Ground floor bricks complete!

Or almost complete, expected to be complete by the end of the day I took the pictures. I'm told that next is to wait for the bricks to dry, possibly by Wednesday, then they can put up scaffolding and wrap and brick the upper storey, as well as painting whatever needs painting while they are up there.

The photos go around the house, starting by going down the left hand side.



View from the front.



The portico. The last remaining bricks to go up are next to the window and door at the front here.



The inside of the garage, with those columns of bricks that garages have.



Side of the house behind the garage, with dining room and outdoor room.



The back of the house. Family room on left, outdoor room on right.



Rear corner of the family room.



This is on the kitchen side, where they had just finished work.



Close up of the window sill for the staircase window. It's the only window sill we've got so far, so I'm taking a close look to see how they do it.

Bricks and More Bricks

Well well, things have been moving quickly this week. I visited the site on Wednesday and found many more bricks than I was expecting!



This is the view from the front. The bricks here were layed using the device in the picture below, to allow them to get a bit higher. But the top-most bricks will need them to get higher still.



Here is what they used to lay the second height level of bricks.



This is the brick pier in our outdoor room.



This is the inner corner of the outdoor room. The bricks go all the way up to the roof here. Above the door and window here will be fibre cement infill, but nearly all other windows have brick infill. The only other fibre cement infill is above the balcony door at the front.



This is the front pier, which will have stack stone over it. Seems they didn't use dodgier bricks even though these will all be covered up. The wire is for a decorative light to light up the pier, since it's the only interesting thing on our facade.



Someone has been busy with the electrical wiring too.. wires for all the lights appear to have been placed.



The wires look like this, throughout the roof of pretty much every room. I didn't check upstairs so as not to disturb the people working up there.

Bricking has started!

We have been visiting the site regularly but there hasn't been too much to write about. But along with a new site supervisor we now have a group of brickies who were at work on Saturday, laying the shared wall between the garage and the house.

Also it's good that they have moved some piles of bricks into the backyard. As soon as the roof tiles had gone from the backyard on to the roof, someone took down the temporary fencing and started driving heavy machinery through our backyard! Now we have 50cm gouges running sideways all the way across. But with the bricks there they can't get past.



Bricks! For a double storey house, bricks are layed on the walls shared with the garage first, then the garage is built. So that's why these walls are getting done first. Apparently some brickies don't like double storey houses and won't do them. Bricklaying further up needs scaffolding.



Maybe they weren't able to do any more in the garage area .. they layed some bricks over at the side of the house too, behind the garage.



This is how they leave the corner, with some temporary bricks to hold the permanent ones in place.



Antenna has also been installed.



These arrived a week or two back. At the bottom is plasterboard, at the top is something black. There are a whole lot of these up on the second storey, as well as one pile in the family room/kitchen downstairs.



It looks like the heater has been installed. The big silver ducts are insulated, the dark coloured ducts (you can see one in the bottom left corner) appear not to be. I'm not sure if there should be a dark coloured duct up in the roof like that .. most of the uninsulated ones are downstairs.



I'll be checking to make sure they fix this before bricks go up on this wall.. the wrap is loose in many other areas too.

Bricks! And ducts

We have bricks! But no-one to lay them. And it sounds like we may be waiting a while. We do however have some heating ducts. And a foot door.



Bricks out the front.



Bricks at the side.



Leaning tower of bricks on the block next door.



Close up of the bricks. There's some variety in the colour of this lot, not so much in the stack to the right.



Downstairs heating ducts.



Upstairs heating ducts.



Here is our foot door. Thoughtfully placed so people don't have to step on the dirty concrete when walking in through the front door.