Getting closer!!!!

The weatherboarding is almost done. It looks fantastic. I am so happy with how it has turned out. It's great to see your ideas grow from paper to an actual house!

This is Daz and Tai (in the white) having lunch. I've just bought them Chinese takeaway. Aren't I a nice wife!! It reached 30 degrees today. Darren is going to get some water. It's hard work weatherboarding and painting in the heat.

The top left end of the house is painted in the finished colour. I hope you like it! We have admired the colour of a house up the mountain for a few years now. Finally, after much experimentation and trying different sample pots, Darren went in and asked them what colour they used . They were really nice. It is "Stonecrop" by Dulux. They said they absolutely loved the colour and that it is fantastic in disguising dust. We get a lot of dust off the dirt road so I am really happy with the choice. By the way, the dark bit on the 2 boards near the window at the bottom was just one of our experiments. The colour we chose is much lighter and softer. See below.

Our electrician Peter is coming tonight from Qld. Darren worked on his renovation last year and they have done a labour swap. Peter moved to Qld but he is happy to keep his part of the deal which is great! Yesterday Darren and I had to add up all the power points and light switches and buy the brackets, then put them all where we want them. It actually takes quite a bit of thought! You have to think of where the furniture will be going, what applicances you might want to use in each room, etc. It was fun. We also went tile shopping. I love these beautiful new tiles I saw online. They are glass tiles with a lovely, almost wallpapery background in a classic tapestry pattern. There's a picture below. But when we priced them for our ensuite, it would cost $1300 just to do the back wall of our shower let alone around the mirror. My dream probably has to end!! I just want something classic but modern at the same time, like the glass tile idea. I don't want a strip of stones like every other new home of the last few years!

Tim's camping party

Our Tim has turned 11 and had a camping party at the block to celebrate! Here he is with his friends in what will be a shower one day!
Here they are having bacon and eggs on the barbie for breaky. Tim is out in the sun so you can't see his face very well! I think he's having fun though.

Weatherboards go on!

Isn't it pretty! It's starting to look like a house instead of a frame!
Some rhodies on our block.

Dazza, Mark (Darren's brother who is generously helping us out atm) and our neighbor Greg having lunch in my garage upstairs.

Weatherboards going on.

A few more photos

The view from the road.
Darren's beloved Weeping Cherry. It has a specially grafted trunk and we transplanted it from our old house.

Our magnificent Purple Beech.

Our weatherboards. They are James Hardie Linea boards, made of cement stuff but look like timber boards once painted.

This is our al-fresco area. It will lead onto a big deck that goes out amongst the tree ferns. We got sliding doors, I can't remember what the reason was but I don't think we could get bi-folds. These will do but I hate the black handles. We will change that! To the right is the rumpus room.

Darren is grumpy

Poor Darren is very grumpy. The roofers finally came back and finished after starting about 5 weeks ago. It was only about 6 days work! The roof looks great but there are a few little mistakes. One line of screws has popped out, they mustn't have been screwed into the timber properly. Also, different parts of the roof have corners cut off in different ways. I would never have noticed but Darren looks at every little detail and things like that annoy him greatly. So we'll have to call the supervisor and get it fixed up. Darren really didn't like the roof guys much. They were arrogant. He was hoping they could help him cut in the skylights and offered them a slab but they just said no. He is glad they have gone and hopes someone else will come to fix things up. We have windows now!

Here's a pic of our lovely roof. I can hear the music from the Colourbond Ad in the background!

This is from inside the lounge room with the dormer window.

A gorgeous Spring day for windows.

The lower roof is now on. It's a bit hard to see the colour in this shot, it's a dark grey. You can see what beautiful weather we are having at the moment. It is my favourite time of year, full of anticipation of Summer, Christmas season and holidays.
Our windows were delivered today. Yay!!! Here is Darren checking if the colour matches the fascia OK (which it does). Our windows are aluminium but have wider sash pieces so they look more attractive like timber windows. They are all double glazed too. Most of them are casement windows, some awnings and some sliding doors.
The house with almost all it's roof on.
More windows.
Jake was so happy I was taking his photo!

