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

Day 48: Base stage paid, and frame started!

Paid the base stage invoice today - can you believe CBA wanted $28 to do an electronic transfer to ANZ? Anyway, ended up doing it through netbanking for free - stuff you, banks and your fees!

Got a call from Tina on the way home from work, and she sounded excited - for good reason too, as she was already walking around our ground floor frame, which was halfway done!


Not bad work by our tradies, suffering in 34 degree mad heat - I'll bring them a carton of beer tomorrow I think! Also spoke to our fantastic neighbours, who said the chippies started about 7, and worked through to about 3, solid effort that!

The next picture shows our sitting room.




Now that the frame is starting to go up, it's so much easier to get an idea of the size of rooms. My perceptions so far is that the sitting room and laundry seem a little smaller than I thought they would be, and the study is bigger than I thought (good!). Powder room seems about right - because we made some modifications to the floorplans, our laundry/powder room is different to standard Nolan.


In the previous picture, from bottom to top: Powder room (with one pipe for sink waste), then laundry (two pipes), then the two little areas are for walk-in-linen and walk-in-pantry. Then the kitchen (with 2 pipes for sink) and dining room, then outdoor room!

This next picture shows my room in the house - the home theatre/man cave. Tina can have pretty much every other room, but I've got big plans for this room! Though one thing we need to check with our SS tomorrow is the door heights - we have 2340mm doors everywhere, and I think the door frame to the HT is too low. It's basically the same height as the bipart doors to the rear (right) of the HT, which is only about 2000mm high. Should be an easy fix at frame stage to rectify.


The next pic is a view of family room from kitchen area. HT room is to the right, and to the left is entry hallway. We'll put our plasma TV on the left, so you can see it from the kitchen and meals area.


Finally, welcome to all the new readers to the blog - seems to be quite a few fellow metricon builders out there, some ahead of us and some just starting out. Please feel free to ask questions, and to comment about things that we should be checking (in particular, we'll have to get around to organising an inspection at preplaster in a few weeks/months?)

Ben&Dana: Hi, welcome to our blog. Jealous that you're at lockup already! We looked at a Stanton display home, somewhere in the northern suburbs I think - we like how the informal area of the house (kitchen, meals, family) takes up the entire back half of the ground floor! We did get our building permit mid October, but due to delays in demolition, we really didn't started until mid January, though the site scrape was Dec 22nd.

R&T: I think you said you had a bit of a fall on your block? Sure, a big slab will cost more $$$, but it'll stop your house sliding off onto someone else's land :) Should get nice views too! I think I've found another Nolan being built in Mitcham, will blog about it if I'm right!

wushukid: Hi! What design are you building, and what area? It's interesting to find readers of this blog are building all over Victoria, and NSW as well :)

Today's frame start has been sooo exciting - I just wish I could stand the heat to stay a bit longer - had to go home after a few minutes to change!

T&T