Day 49: Ground floor framing complete, site supervisor meeting.

A day off work = a good day to inspect the site! I turned up first around 11, and caught the chippies hard at work in the sun finishing off the ground floor frame. The head guy there was Josh, and when I pointed out that I should be having higher door frames to accommodate the taller 2340mm doors, he agreed and said it'd be an easy fix. Good one boys! Gave them a slab of coldies for their hard work. Here's the thing - if you're nice to your tradies and bring up little issues early, you'll probably get a good resolution to your problem. Of course, this is dependent on you having the time during the day to get to your site, which isn't always possible.


This pic taken in the afternoon, they finished the job around 2pm. The entry doorframe is too low - only about 2000mm instead of 2340mm, so that'll be fixed later. Not bad for 2 days work!

View from outside the sitting room, looking towards back of the house. On the left is doorframe to garage internal access, then study behind that. Centre of photo; cavity slider door to rear of house. The internal access doorframe is set too low, another one to be fixd up later. The crew had already fixed the frames to the study, laundry and powder room


View standing in kitchen. To the left is walk-in pantry, walk in linen to right of that, then doorway to hallway. Lots of angled wood stuck across doorways, maybe just to hold the frame together until the supports are all set in?

We also met our SS Brian in the afternoon - nice guy! As for progress, he reckons more ceiling trusses will be delivered tomorrow, and the chippies back later in the week to set them up. Then first floor, then roof trusses - expecting frame to be complete by end of the month! Windows should be in around end of the month as well. And then, lockup (tiles and bricks) maybe a month later - ie end of March! Yay for progress!

He also asked us if we had any issues so far to be looked at, so we brought up these things:

1. Door frames too short = acknowledged, and already on the way to being fixed.
2. Powder room toilet position very close to door = will be fixed, as the doorframes are larger than the actual door size required, so there's room for adjustment.
3. Laundry floor waste in wrong position (under cabinet) = will be fixed so it is under the washing machine.
4. Site cut at neighbour's boundary leaving about 300mm of vertical soil = will need tiny retaining wall, will be raised as a variation. Hopefully not too expensive!
   
5. Huge mound of soil at back of site from site cut = will be levelled. But some medium sized rocks, we'll have to pay (not much) to be removed.
6. Some minor changes to electrical plan - want to move a couple of lights, shouldn't be a problem.
7. No temporary power pole required = we had a $1000 powerpole included in our contract, but because we organise the power pit, we'll get this amount back as a credit towards final payment.
8. Small chip in corner of portico concrete = will be repaired, brickwork for piers to balcony will cover most of it too.
   
9. Some water pooling in front yard area - leaking tap? = plumbers will be coming in the next week or two to run in water to the house, and will correct and leaks from the main water line to the block.

Pretty happy with our SS so far - certainly we've had heaps of work done since resumption of activities mid-Jan, and the next couple of stages will roll through pretty quickly he reckons.

We've also located a few more Metricon houses in our area, so when there's a slow day with no work to blog about, I'll post photos here - helpful if you're trying to choose bricks etc for a nice facade!

wushukid: Peninsula is a fantastic design - the open area above the dining room is incredible! Bit expensive for us to go for though :(

stefan petersen: thanks for your comment! There are pretty big windows, and the family room window faces east, so some nice morning sun. It's about 3m from the side fence, so hopefully no shadowing will occur. We walked through all the ground floor rooms today, and our earlier perceptions of rooms being too big or too small are gone - everything feels in perfect proportion now!

T&T