Some of my kitchen ideas

I thought I'd share some of my ideas for my dream kitchen. This dishwasher is 90cm wide with a 34cm deep door. You can have it just under the bench or even mounted in a wall so you don't have to bend as far down to reach in. It has two baskets that sit side by side, 10 wash programs, a special filter system that means no more food scraps to clean out and it is very energy and water efficient. I wonder how much it costs? It's a Smeg. I like it better than dish drawers as it's way bigger and uses less water.
I want a 90cm ceramic cooktop purely for ease of cleaning. This is a downdraft exhaust extractor. It works like a rangehood but you install it in the wall behind the cooktop. I am having a cooktop on a bench with no wall behind it, only a small "backstand" where this will go.

This is the Titan sink. It is one bowl, deep and humongous. I want to get a mixer tap that swivels 180 degrees and has a pull out hose for rinsing like in a commercial kitchen. I want a big sink so I can wash big pots etc. without getting water all over the bench.

The roof goes on!

The top level of the roof is now on, yippee!!
The dormer windows with the colourbond on.
This is our gutter guard to stop leaves from building up in the gutters. The roof is just too high in a lot of spots to clean out gutters.

This week has been stressful. Everything just takes soooooo long. We are always waiting for someone to come and do something. This is the down side of owner building / not hiring a team of tradesmen. To cut costs Darren is doing as much of the labour as he can. He is also organising other trades as he needs them. The problem is that most of the other trades have other jobs on too (they don't just work for Darren as they would for a big building company). They have to juggle jobs and we are not always top priority as they figure we are just a one off job. It just makes everything slow. I know even big builders have these issues but it is worse for us I think. The weather doesn't help either. I know we need rain but I wish God could somehow just make it not rain on our block sometimes. That wouldn't work though because everyone just looks at the general forecast and will stay away anyway on those days!! At least once the roof is completely on, rain will not be a big deal anymore.

My main stress is that every day is costing us money. Rent money, living money, food money, school money, etc. Every day Darren is not out earning money on other jobs our mortgage goes up. It has been OK up till now but we are starting to see our loan at the end of it all being much higher than we wanted. When I look at it though, out initial estimates were very naive. We just didn't factor in a realistic amount of living expenses. We haven't really tightened up enough either, just kept on living normally, still going to the footy, movies, eating takeaway, going on holidays etc. Add to that the building has taken way longer than we anticipated, mainly because Darren is working predominatly on his own and spends a lot of time waiting for things.

Anyway, that is my whinge for the day. At least we are learning a lot and I know the house will be worth way more than we will owe on it so that is something. I really hope we can move into at least part of the house soon. We are thinking of getting the guest room part finished first (where the dormer windows are). If we can get the bathroom there going and have it lined, we could live there and in the caravan and garage underneath and be quite happy. I don't know if you are allowed to do it that's all. We have to be careful with insurance issues mainly. I am looking into that at present. I think it would be fun to live the simple life for a while and we would save a lot of money that way.

What I must do is to look at the bright side. Look at how blessed we are in so many ways. It is a blessing just to be able to build this house and experience the process. We've always wanted to build our own home. Our kids are happy and healthy and we will always afford a roof over our head. I shouldn't complain! Compared to many in the world we are very rich indeed!!

We have a scaffold.

The Waiting Game

This whole week we have waited for the roof people to come and set up the scaffold. First it was Monday, then Tuesday, then Wednesday, then FRIDAY and now it's Monday again. I know people have colds and flu and so and so's wife went into labour but it is very frustrating. Darren busted his guts last weekend so it would all be ready and he can't do the upper roof battens until the scaffold is up (it's too dangerous).
He's been working on our "al fresco" area, figuring out how to have an undercover outdoor area but without losing too much light and views. It also has to have a fireproof barrier between it and the house, where the roofs join etc.

PS I sold our Tarago on ebay for $1000. I'm so clever!!

PS, I forgot to tell you....

That we sold our house in Venus Bay. Houses take a long time to sell down there so we were really blessed! We settled in July which has helped our building fund immensely. We will miss the house though, it has been a great part of our family's life over the last five years or so!!

Spring, Spring, I love Spring!!

Here are some photos I took today in the beautiful sunshine. You can see that all the roof trusses are on. Tomorrow the roofers are coming to set up the scaffolding then next week they start fascias, gutters and roof sheets.
This is our gorgeous front veranda. Darren is sitting where the stairs will go leading up to the front door. We really wanted the brick pillars and base to tie in with the garage. We used Clinker bricks and they look fantastic.
The familiar view from the driveway.
The facade of my garage up the top, next to the veranda.

