The house made of bricks

It's done! We have bricks :) ... and they look great. The brickies finished last Thursday and we are really happy with the result. The front of the house ... from left to right, garage opening, front door and 2 front windows.

View from standing at the alfresco, looking back towards the street. The window is the main dining room window to the side.

Standing at the front of the block, looking back towards the dining room. Sliding door to rumpus on left.

The kids and cousins playing in the 'pool'! Gumboots are a wonderful invention... Looking at the study and Blue's windows.

Looking at the alfresco area and sliding door to the living room. I don't think I've ever taken so much notice of window sills in my life!

Next... Chippy 'Beam me up' and Bikeman will be squaring up the frame on Friday (well actually BMU will be and Bikeman will be installing the sliding door furniture) for all the sliding doors in the place. Bank should be out sometime this week to do the lockup valuation, we spent the weekend nailing up masonry board on the front door (so our beautiful front door doesn't get damaged or pinched) - thanks to Bikemans new toy (the golden nail gun ... is it really gold plated??).

Completed .... We installed the laundry door which looks fabulous. Garage entry door painted up and ready to be screwed on. (Pictures to follow later). Had to plane the laundry door a little as it didn't quite fit, borrowed Pop's electric planer wooo hoooo if I was a carpenter I'd want me one of those babies. Did a great job of planing it without looking like a hack job - very professional. I can tell you I was pleased that we ran out of time to stain the door before installing it - that would have been a waste as we needed to plane it! Also the electrician was in last week doing the roughing in. They got up to 1.4km of electrical wire then stopped counting (but kept installing). Geeeeeez! Yes we know everyone, it's a bloody big house!!

Stay tuned for 'Days of the House' for more stories..... real live reality blogging!

Oh and please.... if anyone would like to become a follower of my blog please do so. There's a little section over to the right. I added this 'gadget' the other day and I'm feeling a little unloved as it looks like we don't have any friends!

Actual bricking pics!

Well the bricks are well on the way and looking great! We're probably about 3/4 the way through the bricks now, however have been hampered by wet weather over the weekend and today. So will have to be patient!!! Sparky was in today, roughing in, looks like he has nearly completed that part which is great. Moving along nicely..... now to get to lock up! Not that far away now... Bricks looking good.... from the soil heap at the back.

Down the side with the laundry door, you can see our ensuite bathroom window on the RHS.

It rained all day in Romsey today... so the brickies were only able to do the first course the whole way around. Forecast for more rain the rest of the week so might be some delay in finishing it off. Damn!

Study window on LHS, Blue's bedroom on RHS.

Pinks windows on RHS, then Blue to the left, then Study and Theatre Room double doors. Window sill bricks to hopefully be installed later in week (if weather holds out!).

Alfresco has a beautiful view through the dining room and out the front ... fantastic!

Updated Bricking Pics....

Sorry, that was a trick. There aren't any at the moment! As in, I left my phone at my mum's place which has current photos on it. So tomorrow! But rest assured, the bricks look BRILLIANT! The brickies have finised down to the alfresco area, with just the wrap around the dining room and the front to go. Luckily for us we had excellent weather last week so they were able to work solidly for most of the week, which was great. Today Bikeman and I played site cleaner. We dug into the pile of rubbish and cleared out all the tin from the other stuff, and took a load to the transfer station (these are free - learn something every day!). We also took most of the rubbish as well, it took ages to bag it up but it is so worth it in the end, the site looks much cleaner. And it was sooooo windy today - best to get rid of all that rubbish before it all blew around all over the place. It was raining a lot too, so by the time we finished we were muddy and wet and altogether homeless-looking, but it was actually fun (I think I'm going slightly mad!!). We are nearly at lockup - have decided to board up the front area where the door will go, as we still have some prep work to do before the front door is ready, and we don't want it stolen/damaged either. Also Bikeman and Beam Me Up (the chippy) have some work to do creating a frame for the triangle above the front door so we can order the glass for that too. Other than that, (and of course the bricking being finished!) we just have to install the garage side door and the laundry door and we're at lockup! So a couple of weeks, methinks. Woohoo! Sparky is in next week to rough in, so we've been looking at the electrical plan and making sure we have enough power points etc. Fun fun fun! Oh and we've pretty much decided on colours - will upload in another post. Kitchen colours that is, then the rest of the house follows from there. Stay tuned, photos to follow in next couple of days....

Bricking progress pics

We have one full wall bricked - down the side to the right hand of this photo - along the garage, our bedroom, the laundry and spare bedroom. The brickies were great, really wanted to finish the last course tonight before they went home. Have done half way up the back wall, and partially around the other side. Wow - it will be up before we know it!

Took the kids out for a look today, they were very interested in what the brickies were doing. They thought the cement mixer was particularly cool! Apparently the weather is going to go downhill by the end of the week, so they are keen to get through as much as they can while the sun is shining (which it has been the last 2 days!). It has been freezing cold in the mornings though, I don't know how they do it! I like my nice warm bed first thing in the morning, I'm soooo not a morning person.

Build it up, up up, build it higher, build it up up up up up up to the sky.......

We have bricks! Beautiful, double height bricks that just look perfect. Can't wait til they are all the way around the house. So far the brickies have started on the dead side of the house, down past the garage and our bedroom and laundry. But it still look sooooo good! Brickies should be back on site Monday so I guess over the next week or so it will be complete - and then we'll be at lockup!

Oh and I just love the roof. I feel like I'm starring in a Colourbond Roof ad, I keep standing and staring at it will such admiration... it looks perfect.

All systems go for this week, after so long waiting now it seems like it is going really fast! Doo Bah, you'd better get your cleaning gloves ready I don't think there's any way you're going to beat us in the house building race - and it's going to be one hell of a housewarming party!!

The mess that winter causes...

We had the bricks delivered yesterday (Wed) and boy did his little forklift thingy make a mess! Driving from the back of the block down to where the land falls away a little bit and placing the bricks where the pool will be - mud EVERYWHERE! And I literally couldn't watch - I was sure the whole thing was going to tip over OR get bogged OR he was going to run into the alfresco bricked up post - it was giving me heart failure so I decided to clean up instead. In my cleaning up it looked like there was water coming from the pipes in the kids toilet, the bathroom and the laundry (it was kind of pooled around the pipes -wanted to make sure it wasn't the roof!). Bikeman confirmed with the plumber that they were doing a pressure test and did an o-ring. So all ok. Anyway, brick delivery all done, no crashes/bogging but mud and chopped up ground everywhere. And someone had taken it upon themselves the day prior to wire tie the back gate - hmph how rude! And not just a single piece of wire bent around the top a little bit, 3 strong well-tied bits of wire that I couldn't have opened without pliers. Not sure it is in the neighbours of the empty block or someone else. If it is the neighbours, they must think that the gate is on their property due to where our temporary fence is - but no, our property goes to about 2/3 across the gate face, so most of the gate is actually ours. Anyway, no doubt the chopping up done by the brick delivery isn't filling whomever it may be with joy. Tough! That's building. Will just have to wait and see what happens, in 'Days of the Block'..... stay tuned for next time. Oh yes and the brickie was onsite starting the bricking up today. Yee-har!

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.