New Pics :)

We have been talking to the builder again this week.
The good news: The tiler *should* be starting this week :)
The excavator *should* be coming Tuesday to dig up the pipe causing us all the drama


The not so good news: We won't be moving in until AT LEAST mid November :( The builder estimates we will move in 5 weeks after the tiler finishes (the first time he has even given us an estimate of a move in date) Nothing much can be done until the tilers are finished so we are hoping that we will get lots of tiles done this week!

The site has been levelled. This is where the garden goes :)

The line is where we are going to pave. The pavers will go past the sliding door to the BBQ gas point, and around the corner up to where the air con unit is. 2m wide near door, 3m wide along side of the house









Looking towards the street. This side will all be garden (except for paved area)

We have shed roller doors!!











Tile boxes! :D Now we just need a tiler to put them all down!

333ml floor tiles. These are the same throughout the whole house.

 The feature tile for the bathroom will be three rows of these squares wide and will run horizontally above the shower and bath. In the kitchen the same tiles will be used in 9small squares to make one square, laid as a diamond.

Wall tile, feature and floor tiles are all the same throughout. Wall is garage lining painted in 1/4 hog bristle
















The shed kit has arrived. They just dumped it out the front :( so it took us about 3hrs to break it up and carry it into the garage piece by piece :P

The front door is also here :) This is the top of it, it will be stained by the painters when they come back after the tilers come.

The paint is looking awesome! This is the niche all painted and ready to be go :)

 Not a good pic but you can see the finished paint and aircon installed :)

 The top cupboards look darker now that the paint has been done (peruvian clay - laminate)

The daiken air conditioner :D :D

 Bath ready for tiles












Shower base is done

 The backyard and paddock crazy with weeds

 Looking from the front door

The front of house now that the site has been levelled. We even have a strip of turf left over from the house across the road! I don't know if there is much point though, it'll just die as we won't be there to water it :(

Updates

We have had a few things happening at the house over the last week or two. My parents were in town today, so I took them around to have a look at the house (they hadn't seen it since it was just a dirt block)

The builder happened to be across the road on another build so we were able to get a key to have a look inside. I haven't been inside the house since it was half painted. The paint is now complete (except for skirting boards which will be done after tiles) and it is looking really good :)

The tilers haven't come BUT the waterproofing has been done and all of the tiles are waiting in the garage. I had a look at the tiles and they look good. We only have one style each of floor tile, wall tile and feature tile to keep it simple. They looked exactly the same as in the shop so very happy so far :) We could be waiting up to 2 weeks for the tilers as they are booked out. Nothing else can really be done untill they have finished.

The roller doors for the shed/garage also arrived this week. We had to meet the guy on site (He'd driven all the way from Sydney that morning) so we could sign for them. We also had to carry them around the side of the house - just to be on the safe side as we didn't want someone to come and help themselves to them :S

The shed kit will arrive on the 7th. We still don't have a slab :( The builder still can't get onto an excavator! At least he has been there with the bob cat and our yard is now levelled out. We also have our reverse cycle aircon installed. It's a Daiken and looks really nice - can't wait to use it. We are still waiting on the kitchen appliances, electrical fitout and bathroom fitout. The internal doors are all on but no handles on yet. The front door hasn't turned up yet either.

That's all for now. I forgot my camera so no piccies :( :(

Bricks, gyprock and cornices!

I survived our 3 week Cape York trip and had a great time (away from the winter - 32*C up the top! mmmm), so now it's time to update you on all the house progress :)

The bricks were finished around the 5th of July. As we had a lot of wet weather there was little progress until the following week when we had the gyprock installed on 14th-16th. Since then we have had more rain with minor flooding in local creeks so progress has slowed again. The cornices are all installed as well as the lining of the garage and framing (?) around the front door way. We are yet to get skirting boards installed.

The water points/pipes are all in place in the bathroom (with a possible wrong fitting for one - we are having a mixer in the shower but there are two pipes sticking way out of the wall, not sure if this is just hot and cold or if it needs to be changed to one pipe. We will need to look into it) The reverse cycle aircon wiring is also installed in the wall in the living area.

Current things to discuss with builder/SS are: mixer in bathroom, relocation of tank as it looks like they are planning to put it where the shed is going to be, finding out if the verandah will be cemented - i hope so but not sure! and whether we are having flyscreens (windows currently do not have them, we think they will put them in before handover as we are pretty sure they are meant to be included)

Photos care of dear husband who kept me updated while i was away :)

above: pink batts in our bedroom to reduce noise & insulate as hubby is a shift worker. Below: kitchen/living wall with wiring. Thick wiring with orange cord is for reverse cycle aircon unit

above: plaster people hard at work. Looking down hallway from front door. Below: My beautiful corner niche which is visible from lounge room and front door/hallway (see above pic) soooo glad we added this :)

above: kitchen and sunlight :) on left is pantry and linen then hallway to front door. Notice aircon cord poking out! Below: same room from opposite direction, this will all be open tiled area. The doorway to  the right leads to bed1, bathroom, toilet and bed 2

Below: Shower pipes that may need to be changed.

above: gas tap for bbq and external powerpoint for future outdoor area. Below: water pipe and power for pump (we are on all tank water except kitchen tap and two outdoor taps). I think other cords coming from ground may be the power for the shed.

North side of the house in late afternoon. The sun makes the bricks glow a lovely golden colour :)

Solar Passive

Just thought i'd tell you about why we choose this particular plan & block.

A solar passive house basically means it makes the most of the sun, garden & breezes along with choosing appropriate building materials. Basically we want a house that is (as far as possible) naturally warm in winter & cool in summer. It doesn't mean that we are hippies or have solar panels. :) It is the one basic principle that can have a big impact on your heating and cooling bills - believe me, my parents built a solar passive house and on a hot 30*C day in Australia it was naturally 10*C cooler inside and 15*C cooler in the basement.

We'd been looking into solar passive house designs for a while and decided we wanted to incorporate these ideas into our house plan where possible.

I won't go into big explanations here as i'm prob not good at explaining it. Basically you should have the long side of your house facing north so you get lots of warming winter sun & sunshine. It's best to have living areas on this side and not waste sunshine on your garage or wet areas.

We are actually placing our house closer to the southern fence (we have a fair bit of leeway with our block size) so that we can get in more of that sunshine & not be shaded by the neighbour's house.

The western side heats up quickly from the summer sun so it's best to have a short side of your house face that way. pref the garage to absorb extra heat. We have a bedroom facing west but it is shaded by the verandah and we can also cool it with flow-through breezes.

Another way we are keeping the heat down is by having a light coloured roof and brick. Think about how a black shirt heats up on a hot day - bbq anyone? We are also having a whirly bird to get all the hot air out of the roof cavity.

In summer we will open all the windows up at sundown and close them early next morning to let all the cool night air in. Keeping doors, windows and curtains closed during the day also helps keep the house nice and cool. In Winter we will close all the blinds & curtains at night and keep all the doors closed to help keep the warm in. We have standard insulation supplied by the builder.

Lastly we plan to plant some decidious trees so they shade the house in summer but let all the sunshine in in winter :)

So there you go, sorry if i bored you but it was an important part of our planning process.

We don't have solar panels or any 'weird' energy saving things in our plans. We will be on natural gas though so that means an instant gas hotwater system - no more running out of hot water, yay :)