We are getting excited again after a bit of a down time at the end of winter. It just seemed that we had been building forever and not getting all that far. Now the roof is near, we can see some light again. Next will come windows (they are ready and waiting for delivery). Then weatherboards and not far to lock up!!
Our oldest boy Jake has now left school and is working with his Dad every day. He has NEVER liked school and although we both would like him to have stayed, we didn't see the point as he was very unhappy and not doing any work (hence failing!). Hopefully one day he might go back to study something or other but in the meantime, as long as he is being productive, we are OK with it.
It is helpful having a labourer full time. Jake loves clamouring around the roof especially! It's amazing how much quicker and nimbler youth are! He has worked out from his bedroom verandah he will be able to climb out onto my garage roof and then right up to the main roof. He has picked out a "nest" for himself in a meeting of two valleys where he wants to set up some hammocks.
Jake's dream in life is to play guitar in a band and travel to the Carribean. There he is going to buy a boat to live on, have a monkey for a pet and brew a new exotic drink that no one has seen before.
Well, better go and attend to my mounds of washing!
Jodie.

A holiday, an abcess and lots of rain.

Wow, it has been ages since I posted on our blog! I hope you haven't given up reading it!

We have been away on a wonderful holiday, towing a caravan up through Central Australia to Darwin and back. We were away for 4 and a half weeks. We travelled with two other families (we had 17 kids between us all!!). It will be something we will all remember forever. Even though it did cut into our building time, we wanted to go with our friends when the opportunity arose. The kids are getting older too and you never know if they'll want to travel with you in a few years time!

Well, after a wonderful time of freedom and sunshine, we came home, back to the real world. Unfortunately Darren was really unwell when we came home and couldn't work for around 10 days or so. He had an abcess under his arm that was very painful. He had a fever for quite a while and couldn't move his arm much at all. It was horrible and very frustrating but eventually, after lots of antibiotics, it went away. He was very anxious to get back into the house after so much time off but as soon as he was well enough to start, down came the rain and it has hardly let up for 2 weeks now!! I know how much we need it so I won't complain. It has delayed things a lot though. The main jobs have been roof trusses and bricklaying which is not fun in the wet.

Still, a lot has happened since the last lot of photos so I'll put up some more to show our progress. All the ground level roof trusses are on and the bricklayer has done the front of my garage upstairs and started the front veranda base and pillars. It looks great!! The top level roof trusses will be here this week then it's on with the Colourbond!

Darren's beautiful dormer windows. The nearest one is in the "grown ups" loungeroom where the open fire will be, the second one is in the guest room.

Matt on the bobcat in front of the upper storey. To the left of the photo will be a big double storey verandah with french doors opening from the bedrooms upstairs.
This is our bunch climbing Uluru. Ben is in a green T shirt just above the middle of the photo. Tim is on the left kneeling down with a black cap on.

Ben and Matt near Alice Springs.

Amber at Uluru visitors centre.

I've got photos of lots more places but they are on another computer so I'll post them later.

Up we go!

Here is the ground floor frame extending over to on top of the garage.
The first floor begins to appear! Darren has got a real run on the first floor frame and he's done it all by himself! He was going to get some help but had to wait for people so he just up and did it! He feels much happier when things keep on moving along. The weather is starting to get quite wet so we really want to get the roof on ASAP. Jake is helping him this afternoon. The frame should be finished in a few days and then we can order the roof trusses. We've also got some quotes on the roof and that can start as soon as we're ready. We're having Colourbond and getting roofers in to do all the roof, gutters, etc. We need to look at some display homes to choose a colour but we think we like Woodland Grey which is a classic, dark grey.Jake is standing at the front of the house in Nicky and Amber's room. On the floor is a wall ready to lift. You can see the Hebel flooring down. It's aerated concrete sheets and is really sound proof. It's very quiet walking around up there.
Here, I'm looking across the stairwell which will all be open. Jake is standing at the entrance to his bedroom. The stairs come up to the first floor just to the left of where he is standing.
Looking down from the first floor to the rooms on top of the garage. This is the Guest quarters!!
Just a bit of Autumn colour. That is our new car, a 1997 Landcruiser. I absolutely love it, burning around the hills on the dirt roads is so much better! The beloved Tarago has finally wound down after 430,000km!