A roof over our heads

Good things come to those who wait - so here we are with a new roof.  The weather cleared, the guys turned up (including another ex-student, now roofing apprentice) and the roof went on.  Not much more to say about that really, except like the colour, like the angles, like how it looks, like your work fellas...

"Just make sure you pack up all your stuff when you're finished guys... "

Fascia goes on, guttering goes on, silver insulating paper rolled out, Colourbond corrugated steel on top of that - suddenly the house has a 'top' on it!



Inside the kids' playroom - a much more defined space with a solid structure overhead.

 

Level 3 roof almost complete from the south - looking at row of kids' bedrooms and their bathroom.



As the roof went on we also started 'wrapping up' - basically enclosing the whole house in a layer of insulative AirCell, which is like high-tech (and expensive) bubble-wrap... So now we can send our house to anywhere in the world for standard postage rates.

Let's put a lid on it

Well, Christmas has been and gone - both families caught up with and presents deposited (the stage our kids are up to means we always seem to come home with far more 'stuff' than what we packed!)  With Phil the Builder doing the same and enjoying a well-earned break, things have slowed down at the house apart from the occasional days and half-days I've done screwing down the battens, adding cyclone ties (no, not a common occurrence on the North-West coast of Tasmania, but it's good to be prepared...) to hold the roof on and putting noggins through Level 3.  The latter job brought on the inevitable death of my very cheap home handy-man-only drop-saw... but all these things have a bright side - must be time to move on to a more expensive and feature-laden model!


The most exciting thing happening at the moment is the roof going on - I have to add "finally" to that sentence.  We've entered the nether-world of sub-contractors now at eightmangana - that shadowy, misty realm where nothing is as it seems and very little is firm or concrete... just as you think you've grasped reality and the truth, it slips from between your fingers and everything changes again...
Subbies are those extremely useful and important people who only do one thing and do it very well (certainly the ones Phil chooses to work with).  However, it also means they're constantly in demand, working several major and numerous minor jobs all at once, are constantly juggling priorities and know that they're indispensable.  That means timeframes can change over the course of a day, let alone a week.
The roof was going to get measured and started before Christmas; then it was just the measuring that was going to happen before the Yuletide; then it would be measured over the Christmas/NewYear break and delivered ready to start on the 4th January; on the 4th the guy turned up to measure... I have to admit, the first delivery of stuff was pretty much that same day, and then the gutter-guy (who sub-contracts to the roofing sub-contractor...) had 4 teeth pulled out and couldn't come that week... and then the week after poured with rain for 4 out of the 5 days.  Ahhh, patience...


But...  good things come to those who wait.  In amongst the rain there was some progress as John, Jye and Dan dodged showers and tried to predict the weather.  Last week (Jan 10-14) we did get gutter, fascia and a roof on Level 3, the garage just about complete, and the gutter and fascia on the workshop/storage area (John working bravely in the rain on the latter on Thursday so he could give the roofing guys something to keep going with so they weren't on his tail this week).  Happy with the colour and the look of it so far, and this week looks a whole heap more promising weather-wise - I reckon they're out there this morning getting stuck into it!
Here's a rough idea of where we're up to:

View from the north-west, pre-roofing but ready to go

Roof almost done on Level 3 - from the south

So, what's the plan?

Realised the other day that we're showing anyone who's interested photos of a house in progress and yapping on about it without so far giving the 'big picture'.  So here goes...
We designed the place ourselves, basing ideas on things we'd done and liked at our first build; things we'd seen since and liked better; the site and aspect of the new block; general observation and only slightly critical analysis of any other place we've been into; magazines; the web; etc... 
First came the block.  We'd started thinking about the idea of building again, and talked about some of the very general changes we'd make, but a piece of land has to come before the plan.  I'm no architect, but still get frustrated by houses that are obviously planned before the land - then just 'put down' onto whatever block someone happens to find.  See them quite often.  Once we found the block we knew what direction it faced, where the sun would be, what views we had, the slope and aspect, where neighbours might be (none yet!) and could use all that to influence the plan.
Then we started planning.  Without a great deal of IT skills, I used Publisher rather than something more high-powered, to draw in the first few drafts of floor plans - stored on our hard drive somewhere are something like 10 or 12 variants as we refined the ideas and gradually developed the plan to something we felt really comfortable with and could 'see' ourselves living in.
One exciting step along the way was having a young friend of ours, an almost-graduated architect, play around with some 3D renderings of our plans, based on a rough description from us as to what we were thinking.  Having someone take our flat-pack drawings and turn them into something more like a photo really helped.  What also helped was that Sam did it for free as it helped him build an extra layer into his portfolio - so benefits both sides.
Since we're having trouble transferring the pdf floor plan from the draftsman into the blog, we'll use Sam's images to give a bit of an idea of our floor plan and possible end-result:

