Internals

Quickly (because I'm leaving TAFE soon!) a few shots of the insides.

(1) Hot water system in approximately the right place - a lot more to happen yet before it goes though!

(2) Plumbing roughed in. Bath taps are 100mm too low (oh lordy) but apparently that can be fixed. Ah, apprentices.

(3) Scandia Cuisine, has the pipes inside the wood box to hook up to the hot water system. Free hot water from our 25 acres of trees forever!

(4) Gable ends have no wall sarking or cladding yet, and haven't got the external doors on so the weather (OH the weather!) is still getting in. Top priority before we move in 12 days' time is to at least get the place to lockup!!

(5) View of the western gable from inside the ceiling space. We're putting up some sheets of yellow-tongue flooring so that we can use the roof for storage.

External Walls

I forgot to take photos in the last couple of days so I can't show the latest. I spent Monday and Tuesday nights in the tent, working on the wall cladding. Came home this morning because it rained! And it is STILL raining, and planning to rain even more - and where is the tank that was going to arrive two weeks ago???? Sigh!!

(1) Wall cladding started going up while Dave was working on the roof.

(2) South side, under the verandah. I've got all done now except for the narrow strip just below the wooden wall batten. Fiddly, but I'll get there.

(3) Northern face. I've got done up to the tops of the windows, interesting times ahead there because (for example) the cladding to the left of the sliding door is 7mm lower than the cladding on the right. I'm still brewing about how to get around it...

(4) Not a good shot, but it was raining so much this morning I wasn't going to go for a wander too far out from cover to get a good photo of the wall claddings. Good shot of the old tin tank though. It's supposed to be the header tank. See the "path" straight up behind/beside the tank? At the top of that path there's a clearing in the trees where it will eventually go. The patch of crusher dust to the right of the tank is where the new tank/s will go. Dave got the fire fighting pump serviced so that when the first new tank arrives he can pump the water out of the little tin tank into the new tank, then we can move the little tank up the hill to fulfil its destiny.

Roof

The roof sheets have gone on in stages over a couple of weeks, depending on the weather. OH, the weather!!

(1) The verandah sheets go on.

(2) The first roof sheet goes on.

(3) The first side of the roof finished.

(4) Halfway across the second side ... and the wind got up. Pa insisted that he would drive back from his month at the coast to help us get the rest of the roof sheets on, but we got a really good, still day (and we had learned a lot from working with Pa) so Dave and I got the last lot on all by ourselves - and weren't we happy little campers being able to ring and say "you can sleep easy at night now Pa, we got the last roof sheet on today".

(5) Last sheet goes on!!!!!!!!! What a sense of achievement.

Roof trusses going up!

Here's a little retrospective of how it's been going ...

Dave doing the "flying fruit fly" getting the roof trusses stood up. My job was to stand below and push the truss up with a pole while Dave pulled on the rope he'd tied around the truss. Once it was standing he bolted it to a temporary truss spacer - and that's another story in itself! Bit of a waste of time in the end, but that's something you find out the hard way, hmm.

A very happy pair of campers :-)

(1) Wall frames completed.

(2) First roof truss going up.

(3) A few roof trusses up...

(4) Nearly finished ... !

(5) Done!!!!!!!

Update

It's raining today (and most likely tomorrow) so I'm having a pricing, paying & ordering day. Plus we're having a garage sale on Saturday so I've got to go through cupboards and sort the entire house out.

Three weeks today we hand back the keys to the rented house!

The state of the house today:

• Roof sheeting is ALL ON! Dave still needs to put in the other half-a-million roofing screws but the sheets are secure enough for the moment. The barge end on the east is trimmed out, but not the west, so that's his next job. Once the western barge is trimmed out the last piece of ridge capping can go on too, and that will be the roof finished ... oh, except for a fiddly little half-circle thingy but he'll get to that eventually!
• All windows and both external door jambs are in. Need to hang the two external doors.
• Just over 1/4 of the Hardiplank cladding is on. I've been working on that mostly by myself. Dave's been on the roof with me helping out a fair bit, but when he's just whacking screws in I've been working on the external walls.
• Plumber and bobcat man came on Fri, drains are done and buried, including septic trench. Pad is done for the tank, which should arrive Thurs or Fri. Pity it hadn't arrived already, this rain is the best we've had in months! I've got a couple of buckets under the downpipes though...
• Council comes to inspect frame tomorrow arvo.
• Plumber comes back tomorrow or Wednesday to rough in pipes.
• Telstra contractor comes on Sunday to connect phone. Telstra switches it on at the exchange on Monday.
• Next Monday the truck arrives with the plasterboard linings and the insulation.

The plan at the moment is:

• Complete external wall linings by Monday 21st Nov.
• Garage sale Sat 23rd Nov.
• Have internal linings complete by Monday 1st Dec.
• First week December is mostly moving - need internal ceilings up so that we can store a million boxes in the roof cavity while we finish off the inside of the house!

There is so much to do it is overwhelming. For example, I haven't worked in two weeks because I don't have time - thankfully my new boss isn't stressed, she's happy to plug along for a couple more weeks until things settle down a bit.

I'll post some photos ... one day!