Ground Floor Roof

Pleasingly we are starting to see fairly regular attendance of trades at our block so far this calendar year. Having had the scaffold removed from the upper storey and relocated to the ground floor (which is at the back of the house, next to the pool) in the first week of February, we've seen a few things happen every few days. First, the came and removed the brick lift and tidied up the front of the block. Next a couple of guys spent a full day cleaning the inside of the house as well as down each side and around the back of other building debris that accumulated during the construction of the top storey. Roofing materials then started appearing on site in preparation for the construction of the ground floor roof.

Yesterday, February 19th, a big mobile crane came and lifted all the wood and steel beams up and over the top storey and into the back part of the block (and where necessary, into place as part of the roof support). Despite it being 40+ degrees, the roof chippies were also on site and cracked on with the construction of our lower floor roof. By the end of the day, pretty much all the horizontal beams had been installed. Today, another 36+ degree day, the roof chippie team had constructed all the pitched beams. They now need to tidy up all the eaves, install the flashing & guttering and horizontal supports across the pitched roof and it'll be ready for measuring up for cover. 

Upper storey revealed

Today we got the first look at our completed upper floor following the removal of the scaffold that has surrounded it since mid June 2023. We are thrilled with how the house is looking, the colours we've chosen and the lineal design style. We really like how the splayed gutters accentuate the house width.

Removal of the scaffold marks an exciting step as construction now moves to focus on the lower floor, starting with construction of the roof at the back half of the house, including the alfresco, which is also under the main roof. We are also looking forward to seeing the light come in from the skylight we optioned to have over the kitchen.

 Once the roof is on, it's back to more render inside and out, installation of the door and window glass, including our large commercial sliding stacker door between the kitchen/dining and alfresco and our wide front door to get to lock up. Lock up is our next formal completion stage and the next time the builder gets cash so I'm hoping that incentive will see us power through the next phase. I've got a bet on with Josh that we reach lock up by March 31st. Two shiny dollars are at stake so fingers crossed!

Ready for scaffold drop!

Hope everyone had a great festive break. Our builders certainly took one with nothing happening at the build between Dec 19th and Jan 17th - pretty much a month, but that's to be expected at this time of year.

Happily, since the 17th, we've seen a few things happen. The first trade back to site was the tiling team, who came and screeded our master ensuite, the kids bathroom and the balcony. The next week, it was the rendering team, who first applied a paint sealer to all our external walls before coming back the next day to apply the acrylic render texture coat to the whole outside of the upper floor. At the same time, the tiling team came back and applied the waterproofing to the ensuite & kids bathroom. The painting team then reappeared to finish painting all the eaves of the house. The upstairs is really looking great!

Best as we can tell, there's nothing left that requires the scaffolding, perhaps just the drain down pipes, so hopefully we see the scaffolding dropped so work can start on the lower floor. At this point, the build looks like a house (upper floor) has been built on top of a construction site (ground floor). 

We're excited to be moving to the ground floor part of the build. The upper floor is more of our "sleeping" zone of the house, while the ground floor is where we're going to do our living, so it will be great to see that start to come together.

More internal painting

 The last official work week for the year before Stannard went on festive break saw the painters return to continue painting the inside of the upper floor. They applied a second coat to all internal walls and fully painted the ceilings and cornicing. It's so white and bright walking around upstairs now 😀It actually is looking more like a home than a construction site up there. According to the painter, we should expect to see the external renderer after Christmas, but I suspect that means after the Christmas break, i.e. early to mid January.  

So that's it for this year. It's been reasonably productive I guess. 2023 saw the upper floor formwork built, the upper floor concrete slab poured, the upper floor brickwork completed, upper floor roof frame, upper floor roof cover, upper floor rendered inside and out, upper floor walls plastered and painted, upper floor ceilings and cornices installed and painted, upper floor glass installed to windows and doors, external moulding installed to balcony and portico and all the plumbing, electical and air con work performed to the upper floor.

