Bye Dad....

Most of you will be aware that my wonderful Dad passed away on Friday 22nd May, 2009. May you rest in peace, Dad, we miss you already. x

Thanks to all our wonderful family and friends for being our strength during this difficult time. The phone calls, messages of support and flowers, food and cheering up are greatly appreciated and we are lucky to be surrounded by such wonderful people. xxx

Roof Trusses are in, partially completed...

Well the roof trusses are partially in, we've received many comments from the carpenter, the truss dude and anyone anywhere near the house - the roof trusses are huge! To match the rest of the house, I guess.

The chippie and Bikeman had some issues surrounding the delivery of the trusses, they missed a large beam which held them up from finishing one part of the house toward the back. This was delivered the next day but this didn't help in the meantime!

It looks really cool to have a roof over the alfresco area, really boxes it in more. The rooms are starting to take shape and the roof trusses should be finished next week. Unfortunately Bikeman is at the end of his labouring effort, he has to be back at work next week. I think he's quite enjoyed it, although he has been rather tired at the end of the day. They've been working pretty hard though.

Next we need to give the site a bit of a cleanup - have to hope a workcover inspector doesn't come out in the next day or so! There are bits of wood all over the place and bits of roof trusses waiting to be installed. Ah the joys of owner building! It has been really great to go and walk through whenever we want to, and to do 'stuff' - like adding extra noggins in the walls, and priming the window sills - it all saves money and gives us exactly what we want.

Oh I nearly forgot! We signed up for a kitchen last week. It's great to know we're moving along nicely. Just have to make time to get to the auctions to buy ourselves and oven and rangehood!!

Are butterflies good luck?

This beautiful butterfly paid us a visit today. I'm hoping that perhaps it might bring us luck, in particular to those around us who need it most. The kids were so excited!! It had such lovely colours, I couldn't resist.... this was taken through the theatre room sliding doors (from the outside looking in).

View from the back of the block

This is the standard photo I've been posting on facebook - from the same spot, whenever we have any new stuff appearing on the block. For some reason facebook doesn't like this photo so I'm going to try and post it here....

Well we finally made it to bricking up time! Had a few false starts, with the wall trusses arriving later than expected. And the windows arriving earlier than we wanted them to. And the following:

- Had issues with the lintels, in particular the one above the garage door. The engineer (read: Bikeman) ordered the wrong size so it was too small - and only realised once the brickie was onsite and called us. He also had issues with the garage door we had ordered - turned out the frame which came with it should have been installed by a chippie so that caused further panic where we had to go and find a steel garage door so that the bricking could continue.

- So we ordered a new lintel, which arrived onsite the next day... only to find that the manufacturer had put two of the bits (sorry for the non-technical information) the wrong way. So it was too short one side and too long the other. So back we went again, new lintels required.... eeep! More delays.

The brickie was brilliant, in the end he and his guys ended up onsite on Saturday to finish the job which was great of him, especially considering none of the issues had been his! A slab of beer went his way and hopefully he enjoyed it after a long week!

In the week to come: Bikeman has some time off to finish the roof trusses and do some general work around the house. We have to do things like stain and varnish the window sills, paint the wooden lintels for the alfresco, and clean the sticky residue on the windows left from the stickers on them. Plus adding a few extra noggins in the walls for things like the TV, toilet roll holders, shelving, etc etc. No doubt will keep him busy! I believe we may be at lockup in about a month, which would be great - get it out of the way before the cold weather hits. Will keep y'all posted...

We have bricks!

Looking back up toward the front of the house and the garage. Even the garage has a great view! Wow the bricks look great! Thought they looked a little red when they were delivered, but they look really good (and more like I imagined). Loooove the double brick look.