Floor plan from above and to the north-west.
Foreground is open plan lounge/dining/kitchen
To the left is our bedroom and ensuite
Far right is the garage, linked to main house by workshop/storage area
Smack in the middle, an enclosed but open-air courtyard to let light into the kids hallway
Top left is the family room/rumpus/kids play area
Along the back are three bedrooms and the bathroom
Study/Spare room between garage and the entry (which is at the top of the stairs off the driveway)

Same but from the opposite view-point.
Some slight changes were made between this and the final building plan but this is basically it.

 The three levels are:

1 - Garage with attached workshop and storage ('ground' level)

2 - 1200mm (4ft) higher are the entry, study/spare room, main lounge/dining/kitchen and our bedroom

3 - Another 1200mm up from this main level is the kids' area with bedrooms, bathroom and play room (+ laundry and an outdoor-access storage for all those bats, balls, raquets, mowers, shoes, nets, etc that never seem to have a good place to be...)

Idea is to earth-move the site to make a flat area for the kids (to the right of and behind the second floor plan above) with dirt from there going out in front (to the north) of Level 2 to create flat ground in front of the house at that level as well.

Sam's efforts gave us a sneak peek into some possibilities:

3D 'render' of the hypothetical front of the house, based on what we told Sam.
Idea for face-brick in between rendered/painted 'pillars' is ours.
Not sure if we can manage a set of stairs like that though...

Inside the lounge/dining/kitchen according to Sam.
We will have bamboo floors in the dining and kitchen and will have big sliding doors (furthest away) onto a deck.
We'll put in carpet in the lounge however - probably similar colour to the rug depicted but covering the whole area.
Breakfast bench, bulkhead over kitchen and raked ceiling are all according to plan.

...and so we continue

Monday 13th December setting out (drawing lots of chalk lines) on the Level 3 slab and then cutting out the top and bottom 'plates' (90x35mm pine that goes on the top and bottom of each framed wall - they're nailed together, cut to fit the chalk lines and laid out on the slab to make sure everything fits before doing anything too permanent...)  Trusses also arrived on a truck, which was a bit exciting.

Level 3 with top and bottom plates laid out to form the outline of rooms before framing.

"Posirafters" - usually used for floor joists (if you don't have a slab) but used at eightmangana as trusses where we're having a raked (sloped) ceiling inside.

[The Friday before, same day Level 3 slab was poured, we also made a human chain up a scaffold to pour concrete into our dining room 'thermal mass' wall (see earlier post) three-and-a-half metres up in the air]

Tuesday 14th Phil left me with Josh the Apprentice to start framing Level 3.  Josh, being the Apprentice, was pretty excited about being left with that responsibility and was keen to get the whole thing done by the end of the day.  We didn't quite get there but did manage to get a fair bit done.  The way our roof runs means some walls need to be different heights, which needs a bit more thought and care, so makes framing those sections a bit slower.

Wednesday 15th we kept framing Level 3 and also started trusses over the garage and study/spare room.  A note in my building diary says, "Looked like it was meant to!"

Thursday 16th was more framing and battens on the garage trusses so that the roofing team had a full roof to get started on when they were meant to come the week after.  In the end it didn't matter - the roofers rang to say they wouldn't be on our roof before Christmas and we'd have to wait until the New Year.

Friday 17th dawned drizzly and wet, which developed over the course of the morning into a complete downpour.  In a display of admirable optimism (or just out-right denial and stubborn determination) Phil decided we'd get as much done as possible and see if the rain cleared.  So coats and water-proof pants on and out into the rain we marched...  It took about 2 hours for me to work out that my 'water-proof' items were actually just 'water resistant' and by about 10.30 any resistance had folded completely - we moved from water-proof, through water-resistant and on to water-logged.  By 12.00 we'd all had enough rain down our necks and in our boots but had all Level 2 basically trussed.

