Frame (Day 2)

Friday saw more framing action, with the trusses for the first floor being installed and the portico/balcony bracing erected. Looks like there is still a fair bit to do downstairs but we are pleased with the quality of the job so far. There are a couple of twisted and dinged parts of the frame that we have spotted so will be sure to point these out to the SS.

It was great to be able to walk through the house this morning, the room sizes are excellent, couldn't be happier with the layout and the amount of windows we will have. It was awesome imagining where everything was going to go and what the kitchen would look like once it has cabinetry and an island bench.
We had hours of fun picking up all the dropped screws and playing "house" with our boy. Really funny until I fell in the imaginary swimming pool. We have decided to keep the pool shape and dimensions as we originally planned but push it further down the left side of the house and about 500mm closer to the boundary to give the amount of clearance needed for the sewer. This means instead of the end of the pool being flush to the end of the outdoor room it will be flush with the end of the house. Yes, it will be costing us more for shoring up around the sewer but we have decided that is one expense we will simply have to swallow so as not to compromise the outside space  as after all having a decent sized garden to run around in was the main reason we decided to build rather than buy.

Frame (Day 1)

"Frame thy mind to mirth and merriment, which bars a thousand harms, and lengthens life" William Shakespeare. Thought it might be nice to add a little culture!

The frame was delivered bright and early and work had already started before 8am. By lunch time we had a fully framed first floor. Wow and wow again it looks great! For the first time we can appreciate the size, shape and layout of our home. The windows in the family, dining kitchen area are huge and when you factor in the two sets of massive bi-folds we are going to have so much natural light in this space that it will be incredible. It also means that no matter which part of our outdoor areas our son is playing in we will be able to keep an eye on him with no trouble. Perfect.
I can see a few roof trusses in the delivery and guess these must be for the garage and outdoor room roofs as there doesn't seem to be enough to do the whole house. Our theory is that they will complete the ground floor then deliver the frame for upstairs.
I haven't had a chance to walk through yet but Sandy reassures me that all the rooms are big enough and that I won't be disappointed.

The digger and truck also arrived before 8am to move the soil and deliver it to our soil swapper as arranged however the guy who was supposed to take it off our hands was an incompetent tosser and hadn't got his site organised to take delivery. Rather that have the truck driver sitting around for several hours whilst said tosser got his act together we made the decision - a costly one - for him to take the first load to the tip, putting an additional $550 on the price!! Aaargh - lesson - buyer beware when dealing with people on the internet as not everyone is as organised, honest and reliable as you are.
Luckily the frame looks so good nothing can spoil my day!

Now for some pictures............. ahhhh you'll have to wait until later.

Something's Coming

Something's coming, something good, it's made of steel not of wood, it's called a frame! (sung to the tune of Something's Coming from West Side Story).

The steel frame is being delivered tomorrow along with a team to start putting it up - at last we are about to get vertical.

Moving The Mound

No luck getting the SS to agree to move the considerable mound of soil still piled up in the back left corner of the block but we do have someone locally who is willing to take it off our hands. The diggers and truck are coming on Thursday and then taking it to their place to be used as fill.

If you need to get rid of soil it costs a fortune to dump it so try advertising it on sites like soilswap, needdirt or fillwanted and then you only have to pay for diggers and removal, in some cases people will even offer to split the costs of moving the fill with you.But either way you're bound to save some money as we were told it was approx $50 per tonne to just to have it dumped. We have around 100 tonnes so that would be pretty expensive!!!!

Nothing Going On But The Bills

So we've had no action on site this week but Metricon accounts department have been busy sending out the invoice for the first progress (or lack of it!!!) payment. It had totally escaped our attention that now the build had started so would the bills. Base stage is 10% of construction cost and needs to be paid as soon as possible.We are part funding the build so we will make the first 4 payments ourselves so no need to sign papers and put invoices into the bank. This will be what happens later in the build when the building loan kicks in to cover the rest of the expenses.

So what's the hold up? Apparently steel frames are now extremely popular and there is only one company that makes them (hmm really?) so ours is in a production queue even though it was ordered almost 2 months ago. Hopefully it will arrive later this week and we can start getting 3 dimensional.

Frameless

No action on site yet this week apart from a couple of bobcats spreading some of the large mound of soil around, looks like they've hardly made a dent in it so we have advertised it on a soil swap site in case someone wants to take it off our hands. We will also do the same when the pool is excavated.
We were hoping the steel frame would have arrived by now so we remain frameless - the frame was an upgrade as part of the Neo Dusk promotion and only cost us an additional $3K which I thought was a fair price.
I see Metricon are now including solar - would have liked that as well but can look at getting it installed once the house is completed (assuming we have any money left!).
Get the feeling there will be no progress now until next week.

Pool Planning Problems (Possibly?)

We have just received a call from our pool builder apparently the pool now needs to be 3 metres further away from the rear boundary due to not being able to excavate too close to the sewerage system. Planning department have said No to our original plans now as when we drew them up we didn't know that the sewer pipes would be in this corner. 
This means we have 4 options 1) move the pool to a different place 2) keep the pool where it is and slide it down the side of the house 3m and end up with a really titchy pool 3) change the shape and size of the pool and how we were going to have the fences 4) Pay $3,000 to shore up area around sewer move the pool 2 meters down the house and a meter closer to side boundary if possible.
Looks like we'll have to make some compromises and pay more money to get what we want as we don't want to change the aspect or position of pool too dramatically. Guess we'll be having a meeting with the pool builder this week.