Roof and Cladding

The roof and cladding is going on. Here are some photos:






Here is some detail in the flashing of windows and the colorbond wall.



In the meantime, i've being working on on the window sashes. These will be double loose mortise and tenon joints held together with a bugle screw. Designed to not fail after being hit with a sledge hammer - a bridge too far.

Record Rain

Yesterday it rained non stop. 114mm and the garage was overflowing with water when I arrived this morning. I spent most of the day collecting rubbish and draining the water. I did also however fit my first stops to one of my windows.

Over the last week, we made a small change by adding another room. We added a small kitchen complete with sink and gas outlet. Now we have a two bathroom, two kitchen, two living room, two bedroom house (four toilets including the temporary oudoor dunnie). I've got the plumber to put in some more taps for a washing machine to go into the downstairs bathroom - so maybe we have two laundries as well. We should call our beachhouse "two".

Flashing and Window Frames In

Today the window jambs that I have made got installed-except for the high windows. They are very solid (and heavy). Not everyone's cup of tea but they look good to me.

Inspection

I had my framing inspection today. A pass! and I am upto date with my inspections! the guy spent a whole hour looking over things.



ocean views from the roof.



funky plastic plumbing that has just become legal in nsw. They have just gone through the once in 100 years plumbing review.

Plumbing fixtures chosen

Graham had the plumber in recently and he needs to know all our fixtures. So today I went to Reece to pick them all out.

The showroom had a range of showers connected up, with pushbuttons to operate them, which Louka found quite exciting.

We'd already picked the washbasin (same as in our flat) which probably helped. I went in and asked for everything in the highest water-saving star rating, because that's what our BASIX certificate requires. They told me everything is the same anyway, which didn't help. So I gave them some general guidelines (bath size, mixer tap preference, etc) and went with the cheapest or their recommendation for everything, which simplified everything. I thought.

Except when I got home and actually checked our BASIX certificate, it required 6 star rated bathroom and kitchen taps. Which don't seem to exist, or if they do they're not available at Reece, where everything is 4 star. So I updated our certificate and of course it no longer passed. Graham suggested getting a bigger rainwater tank, so I increased the size from 3,000 litres to 3,200 litres, and now we pass again.

Tiles are chosen

I'd been looking at tiles for a week or two, but hadn't made a decision (it's hard to decide when you're not just choosing for yourself). Then this morning Graham suggested we look at tiles together. The only tile shop we could find open on Sundays was Amber Tiles, so that's where we went. They happened to be having a 20% off sale this weekend.

Louka sat at a table going through the contents of her treasure box and occasionally bringing us coins and polished stones while we looked at tiles for the entrance and bathroom floor and walls. We found a pleasant dark grey tile for the entrance quite quickly, but weren't getting very far for the bathroom. Graham was favouring dark greys while I preferred lighter and warmer colours. Then Graham said something about "blue". But it seemed there were no blue floor tiles. I saw a beautiful dark blue tile, which Graham thought looked expensive, so I went to ask about it. It was a wall tile so I asked if there were any blue floor tiles. At first the salesman said only the little mosaic tiles (which were the wrong blue anyway), then he remembered another one. Among all the grey-brown tiles it looked pale and dull, but when we put it besdide the white wall tiles it suddenly looked much richer. We considered using it for the entrance too, but the dark grey looked better against the deep ocean external walls.

So now we have all our tiles chosen, in one morning. I thought that was pretty good.

Rafter from the Rear

Here is a rear view of our house from the park. We decided to make the rafters for the top roof shorter. They put the rafters in at 600mm - the spec said 525, but they looked too long. You could not possibly see the sky. I got them to reduce it to 400 (a reduction of 125). This compensates the high windows being 40mm shorter. The angle from the bottom of the high windows to the end of the roof is still quite low. Absolutely no possibility of rain getting in those windows.



The carpenters worked back today. At 5pm the neighbour came out and demanded they stop. There are tight restrictions on working hours in this suburb.

More Framing

The framing is going up - ever more timbers. I think I have bought all the timber I need now. I've been beavering around making up the 24 high windows.

The high roof is a bit funny in the sense that it is really supported by purlins and the eve is supported by rafters. You will understand when I take a photo when this is done.

The main man chippy has made up his own scafolding - I don't want to know. Here is a picture. Straight from the turn of last century.

Most of the trusses are up

Most of the trusses are up. I can now get the feeling of what it will look like.

Trusses and Sanding

I spent most of the day sanding the exposed beams and trusses while the carpenters erected the trusses. They tell me that they can see the ocean while they were doing that. I'll get up there to take a photo.

They told me that I have ordered too many 2.7's. I said that is strange. I thought for a few seconds and then realised that they were going to install too few trusses. Another case of lucky I was there.

The Rain is Back

The rain came back and the garage is flooded. I resorted to trying to siphoning water out from the bathroom. It seems to be going ok albeit slowly. It really has that dungeon look now - dripping water, water marks - pretty scary. I drilled about 5 holes in the subfloor to try to get the water to drain through.



One of the problems of such a huge garage is that it will collect a lot of water. Every 10mm of water equates to 1.3 cubic metres of water. I'm expecting 50mm this weekend. I did the calcs and by punny garden hose siphon will remove around 200ml per second. So this will take 10 hours to drain away. The easiest way to calcuate the effect of siphoning is the cross sectional area multipled by the square root of 20 times the height difference.

I returned on Monday to find that the siphon had stopped. Either it had finished or became blocked. I started it up again and it drained most of the water after about 6 hours. I suspect it finished since there was a water mark on the park's footpath.

It is a very interesting garage. I may call it a dungeon. All those water marks - which would be impossible to artificially produce really make it quite dramatic and theatrical. A few moose heads would give it the finishing touch. The very rich dark red tanins from the spotted gum and bloodwood really add colour which I suspect would be almost impossible to remove. I'm not even going to try!

All of the posts are in and trade connect

All of the posts are in. We hired a crane ($500) to drop them all in. The carpenter thought they weighed around 200kg each. Of course I know this not to be true since that would mean I could lift 100kg - yeah right. The raw posts were 158mm square and 6.1m long. Their density would have to be 1.22 to be that weight. I forgot my camera, so sorry, not pictures. They all went in well and matched up so that they are vertical.

I took the plunge and asked for quotes through Trade Connect. After posting the job, 3 electricans were around that morning ready to quote me. Another couple are coming around Saturday. I recommend it.