Roof

Just to top off what has been a busy week so far we now have a roof. The tin only arrived yesterday and it seems they've installed it all today.

Our roof is "ironstone" from Colorbond.
It was quite overcast and grey when the photos were taken so it just looks grey but it is actually a grey with a blue tinge.
We've also fished out a full piece of colorbond from the rubbish bin and some ridge tin. Both in odd colours. We assume these pieces were to protect ours during transport since the capping colour was green and the dumped sheet was black. Makings of a chicken coop I hope.

G has gone back up to move some of the bricks. We are bit worried some keen bargain hunter at the auction on Saturday will help themselves to our spare bricks.

And finally from the back of the house. Alfresco on the right.

Sparkies and Plumbers- the new wild ride

This is our front porch. You can see one of the downpipes is quite close. Hubby is going to be very busy digging to put in some soak wells for the down pipes.





The sparkie arrived on site last week and has completed half of his work. He'll be back next week to finish off as he's gone on holidays!.Seems the Christmas break wasn't enough. :)
We have a huge amount of additional mess on site since he has returned.


It looks like we've been hit with brick termites. :)


Sparkie has made some interesting decisions on a few bits and pieces that he has put in/not put in. Has managed to half do several jobs, put 2 power points in the wrong place( maybe more) and a light switch and one of the previously mentioned power points on a wrong wall. All to be corrected, we've been assured by the S.S. after a frantic message left and a long email left and a phone call today. So we'll see what happens. I'll say no more at this point until he's had a chance to rectify the mistakes.
There has also been a mis-communication somewhere. ( has to be some doesn't there) The original contracts person "B" told us all conduit's come with draw wires. Something we'd specifically requested. iI seems that is not the case. However after some negotiation it looks like the electrician might put them in for us after all. We'd otherwise offered to do them ourselves if it wasn't a problem for us to go on site since it was B's error. All the cablers I'd spoken to about our house had suggested that this was what they'd preferred.
The plumber also arrived on site yesterday. The sparkie had already done some brick cutting in for him to make his job easier. Not too reassurring given the wrong placement things he'd done as part of his own job but thankfully it all seems to be being used. phew!


Phone guy must be also due to appear this week or early next week judging by the information we've had from the S.S.
Plasterer isn't due for a little while yet as he is currently working on another house in Collie so there is time for the electrician to complete his job next week.


And.... I took a drive up to the house this evening and we now have outside taps and our roofing tin has arrived on site.






This is the view through the office window. You can see where the conduit has been placed as well as the powerpoints. The red circle is where we hope the phone point will be.



Plumber has very carefully insulated much of the copper piping with foam tape stuff( perhaps partly it stops leaks) and there is black rubber piping insulation on the hot water copper piping in the roof areas.




These are some of the copper pipes that run down from the Solar HWS.

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The plumber has been very busy working out all his measurements and cutting everything to length.

repairs and gross

Pleased to say the brickie has been back and the chipped brick and the bricks on odd angles have been removed. yippee. He's also patched up the opposite side where the mortar was all cracked.

BUT someone working onsite on Friday brought their dog with them. There's dog poop on the floor of our main bathroom and a plate with gladwrap still on it tucked in the pantry. it's got some saucy- bloody muck on the plate and we found what we originally thought was a pile of blood in DS1's bedroom on the concrete. Now I think it was whatever was on that plate. I guess that's where doggie had his snack. :( ew



Also weird we found that some birds have been going wild ripping bark off one of the tree trunks down the back. I guess there were some bugs/grubs they hoped to feed on. Looked quite odd with all the bark ripped off one long section.

Roofing goes ahead

First a picture of the bricks in the garage that are causing some concern.





View looking towards the house and looking south.
You can see how shaded the house is by the
trees on our block.



Looking west

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Family room with roofing.


View of the house from the main road side looking nw

A day of good news

we are thrilled with how the bricks look. :) yes it was horrible to go 6 days with the place being empty of workers. Glad they weren't there in a way the day before though as we had visitors down and were able to show them through the house which was exciting.


