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.