and if they aren't sure ring the emergency contact guy.







Standing in our bedroom with the one incomplete wall to go. To the left is the lounge. in the centre the entry to the front passageway which leads to the main family room/living areas.









Our W.I.R it also goes around to the left as well.




Looking into the ensuite. The shorter wall in the background is the shower wall.






The Kitchen.






What's left to do.

One more day closer.

Red is completed. Blue is started. (They've done about 4-5 courses on the long wall)

So far

Well the building seems to be rushing along now. I've uploaded a copy of the plans with all the currently built walls marked in red. As you can see there's not a lot more to be done.
DH noticed there were 4 workman there today busy on the house.







We've also has some unsettling not totally bad just sad in a selfish way type news. We've kind of grown used to the idea that no one is buying around us atm. Enjoying that we had the additional blocks around us as pretend ours. No responsibility. but all the pleasure of distance from neighbours. It seems this might change sooner than we expected. We talked to the estate agent we purchased our block through, on Sunday. We had noticed that the "for sale" sign had been removed at the start of the small sub division. He told us that the developer had decided to pull the sale advertising and give it a bit of a break then start a fresh next year. Terrific we thought BUT today Dh saw something rather startling. A new sign has been erected closer to town. There is to be an auction at the end of January to sell 2 blocks in the estate. ( if not sold sooner) The developer has also said he will " put a car in the garage " of either lot sold if they build within 12 months. hmm start build maybe. OK this could be a good thing. yes? errm well the 2 blocks he has picked out are..1. directly across the road from us on the other corner and 2.at the cross section of the t junction with the main street and so opposite us the other way. So there goes our pretend game.
I guess the developer is struggling since no one has bought any blocks. a shame he's picked the ones closest to us to sell next. Hopefully he'll come to the party and put in our trees now. DH said that perhaps if we get no satisfaction before hand on the day of the auction w e could set up camp at our house with a sign that reads"ask us about additional expensive site works costs!"
I certainly hope I'm on holidays so I can sit at the house and watch it all happen.
I guess that means we'll have people trooping through our place if it's not at lockup peeking into our build. We often see people having a look when we go up there.
On Sunday night we spotted what we assume was some local hoons all set to drive up our little street but when they saw us walking around the house (it was almost dark) they stopped. Instead they drove into the vacant blocks across from us near the bush and found some poor little joey to chase with their car for a good ten minutes. :(

News for the week.

As of this afternoon we have our first 2 internal walls completed. I am delighted to announce it's the office walls, one of which is also the back of the kitchen and the other backs on to the lounge room! As a confirmed computer head I am really excited to think that it is the first room finished. How sad, especially as it won't be used as a main computer room for a few years. Assuming we have the finances to get the networking gurus to run cable at the end of the build that is. Otherwise it will be in use from the start and we'll all have to share the room.

View as of today Saturday the 13th of December. I'm going to be adding one of these each week from the same spot.






Delighted to discover our S.S is on the ball. Somehow the brickies were measuring from the wrong point and put the back sliding door that goes into the alfresco in the wrong place. It's out by 1 brick or so. DH and I kept looking at the corner that has been made 1 brick worth shorter and thinking we'd made a mistake and made it too small for what we had planned for it. BUT it turns out the brickie has put the door in the wrong place. DH had a call from the S.S on Monday to ask him /us what we want to do about it. So a mistake but not ours. Yippee. I'd said we are happy for it to be a brick to a brick and a half for the move. A brick and a half would be perfect as it's going to be a temporary corner for my computer. ( for about 2-3 years)...

And now...

The corner in question. It is now 41/2 bricks wide instead of 3 1/2. Sounds piddly but it was going to wreck the use we had planned for it if the builder hadn't corrected the error made by the brickie. Thank you S.S. for noticing it and putting us out of our misery.

i

Looking towards the kitchen. you can see the entrance to the office and the view out of one of the office windows. I would have liked to have had the wall between the kitchen and the office longer to give even more separation but it wasn't to be.
.

The guys are making sure everything is marked out so there are no errors. DS1's Robe and the linen cupboard in the laundry.


Looking towards the main bathroom.


It looks like we have all our roofing materials on site now and the eaves boards. Perhaps they will get to start some work before they break for Christmas. We've noticed that this week a 3rd brickie has joined our first two guys. They worked for part of the day today as well.

Views

Just a few pictures to show the views from various windows in the house.

Lounge room




Kitchen


Ryan's Room. DS2 for H1 folks.( nice view of the rock pile)


Cam's room. DS1

More windows

Well it's definitely starting to look like a house. We are getting worried about our games room though. It seems the wrong shape to what we remember but otherwise the house looks terrific. Drove up after work and not only have they done a huge amount of the outside walls now they have put in place more windows and both sliding doors. The kitchen window seems tiny compared to the games and dining sliders but I'm sure it will be fine once the rest of the walls are finished and the cabinets go in.


They've even started adding some of the flashing/insulation between the outer and inner
wall cavity. I took a couple of pictures to show what it looks like.
















Internal walls are called "fast wall" bricks but the top few courses are usually done with "long reach". (that's the longer bricks) These are stronger. In double story houses sometimes the entire internal walls are built of these. So a brickie friend of ours told us years ago.


