S.S. is in negotiation with the brickie atm over some brickwork he isn't happy with. I will try again to grab a photo. I missed when aiming with my phone camera yesterday. The steel Lintel? over the garage is thicker than standard mortar so when the brickie did the surrounding bricks they've ended up crooked and on one side the mortar is cracked. I think he wants to see if the brickie can cut the offending bricks down and re-lay them so the mortar line looks nice and straight. Fingers crossed it all works out. Great to know the S.S is on the case for us. And thanks to boliver who noticed it and made Hubby more keen to mention it. Though as it turned out the S.S. had already spotted it and was chasing up a solution.

Ok Had a few wins today.


Small but promising. I'm almost too scared to mention them yet since nothing is in writing but here goes.

Win1.
We've been on to the council about some screen plantings the developer was meant to do as part of the requirement for subdividing and selling the land. Council guy can't understand how the land changed title to us without it being chased up as the plantings haven't taken place. He wasn't working the job back 9 months ago when it should have been chased up. Anyway he's written a formal letter to the person responsible for organising it and asked for a response with information by the 16th. Spoke to him today and he said that in the letter he's told them that the plantings have to be done by the 1st of July. he also said he will continue to follow it through if there is no response by the 16th so it seems he's determined to keep on their tail. Woohoo. They should have been done last year and in a way I regret not chasing it up then but we thought we were being nice and since we had other dramas at the time with the developer we were sorting them out last winter instead. So the upshot is that 3 rows of dense mature buffer vegetation will be planted before we move in. JUST. The plants have to be from at least 150L container stock so they will be a substantial size. They have a 10 m deep area to plant them in and must allow for a 3m firebreak before the planting area. So there is plenty of space. The council is holding some sort of bond to force the developer to do the plantings and usually this is enough to ensure he does it. ( he gets back more than it would cost) BUT obviously some how it wasn't enough incentive. Perhaps because the land is so rocky and for anyone without the machinery ( developer has the machinery) it would cost a bomb.
Win 2.
The variation paperwork is on the way for us to sign. The builder has given us a $440 credit towards the cost of the additional earth works required for the leech drains. This takes the cost of them down to just under 2 .5 K.


Hmm always something good before the fall is my concern. Let's hope not in this case.

Well the guys are back working on the roofing timbers as of Yesterday.. Yippee. S.S. says they'll be finished around mid next week and then the electrician will be in to make a mess of the internal bricks and trace all the electrical cabling in.
Depending on how long that takes and whether he also does the phone wiring and then depending on any other work the plumber needs to do for Hot water etc. We could actually have roofing on in a few weeks. Somehow I suspect it will be early Feb.

Our Bricks


Office





Looking through the bedroom window and down the hall to the main living area.

Roofing Commenced

Well on Tuesday we had an urge to go to the block on our way home from the shops. Nothing happening of course, much to our disappointment. just as we turned around and started to drive away we spotted the S.S.
s car heading to our block. Hubby quickly turned the car around and we were soon pulled up next to the S.S's car. NY greetings all around . S.S was there to check out the quality of the brickwork and make sure it was up to standard. This gave Hubby a chance to quiz him on the soldier bricks below our front windows. DH and I had both noticed some of them were ever so slightly not vertical. This also gave us a chance to point out the broken brick below the slider. S.S said he'll take a closer look at the soldier bricks ( I have a feeling they'll be within tolerance) but confirmed that the broken brick definitely needed to be replaced and that when the guys come to replace it he will get them to patch up a few very small holes in the mortar along some of the raked joint sections. He also commented that although he hadn't seen a raked mortar style brick house for a while he thought it worked really well with the bricks and seemed genuinely impressed by the effect it gave. He said he thought it looked much better than the rolled and flushed joints he'd see with the brick we'd chosen.

He couldn't help but comment on the size of the office. Everyone does.
We asked him when he thought the roofing guys might start and he said Thursday or Friday as hey had some other houses to finish off as they hadn't completed them before Christmas and that he expected they would take a week and a half to do our place.

so nothing to do but wait we thought.

Anyway...
Today , I once again had an urge to drive past the block and .....YES ... they've started.

View towards the house from the back showing the outdoor area.

According to the S.S. they should have finished roofing by next Friday.


So glad they've started again.