Hopefully this time next year we have keys and have started on the post-handover finishing items. See you all in 2024

Bit more cornice and some cladding

I've been travelling for work this week so it's been a little harder to ascertain when and what has been done but checking out the house this morning, I can see more cornice has been put up in our upstairs void, sitting area and master bedroom. All that's left of the cornice to do is a little bit to our master walk in robe and master ensuite. In our master bedroom, we have a raised ceiling, and we're using some cornice to the internal raised section to create a light trough for this space. It'll then have a single pendant light hanging in the middle. We are really happy with how this part is looking and are looking forward to seeing it painted.

I also noticed that we had some cladding installed to the front elevation of the house. Our house is quite lineal in its design and we're having a raised moulding installed to the top front of our balcony and portico wall to give it a little bit of depth. This was a design detail suggested by Stannard - something we simply wouldn't have thought of ourselves. Anyway, that's about all I've noticed this week - I'd suggest there's probably only been one day of work done by the cornice guys so it's probably been a quietier week, which is to be expected the closer we get to Christmas. The office shuts down in a week's time so I'd imagine we're pretty close to finished for the year now as far as progress goes.

White Plaster Coat, Cornice & Even Some Paint!

It's been back to back weeks of work at the block and to say we're happy to see such great progress is an understatement. 

The plastering team returned this week to apply the smooth gypsum plaster set coat to all the internal walls, leaving them very smooth with a pinky/orangey hue. This took a couple of days to complete. Next up were the cornice fitters who, as the name suggests, starting putting up our cornicing to all the rooms. They also seem to be the ones responsible for making all the gaps smooth everywhere (like where gyprock joins together, where it meets cement render/plaster, etc. They had completed roughly half the upperstairs by the end of the week but appeared to have done most of the measuring and cutting, leaving only the installation bit still to be done.

We had our biggest shock of the week Friday though, when we noticed a different trade ute parked out the front, when we were half expecting the cornice guys back. Instead we found painters! Painting was never mentioned in any of our updates so we were blown away to be seeing our first look at our chosen paint colour (although only as a first coat) this week. The painters are a father and son combo with the father having worked for Stannard for over 40 years. We like that and having trades like that on the payroll is one of the reasons we chose Stannard.

We're starting to get close to Christmas now and with a hot week forecast, I'm not expecting as much progress in the coming weeks but happy to continue to be surprised!

Upper Floor: Glass, ceiling & plaster coat

This week was one of the busiest we've seen for our build yet.😀 

But before I get into that, we only had one thing happen last week - we had the our brickie team from the ground floor arrive back on site to finish bricking up the balcony. Previously they had left an access hole through the balcony to allow trades to get wheelbarrows through the balcony wall for all the cement render. That access was bricked up last week. Was a surprise to see our ground floor brick crew back but since to say g'day to the team again.

Onto the week that was. We had three different trades attend this week. Yep, you read that right, three! The glazier from Jason windows kicked things off Monday by putting in all our external windows and sliding door glass to our upper floor. He was all done by Monday afternoon.  Tuesday saw an early delivery of gyprock and cornice materials followed shortly after by the attendance of the ceiling guys to start putting the ceilings in. They wasted no time and had pretty much finished putting it all up in one day.  We love how the raised ceiling in our master bed is looking! They came back Wednesday morning to finish off what they hadn't got to as well as do the drywall sheeting to the void wall, which doesn't get the cement render treatment that most of the other walls receive.  

Friday the rendering team were back on site to finish rendering the external balcony now that the brickwork had been completed as well as start applying the smooth plaster coat to the internal walls.  I was surprised at just how smooth this plaster coat goes on. No doubt that comes down to the skill of the trade and when you see the quality of the work we're getting, it does make all the waiting a bit more palatable. 

Our fortnightly update that we got on Wed also suggested that the progress will continue in the coming weeks with ceiling guys back to put on the cornicing once the internal plaster work is done, a trade to come and apply our external mouldings (the materials were also delivered this week) and even the waterproofing to the upstairs wet areas are booked in to be done. Nice to get a good run of trades, especially this close to Christmas when I was expecting things to quieten down.