Beware the micro blog

Just a warning that I've found a phone app to update the blog, so I may end up keeping things ticking over with quick on-the-go updates rather than having to sit down to write longer blogs. So beware and unsubscribe if you don't want to be bombarded. (Though no promises I'll be that diligent)

Pull it down - put it up

Looking from the bedroom through the E/S to the kitchen

It's been a while since the last update and a bit has happened.  A picture tells a thousand words, so the best place to look is probably Timelines 2, 3 and 4 on my gallery.

The kitchen and laundry are just a shell.  There is no walls (or roof)  in the back corner of the house.  The dining room is starting to look like the en suite and there is a floor about to appear in the extension.  Things are moving along.

Current Accommodation

Since my last post, the last of the piering was completed.  At the same time, the boys continued to get stuck into the remodelling of the old part of the house.  New walls went into the old dining room to create space for the built in robe, the pantry with the remaining space being for the en suite.  We took the old pine floor up and replaced it with fibre cement sheets to create a solid base for the tiles.  This has been handy over the last few weeks as the cottage I'm staying in has a wood fire as it's only heating and the pine floor has been doing a good job.  The cottage takes open plan living to the extreme with one room containing bed, living and kitchen with a small en suite style bathroom.  It is very spacious and we are, once again, lucky to have found such a nice place to live while we do up the house.  Picasso is enjoying keeping an eye on the alpacas that roam the property.

The cement floor in the laundry was chopped up and removed since it was at the wrong height to take the new floor.  They cut it with the cement saw and then Owen moved in with his big grabs and just lifted the sections out.  It al went pretty smoothly - once they got rid of the back walls which are now held up by a couple of temporary props.

On the fix-up side of things, it turns out the the house had a bit of a lean to the south east corner.  Owen reckons the chimney in the old living room had sunk a bit and pulled the house down by about 30mm.  I'm not surprised given the foundation for the chimney is only about 400mm thick - when you compare that to the 2.2m some of the other footings went down to, I'm surprised the old thing hadn't fallen down years ago.  Anyway, they jacked the house up a bit, but couldn't get it all the way back to level without cracking the chimney so the house will remain on a little bit of a lean - about only about half of what it was though.

There was a bit of a break in proceedings while we waited for the brickies to arrive.  They were held up on another job due to some rain we had a few weeks ago.  They took a couple of days to brick up the piers and planter boxes.  We have a large planter box at the edge of the back deck and a couple of smaller ones in the entrance courtyard.  While the brickies were doing their thing, Owen got the slab ready and had the cement pored for the garage floor, so now the final footprint of the extension is evident.

Robbie, the plumber and his off-siders have been crawling over and under the house 'roughing in' the pipes for the bathrooms.

This week Owen hopes to get the flooring down, and then the frame will go up pretty soon after that.  So finally, things will start to take shape, which is more exciting than just digging holes and filling them up again!  The other change over the last month has been the number of decisions that require an answer.  Where do you want the taps, toilets, drain, etc etc.  So when you all come and stay I don't want any "you should have put that power point over there" or what ever! I'm keeping detailed notes of excuses for putting things where they are so I have a good counter argument ready for you when you do!

More Concrete - and Less Kitchen

Owen brought the cavalry with him this morning - or at least Eben, the young apprentice, and Logan, a more experienced builder.  He had ordered the concrete truck back for 11am and still needed to drill the remaining pier holes so had given himself a deadline.

Eben and Owen worked on getting the piers dug.  Logan began to demolish the kitchen and laundry so the asbestos removal guys can come in and take the fibro away next week.  I was busy moving the remaining few things from the office to the spare bedroom so that the fibro could be removed from there as well.

Bye bye kitchen

I hadn't long get everything set up in here when the cement truck turned up.   This time there were no trench incidents!  Eben and I barrowed the concrete into the holes while Owen used the hole auger to agitate the cement in the bottom of the holes to make sure it bonded to the bottom.  The engineer asked him to do this since the bottom of the holes were pretty messy given all the ground water.  I'm glad to say that I didn't follow the barrow into any trenches, but did miss the hole once of twice!

Once we had unloaded the first mini cement truck, I came into the kitchen to help Logan.  By this stage he had pretty much gutted the kitchen and laundry and had just finished pulling up the lino (two layers).  I helped him pull out the hundreds of little staples that held the floor covering in place.

Meanwhile the second, full sized, cement truck came and went.  So now all the piers have been filled and the bottom of the trenches have had a thin layer of cement over them so that if it rains, it wont hold up the remaining foundation work.  The next step is to set out the foundation steel and then poor the final cement.  While that's going on outside, the asbestos guys will be getting rid of the fibro inside.

The place is really looking like a building site now!

Oops

I don't think I really need to say more...

but I will!

Owen was keen to get the cement into the peer holes as the worst of them keep filling with water each night and then the sides are collapsing a bit, making ever bigger holes to fill.  He got the go ahead from the engineer yesterday so he spent the morning cleaning out the peer holes ready for the poor.  Owen decided to get a small concrete truck in so we wouldn't have any issues with it getting bogged.  The ground is fine to walk on but I wouldn't want to put a heavy truck over it - and it's still a bit greasy on top.

The truck arrived and he backed up to (and partially in to) a pile of clay/mud that Owen had just taken out of the bottom of the pier holes and had carefully placed so that it wouldn't get in the way of the truck.  The truck was positioned so that he could reach several, but not all, of the holes using the cement pouring chute.  Owen said hat he would be fine to barrow the rest, but the driver insisted that he could get closer so he went forward again.  Now, Owen and I assumed that, on the greasy ground that he would come a fair bit further to his right to avoid the mud heap he had already hit.  Instead, he made only a slight adjustment and ended up slipping into his previous wheel tracks and just barging is way through the mud heap and oops - into the end of the trench!

The driver was then concerned about the truck tipping over further when he turned the agitator so he asked if Owen could pull him out with his truck while the cement mixer was still full.  Owen and I both could see that it would be futile, but he gave it a go.  Of course the truck remained well and truly stuck.  We ended up leaving Owen's truck hitched up to keep the cement mixer from going any further over and emptying the load - by hand where the chute wouldn't reach - just like Owen had originally said.  Owen (just) managed to pull the cement truck out once he was empty.

Owen, then asked the guy to make sure he cleaned down the truck properly before leaving the site so that he wouldn't leave mud all up the street.  So what did we find when the driver had left - mud for the entire block along Albert St.  So then it was a call to a crew to come and sweep/shovel all the mud off the road.  That bill will be going to the cement contractors for sure!

After all that, the driver had to front up again with the second load.  The air was a little "frosty" to say the least.  Owen wouldn't let him past the driveway this time and we just barrowed the cement into the holes.

"Why would you be a builder?" Owen was heard to say.