Upper Floor Plate Height

It's been a little over three weeks since my last update and I'm happy to report that we have today reached plate height for our upper floor. Adam has been on site practically every business day barring a couple, diligently working away despite the pretty ordinary weather we've had over the last few weeks. His dad helped out a bit in the first week with the external walls but it's been Adam flying solo since then. 

The weekend just gone gave us our first look at all our rooms with most internal walls largely complete, barring a few courses on the wall to our robe, a small nib wall to our void and a wall required to hide some air con ducting (by school drop off this morning, all of those were complete!). Amanda and I spent a little bit of time walking around each room and couldn't be happier with their sizes and the design choices we made. 

Probably the only thing I'd change, if I had my time again would be the robes in the kids bedrooms. They are a good width (Imogen's particularly at just over 3m!!) but their depth is a bit awkward at just shy of a metre. They are too deep for non-walk-in style robes but not quite deep enough to make them proper walk in's. I have no doubt a robe company will be able to do some smart designs with their configuration to make them work, but seeing them in person, they were the only thing that made me question our design.

There was a little bit of brick work still to be done on the balcony at this stage but other than that, we're now done with the brickwork for the upper floor. We're hoping that this week's update brings news of our upper floor roof commencement in the near future. We can but hope!

Sign of Movement

After yet another wait for labour, we had our first sign of actual construction related movement on the block yesterday. We were meant to get a brickie team a few weeks back but apparently Stannard lost a team to another builder, which threw a spanner in to their scheduling works. Yesterday's update from Sam, our construction coordinator, however, was a little more positive, stating we should expect to see a brick layer on site this week for preparation with construction to commence next week.

True to her word, today Amanda drove past our block and found Adam, a bricklayer assigned to our upper floor, on site. Adam is a solo bricklayer, supported by his Dad, and built another Stannard home one suburb over, so we're familiar with his work. Also, Dean, our design consultant spoke highly of Adam prior to our build commencing, so we know he's a bit of a gun bricklayer and that we're going to get a quality product from him.

Adam got a lot of things prepared during the afternoon, marking out where all the external and internal walls needed to go and getting materials ready for a start in the coming days. He even put up a few things like placing some of our void windows. Hopefully the weather holds out, although there is rain forecast, as we're very much feeling overdue to see some actual construction on our house! Stay tuned.

Upper floor bricks

Just a quick update. Today saw the loading of our upper floor with bricks ready for the next phase of brickwork. We did have a brick delivery two days ago but it was only a small load and left stacked on verge. Today's load went straight onto top slab, along with moving the first load up there.

The upper floor will bring our three main bedrooms, our master ensuite and robe, the kids bathroom, our sitting room, a study nook and it balcony. Hopefully we get some good news about the brick layers soon.

15/6: We had some door frames delivered today :)

Scaffold

The upper floor slab had now had a decent time to cure and finally on June 1st the scaffold team showed up to erect the scaffold around our ground floor in preparation for commencement of brick work to our upper floor. 

It took the guys three pretty much full days to frame out the scaff around our house, including putting scaff in our void area. A week after the scaff guys arrived our brick lift showed up. Talking with the scaffold guys they suggested bricks were due Friday June 9 with brick layers following the week after. Here is a pic of the house awaiting bricks.

Recently while we've been waiting we did go back and have a look at our benchtop selection and we're now inclined to change our previous selection, which is used all through the house, to something different. We're just waiting on that variation to come through to make a decision on. Will update on our new selection later.

There does appear to be a bit of freeing up of resources we're seeing in builds around the place so fingers crossed we can move through some/all of the next stages with less waiting between each step. Would love to also not have so long between blog posts!

Upper Slab

Late on Friday afternoon, April 14th, we received a most welcome email from Stannard to say our upper Slab pour was happening the next day.

We were a bit stunned given it was a Saturday but on the other hand, the site has been ready for about two weeks. 

We went down early Saturday morning on the 15th and, sure enough, the concrete pump truck was there and awaiting the cement mixers' arrival. We didn't have to wait long before the first mixer showed and the first load of concrete had been poured for our upper slab.

There wasn't much to see from the ground so I sent my drone (DJI Mini 3 Pro) up to capture the action from the sky. By 10am it was all done, including the stairs, which, interestingly, I learnt required a drier mix than the main slab after speaking to the concrete truck driver whilst he waited his turn.

The form work stayed up for just shy of a week before the majority of it got removed, giving us a look at what some of our downstairs rooms/areas felt like enclosed with a ceiling, where lights would be, etc.

Next steps require scaffolding to be erected around the house, a brick lift, bricks to be loaded and then, of course, a brickie team to lay them. We've not yet got any timing of any of that so stay tuned.

Upper Floor Slab Prep + Pool Stage 2

It's been a productive couple of weeks on the block. Yay!

Firstly, we had the formworkers complete the wooden framing and prop work for the upper floor slab. Next, the sparkies from Custom Electrics and the plumbers have been out to do some preparation work prior to the steel workers arriving (mainly downlight canisters and some basic plumbing provisions that will need to go through the slab). 

Toward the back end of last week, the steel workers arrived and started forming up the grid mesh that goes into our upper floor slab. They were back for their third day on site this morning. The sparkies were also back today to lay their electrical conduit through the steel work grid for all the electrical circuits that are either under the slab or feeding the upstairs.

If that all wasn't enough, over the last fortnight we've also had Mark from Blue Star Pools come out and start of Phase 2 of our pool rehab. This involved jackhammering off all the old plaster, waterline tile and bullnose tile, core driling through the shell to put in the three new return jets, cutting channels into the shell for new electrical provisions for the two new lights, concreting up the old skimmer box and cutting in a new one on the other side of the pool, as well as making a new 1.8m bench seat in the shallow end and a 1.0m bench seat in the opposite deep end corner. He also laid all new piping and ran that into our new pool equipment room at the back of the house, including plumbing in a waste pipe to our new soakwelll.

An engineer is also due out to certify all the work that Stannard have done and then it should just be a matter of getting the concrete poured to complete this next step. We did go up and have a sneak peak at our view from the second floor and we can indeed see the city off in the distance, as well as lovely views down to our local park. Very happy and can't wait to have a slab party to celebrate!

Formwork!

In what has felt like forever, finally I'm able to make a new post about actual progress. That's right, the form workers have arrived!

Just one day after receiving an update that our formworker was still a couple of weeks away, I received a call today from our design consultant from Stannard stating that form workers were on site and form work was going up. Shortly after, the construction consultant also emailed to share the great news. It seems there was a cancellation so we got bumped up the list. 

I was able to pop past the block on the way to picking up the kids from school and had a quick chat with the guys. He said he got back from xmas break and had 14 jobs waiting, has a yard full of form materials but simply doesn't have the labour to put it up. He's down to just himself and his son whereas he used to have five crews, blaming the mining industry. 

The two of them wasted no time getting started with the framing, with most rooms already having several props with wooden frames set up. Probably a few more days ahead of them based on the pile of wood and props still out the front. So just like that, we're back to moving forward with our build. 

In fairness I should mention at some time in the last few weeks, we've also had the plumber out to mark up the downstairs internal and external plumbing and someone has been along to cut all the brickwork for those pipes too. So we have been inching ahead, but the arrival of the form worker is a more significant progress milestone. Fingers crossed we can keep the momentum!