This is the view from the office. Sorry about the angle. I'll grab a better picture with my camera
in the next day or so. Not easy taking photos with the phone as the screen stays black in the bright light.













This one shows the view from our bedroom windows.

windows

Just a quick post for family and friends to say we popped over to the block last night and found that the brickies have completed the front wall of our bedroom. So we have our first 2 windows in.
I took this picture with my phone so had no idea what I was shooting as the screen was black in the bright sunlight. Hence the side of the garage is missing.

Bricks with raked mortar

Just wanted to post a picture of our garage wall so everyone could see what our brickwork looks like. We are quite pleased with the look of the raked mortar and it has really brought out the patterns on the bricks.
The 2nd and third pictures are from the wall of the office.
Though the 2nd picture shows some bricks with a discolouration which we aren't so happy about. It hasn't shown up super well in the photo but Hubby spotted it straight away. It looked like one small batch of about 25 bricks have a slightly different and less contrasting tinge to them. Unfortunately they have been laid in a 4 course high band along the wall of the office. Not a lot we can do about them. Hopefully once the roof is on and the eaves overshadow the wall area above them it won't look so odd. We hope one day to put a spa in this area and by then it will be completely covered over so hopefully it will be less obvious.

They've started

Met our Site Superviser on site on Monday and got to meet the brickies as well. Hello to D our S.S. and to M and G the brickies who I hope will continue to do a fantastic job. It certainly looks great so far. A bit more bad news though is that the person doing the digging for the leech drains has struck clay so we'll have some more $ and decisions to make before they can be put in. blahhh

Well the brickies started on Monday. A little bit of a drama since our windows had not arrived but they were working around it. Windows arrived late Tuesday and a portaloo finally yesterday while the guys had the building companies annual Xmas day off party thingy. So today they should be getting stuck into it.

We also found out who our roofer is likely to be and possibly our plasterer. More on that as it comes up to that time.

Anyone want a bath? Yes we've had a little rain lately.



They've been able to start on a couple of the walls and leave where the windows are to go.
( end of Monday)

Bricks!

Hubby standing at the front door.



These were taken with the camera in my phone.


External face and longreach bricks have arrived on site.
This is what our main bricks look like.
All the solider bricks for under the front window sills are tucked into one pallet's worth.
I'm a bit worried about how pale they all are but Hubby was very keen for this look.




Doors stacked neatly at the front of the block. No sign of the window frames yet.
They label all the steel beams. You can see the ones for the games room etc.


Supposedly our brickie is starting on Monday. We have a meeting with the SS and the brickie at 9am. If no major weather dramas we should be at plate height when they stop for Xmas.

Hubby was told the delays in them starting site works put us behind 3 weeks and that only some trades have 2 weeks off, over xmas. Some have longer.
End date is 29th of May + delays. So at this stage that means mid June.

On a different note we paid our deposit on the cork flooring for the main living areas of the house last Saturday. Yippee. The rest of the house might have to be concrete flooring for a while depending on finances but at least the cork flooring areas will be in before we move in.

Slab almost complete

As the title says.

Garage slab is still to be done but we think the rest is now complete.

Our title arrived May 1st. we'd been in negotiation with the builder for several months previous to that. and finally jsut over 6 months later we have a slab. Yippeee.



Anyway. The slab looks nice and smooth. Weather here is warm but not too warm so hopefully the slab will cure without too many cracks and they will complete the garage section tomorrow( fingers crossed) I guess that means the brickies can start in a couple of weeks. Hopefully they'll have made a start by December. It would be even better if the brick work was completed before the xmas break but we'll see.

I have a sneaking suspicion we might get the same brickies from a house I know someone else is building in a nearby town. Same builder and I would have thought his brickies would have started this week. I drive past his block every day to go to work and the bricks haven't been delivered there yet. I feel quite frustrated for him and his wife. I'm beginning to think the builders want to have them go straight to our job from his. I've just heard that his brickies are due to start next week and I would expect they'd be finished there around about the time our slab is ready for bricks.
Still no portaloo and waste bin for the rubbish which is mounting daily.

Another blogger and HO member suggested that they might do the garage at the end of the build.

part 2

I've tried to take several photos to compare with yesterday.







This one shows the formwork.
It's very rusty looking but I guess it's only surface rust.
They also came today and sprayed with the termite protection chemicals. You could still smell it when I got there after work.


They should lay the main part of the slab on Monday.

Pipes!

Finally today the pipes have been laid. It's been very wet here so I am not too hopeful that the slab will be laid tomorrow. It could well be next week.
We can now get a real sense of the slab size though from the layout of sinks, toilets etc and can also see just how much higher the slab is going to end up being than the current ground level.


Looking across from in front of our main bedroom towards the southern side and our alfresco.


Looking from the corner of the office across to the back, western corner of the house.

Looking down the side of the house. This is outside a corner of the main bedroom. You can see pipes for ensuite, main bathroom and laundry.

I'm assuming the trenches are for more concrete to reinforce sections of the slab.

You can see it was raining when I took the video below as a rain spot appears on the lens.

from the weekend

Found my phone cable so here are two more pictures from the weekend with the cut starting to be filled in..