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.

Site Supervisor Update

I just had a chat with the site supervisor about how things are going. He said he's got the bricks scheduled to be delivered tomorrow, but no brickies yet. His regular ones are busy on other jobs, and I said I would rather wait for them than to try other ones who may or may not do a good job.

So what he's got planned for the near future is to get the heating and electrical wiring in, and one the brickies are available he'll get the inside garage wall done, so then they can put up the garage and finish off that section of roof. It's a bit more complicated with a double storey as they need scaffolding where the garage will be, and so the garage has to wait until everything that needs that scaffolding has been finished.

No photos yet.. we were going to go look at the site last weekend but staying at home relaxing seemed like a much better idea :)

Roof Tiles!

We finally have roof tiles! And fascia and guttering on the portico too! These photos were taken on wednesday 23rd June. I'm happy that progress is being made again.




Pictures from the front right and front left. The bricks are our next door neighbour's garage.



The long ladder, and the thing which I think they might use to bring tiles up on to the roof. They were packing it away just as I arrived. Picture is from the front of the house.



Something is happening on the portico.. I'm not entirely sure what.



I snuck around the back and took this picture from one of the properties behind our house.

Delays ..

It's now two weeks since the portico went up, and still we have no roof tiles! The SS said they would be done in the week that just passed, but all we saw was a water pipe pouring water into a pool in the ground (picture attached).

Given that each week costs us several hundred dollars, I am not happy with how slow things are going right now.

UPDATE: The SS just called and said he's been delayed by the following things

1. Corporate inductions (I think he's new to Metricon)
2. Rainy days
3. On the days that aren't rainy, he's been dealing with the fascia people. The fascia needs to be complete before roof tiles go on, but the fascia installers decided to re-order materials that were already at the site, and were waiting for those. So he says that is sorted out now and they just need to come in and do the fascia, then roof tiles can go on.

We finally have a portico! Apparently someone said Bunnings and someone heard Bowens, or something like that, and the result was a 2 week delay while no-one knew where the wood was. They've also straightened up the trusses and added extra studs where the gaps were too wide.



The portico! At last.



The bi-part door sitting in the backyard was finally installed. Not before being covered in mud though.



This is where the spa bath will go.



Our inspector is enthusiastic about the latest developements at the mud house.



Our laundry door. We didn't know it had a window in it. Apparently it does. The pipe is so water can drain out through the floor when something overflows.



Here's the side of the house. It's supposed to be 1.77 metres between the side of our house and the fence, I'll be measuring it tomorrow to make sure. The bricks are the side of the garage next door, presumably a 0 offset one.

UPDATE: Distance has been measured - it's more like 1.8 - 1.9 metres from the edge of our slab to the edge of the garage next door. And it's about 10 metres to the back of the property, which is also about right (the plans say 10248mm).



Extra studs have been added where the gaps were too wide underneath these windows.