a.k.a The Green House

We have a fully wrapped, green abode! Roof is finished and wrapping completed on Sunday, which was fantastic.

The wrapped house from the inside ... all silvery and much darker than it had been. Gave us a great insight into how much light will be coming in once the bricking is complete. This photo was taken from the dining room looking towards the rumpus (front) room.

Top windows have now been squared up with lower windows rather than sticking out 3cm or so ... looks much better! And it was much easier second time around. And yes I was very high up on that ladder balancing and holding the phone to take a photo at the same time... I was scared for me!!

Site Foreman Blue.... doing a bit of hammering and stuff. Real hammer and all!

We have a roof!! And sisalation (foil wrap around the outside of the house). All in the matter of a couple of days. The roof was finished Friday, which was absolutely fantastic, which meant we were able to start the wrapping on Saturday (thanks to Mr Reichy for his help (and also the a.k.a The Green House suggestion)) and finish just after lunch on Sunday.

And don't be fooled, no we don't have any of those builders helping us out on our project as per the sisalation... remember that bargain we got from ebay.... well must be some left over from other projects, (we hope!).

Even one of the brickies was out Saturday morning, setting the bricks up ready for the brickies to arrive with gusto on Wednesday. He was probably a bit bummed that the Griswalds turned up, kids in tow, while he was trying to get a bit of quiet work done. Then they started yelling at each other about where to nail the sisalation first... tsk tsk!

So, bricks should be started Wed (weather permitting - looking at those cyclone force storms in perth today and thinking .... err maybe not!!) and will probably take a good week or so. And then we shall be nearly at lockup. Who'd have thought!

One step forward, two steps back

We are soooooooooo close with the roof .... but yet so far. Everything is on except the ridge capping (those pointy bits in between the different angles of the roof) BUT (and it's a big but) some of the roof iron has to be removed and replaced. The manufacturer came out and looked at some of the sheets and apparently agreed with the roofer that they were faulty and bent, so some of them will be removed and replaced. Hopefully (and it's a bit hopefully) by the end of the week. So close!!!! The plumbers were out yesterday and today, so that was pretty exciting. Lots of 'where do you want these taps' and 'how big will the surround around your bath be'. It seems a bit of a shock to be thinking of such things so soon! I'm not imagining where the taps will be in the bathroom just yet, although we have to so they are placed in the right spot. We have an enormous mother of a gas line coming in, it's huge (photos to come..). As we will hopefully (Bikeman says WILL DEFINITELY) have a pool in the near future we needed to have the larger size pipe into the house so that it can feed the gas required for the pool heater in. I hate to see the gas bill once we get that sucker up and running! So now we have a water point in the fridge space, and a gas point outside for the built in BBQ on natural gas (both of which we don't physically own yet but one has to plan for the future!). And taps and outlets for shower heads (which the lovely plumber, Jnr, made a little higher for my Amazon Woman height - isn't that nice!). Snr was also on site today asking me all sorts of questions that I'm really not qualified to answer (have had many a phonecall from them saying) Jnr/Snr ... oh sorry I meant to call *Bikeman* ... but while I have you are you happy for the do-hickey to be placed in the front of the whatsamacallit instead of it being through the thingamejig as I think it would be better. Me: Ahhhh sure but maybe you should run it by *Bikeman* first - I'll get him to call you. Stuff womens lib! I have absolutely no idea what they are talking about!!! And unfortunately can only remember every second word when reciting to Bikeman, so very easy for Chinese Whispers to be played. Yes, best you call Bikeman, if you want a REAL answer. Anyway, enough of my rambling. Upshot of all that: Roof will (fingers crossed) be finished by the end of the week. Plumbing will be finished by end of the week. Brickie will be in next week to start bricking up and if all goes to plan we will spend the weekend wrapping our house with insulation and fixing up the windows that stick out just a little too far! (Our problem - checked the window plans tonight and they had stated the larger reveal depth - we just didn't pick it up, darn it!). Work work work work work... at least I have a clean study, sorted out all "The House" stuff (formerly known as "The Block") so I can find everything quickly. Oh, the joys...

Bikeman the chippie

Ok granted, these windows may be a little hard to see but my clever apprentice chippie Bikeman installed them today. In between the normal four panel window, and the very top stripy bit of wood (how technical am I .... not) - are actually windows! One above the front door, and the other two above the rumpus room windows. The story of the rumpus room windows.....

Installed them where they were designed on the plan (where they are now). Looked a bit strange as there are 11 foot ceilings in the rumpus room so there was a lot of room above the windows which will end up being wall. So Bikeman and Beam me Up (the chippie) went through a lot of grief moving them up so the windows were up higher. I'm trying to upload a past photo but it keeps putting it in the wrong spot so you'll just have to use your imagination.

Anyway, we left it like that for a while to try and get used to it but it really looked wrong. The windows were just in the wrong spot and were way too high. So much to Bikeman's charign... we decided to move it back down again. This time he didn't have the assistance of Beam me Up so he did it all by himself. Pops suggested that perhaps we could put a window just above the windows and the door - to balance it out a little. So that's what we have done. Ordered these lovely, double glazed, little pieces of glass (and paid $1.2k for the privilege) but they do make the facade look much better. So Bikeman and I (well all I did was hold them up due to my super human size) put them in today, with much banging and swearing they were finally in and level and in line with the inside windows. Until we went outside to check how they looked and discovered that the reveal (wooden frame around the windows) was a different depth to the other windows... so they are sticking out the front. Crap! So (another day) we will have to fix it, bring them back in line from the front and then plane them down so they are the same width as the others. Damn!