Monday 20th - more framing on Level 3 while Phil and his brother-in-law Benj tidied up Level 2 trusses, adding the wider eaves, battens, etc.

Eaves out over what will be a deck someday.  Notice how much wider they are than normal - they're over a 6m set of sliding glass doors that are 2.4m (8ft) tall.

Tuesday 21st - Phil and Josh worked through Level 3 making sure all the frame was straight and 'square' before we spent the rest of the day putting most of the roof trusses on, and the house really started to look like a house!  I always reckon the roof makes a big difference - a frame is just a 2D plan extended upwards, but until the roof shape goes on the house has no personality.  Just like a hairstyle really, a different roof can make or break how a house looks.

Wednesday 22nd was the boys last day and they finished off Level 3 ready for the roofing team - made sure everything was straight, added battens, etc.  Day off for Dad the Labourer as we headed off to see family for Christmas.  They left me the fun job of adding a screw to every batten where it crossed a truss... over the entire roof... and I'm not great with heights or balance...

So after all the Christmas cheer was over and we came home again, I spent 2 or 3 days clambering around (very, very carefully - wherever possible with at least one hand as well as two feet) on the trusses with a pocket-full of screws and an electric screw gun.  Lost my nerve on a few spots where a 4 metre drop and a lack of stable-looking woodwork made me decide to leave those ones for someone more brave or experienced.

And that pretty much brings us up to where we're at - I've managed to catch up with ourselves!!  From now on we'll be able to update as we go and add new events pretty much in the present rather than in the past.

One more slab

One positive thing (Phil the Builder might say "the" positive thing) about a split-level house design is that you can get started on framing one area of it while there's not even a slab on another section - which is what we did.
"Level 3", which is the 'kids level', couldn't be done until Level 1 had a slab down and then also needed some metal fabrication done to hold up the only 2-storey section of the whole house, where the downstairs workshop (music room/weights room/8-ball table/table-tennis arena/poker den...) slots in under the upstairs bathroom.
While we waited for this bit to get done, we slab-filled the rest of the Level 3 block-work on Wednesday 1st December, with me spending 4 hours finishing the levelling the next day to get it ready for plastic and reinforcing mesh.  The retaining wall block-work was finished off behind the garage by Phil and Lenny on the 4th.


View from the east - note Level 2 almost framed and Level 3 in foreground just slab-filled


Monday 6th the guys from the engineering firm showed up with their very cool truck kitted out with a whole heap of very impressive gear that allowed them to do just about anything with metal 'to your door'.  While we had lunch they welded a post in place, attached a beam to the top of it and bolted it all in place - nice piece of work.

Post and beam up and Bondeck on top.

'Rain stopped play' (and work) intermittently over the next few days but by Thursday 9th the plumbers had been and put pipes into the slab-fill for Level 3, and then (at 6am, mind you) on Friday 10th the concreting crew were back again to pour Level 3.
Everything slabbed and ready to go!  Lots more grey concrete!!  Great feeling!!!

Reinforcing mesh over Bondeck above the workshop

Something solid to walk on (and for little visitors to walk off - note dad in hot pursuit of our little 18-month-old family friend)

We've been framed!

...and for a little while all we had was one wall, mainly because the power/meter box had to be put somewhere and the guys were getting tired of starting up their little portable generator every time they needed electricity for something.  So what do you do?  You put up one wall, call the electrician, put the meter box on and then leave it there for a while because there are other things more important to do than give it friends.  Still we were excited that we had something in "3D"...  That was Monday 15th November.

Framing started happening in earnest about a week later with Phil and Josh spending almost a day putting lines on the slab and making sure they were all straight and square to each other.  Whoever designed the place made it virtually impossible to do this by making sure none of the walls lined up with any others - so no reference points to get a square from.  What's easy on paper...
But they did well and lines started appearing in all the right places, criss-crossing over the slab and putting the 2D of our plan into 2D on concrete in real size:

From there things just kept moving and the place started to take shape (although it's a heck of a lot easier to move around on a slab than it is through the forest of wood-work that goes up as you frame - one family visit ended in tears with Daniel knowing where he wanted to go, even being able to see the rest of us, but not sure how to actually get there: "Dad! I can see you, but I don't know how to get to you!!")

Lost track of the amount of wood we've ordered and gone through so far.  Will have to plant many, many trees to assuage the guilty conscience and make it up to the planet...