Next handyman project: Installing the sisalation (foil wrap) around the house. I'm off now to search the internet for some 'how to' tips .... amazing! PS don't stop reading now.... photos of the roof are in the next post....)

The beginning of less water inside the house....

Well we're nearly there with the roof.... doesn't it look magnificent?? I'm soooo happy with the colour - i'm very glad we decided to go with the monument on the roof and the woodland grey fascias and window surrounds (and garage door - mmm not sure how that will look but ce la vie!). Anyhoo the roof colour is great. It's hard to tell from a photo as it actually looks more steel grey - it is in fact the same colour as the guttering. It's just the reflection of the light that makes it looks lighter. Come and see it in real life and you'll see just what I mean!!!

Nearly finished, hopefully only one more day for the roof on site and then it will be done. Tell you what, you really notice the difference being inside now - hardly any rain! And of course it was raining in Romsey today. And for the most part we were nice and dry. Not as windy either, although that could just be my imagination :).

Those silver rolls of insulation are called 'roof blanket' and they go right up against the roof. I think it's also called sarking. Anyway, that is to make sure the roof is well insulated and doesn't collect too much heat (or cold, for that matter) in the roof space.

Jobs for today: Installing the fixed windows above the rumpus room windows (see earlier post) and the same window above the front door. We've had to put down some plastic over the door entrance sills, it is so damn muddy in Romsey (and believe me that red mud just does not come out) to stop muddy feet from wrecking the beautiful timber. We also played cleaners today, going around and picking up all the left over rubbish from site. It looks much nicer, although our 'bin' is now overflowing.

Had to leave early as Pink is not well today - think she has the flu her brother had earlier in the week (not swine) - high temp and a cough. Off home for some movies, drugs, and a rest on the couch, that'll fix her right up.

The sun is shining.... perhaps a roof will be in by the end of the week???

Nearly there... the bracing is all on, and the scaffolding has been put up to the back part of the house. Apparently according to Mr Roofman the people putting up the scaffolding were supposed to be there today so fingers crossed. We have fascia and guttering all around the house now, which is SO COOL! Hopefully the roof will be in by the end of the week... fingers crossed. If so that means a busy week of putting the sisalation around the house. Should be fun though, I'm looking forward to doing a bit of hard labour. Just have to make sure to keep my fingers clear of any sharp bits... or mallets... Oh yes... we had a great ebay bargain the other day. $20 bucks per roll for sisalation (the foil wrap that goes on the outside of the frame, before the bricking happens), instead of somewhere between $60 and $100 as per hardware store prices. Bargain! Good old Homeone forum, someone else had been able to get the same sort of bargain so we thought we'd give it a go.

It's cold in Romsey!!!

A message from Mr Lewis today prompted me to think about heating. His comment on the previous post "it looks cold cold cold there" is very true (mind you when you live in Queensland then anything is cold in comparison!). So I started to consider our options. And lo and behold, when I purchased the latest version of Real Living Magazine there was a competition to win one of these beautiful warm Heatmaster gas log heaters. Doesn't that look warm! So I'm hoping to win ... 'The secret of success is enthusiasm!!!'....

Brace yourself!

Well, we didn't expect it to happen this week but we have the roof bracing on the back half of the roof. The roofers were out on Tuesday putting up the guttering (which you can see in the picture) and then Wednesday we expected all the hard work to begin... only to receive a message from the roofer saying his wife had had her baby! Congratulations to them, it is great news and we are very happy for them. So we thought nothing would happen this week.... until Bikeman went up to the block today to do some work and voila, some lovely blue bracing has appeared at the back of the house. Ready to attach a roof to! Wow....

Frame Inspection .... check!

We have a frame! And it even passed inspection. Cool! Bikeman spent many, many hours of his life (big thanks to Pops for helping out) hammering in nail after nail after nail. The chippie showed Pete how to hammer on the bracing so it would save us money (and him time), which was great. So now all we need is a roof .... and for somewhere that is in drought it has been raining a LOT! Roofer was out there today, which is great, putting up the fascia. By the way, we have chosen the following Colorbond roof colours: Monument for the main roof, and guttering , and Woodland Grey for the fascia and downpipes, and also the windows and roller garage door. It's very hard to choose colour based on those little chips of steel and some photos in bad light! But we got there. And up until the day we decided we were always having Woodland Grey on the roof. But there was a new colour, and in actual fact the Woodland Grey looked a little too green for the whole roof... I think the Monument colour will be just perfect. A slate - dark grey colour. We're having some bank issues. As in not enough cash. Thank god for credit cards to give us that little bit extra until we get to lockup... just have to hope it will be enough! We haven't gone over, just a matter of timing for payments. It's all good, though, we've got it sorted. Stay posted for some more photos of the roof going on... maybe even some action shots, we'll see....