The 35th Week: our new home!

No sooner had the ground floor frame gone up then the 2nd floor frame appeared!  Things are really starting to take shape and the builder said the roof trusses will be up by next week. We're very excited to see how much progress will be made between now and when everyone packs up over Xmas. 

Seemingly overnight, the frame sprung up above our newly laid slab. It's quite amazing how quickly things move.  For the first time, we could really start to see our home taking shape and get a sense of the true scale of the rooms. Again, Bumblebee (yes, we've named our drone) was able to deliver some cool aerials. Bumblebee also resumed his ongoing battle with the resident magpies for aerial supremacy. Not long after launch, he came under attack and had to hover higher to evade the onslaught. It seems that the magpies don't really attack high in the air, but do tend to swoop when hovering or landing closer to the ground, which is annoying because I really want to be able to do some manoeuvring around the site a bit lower, but can't risk being bundled out of the sky by an aggravated avian adversary. Hopefully the mating season ends soon and BB can resume low-level inspections. I also have to be careful carrying BB as I've been swooped when I've picked him u...

We got a call early on Friday morning from the builder. The slab was about to be poured in 10mins and did we want to come watch? Does a one legged duck swim in circles?  But talk about late notice! Fortunately I was able to shuffle things around and get to the other side of town to watch at least some of it. On the way to the house, I was following a cement truck from the main road turning into the suburbs and wondered if it wasn't heading to the site - and sure enough it turned in at our property. By the time I arrived they'd already done three truckloads, so I got the drone up as soon as I could. It was at this point that the drone attracted the attention and ire of the resident magpie that started swooping at it! Realising that the guys working below probably wouldn't appreciate a drone falling out of the sky and onto their heads, I quickly took my shots and landed. I also wanted to avoid a drone-shaped indentation in the floor of our new house... I was a little ...

Well, wafflepods at least. What's a wafflepod I hear you ask? The answer isn't as delicious as you would think. They're Styrofoam boxes that form the base of the concrete slab. Quick to put up and giving the floor good insulative properties, it is an alternative to the traditional method of laying concrete. We turned up for our weekly site inspection to find they'd laid down black gladwrap on the ground and had stacks of wafflepods ready to go the following week. Evidently the wafflepods themselves were keen to make an early start, because the neighbours called us a few hours later to say that the neatly stacked pods had broken from their enclosure and scattered themselves onto the street! Fortunately for us, these local heroes managed to gather up the pods and corral them back where they belong. Never underestimate the value of good neighbours!

3 weeks in and we've hit our first snag. The builder called us on Friday afternoon to drop a minor bombshell before heading off on holiday for 2 weeks... It seems that the sewerage pipes were a little shallower than they had accounted for, thus necessitating a lift in the slab by about 150mm. Sure, 15cm doesn't sound like much, however this put the house outside of the building envelope. I didn't even know buildings came with envelopes, let alone exceed one. So the builder calls, ostensibly speaking English at the time, but while I recognised his words, they made no sense to me. Here's what I heard: "Hi, it's  your builder. Site cut, something something, shallow drains. Slab gotta be lifted by 100-150 mm, something something encroachment or something. You have two options, lower ceiling expectations or something parapet wall variation marshallow frog" . OK, so I made the marshmallow frog bit up, but you get the gist. It wasn't until Monday ...

It's now been a week since the house came down with the realisation that after all the planning, our new home is finally being built! After one of the driest Canberra winters on record, the week the builders were meant to start site cut and drainage works, it rained for much of the week. While the precipitation was most welcome, any delays to our build won't be. At least the rain will revive some of our sad looking plants. We checked in on it today and the site is looking for all the world like the red centre - minus a monolithic rock. We were excited to see the indentation which appears to indicate where our cars will be live in the 35th week...

So whilst technically, this is week 1 of construction, in reality it has been almost 2 years in the making. Two years of dreaming, procrastinating, researching, planning, procrastinating, consulting, meetings, and decisions. So. Many. Decisions.  We'll touch on some of these throughout the course of the next 35 weeks, but it seemed easiest to start the blog on week 1: the demolition! Why 35 weeks? That's the time frame our builder has quoted, nay, guaranteed us, within which our new home will be completed.  So we received final bank approval a few weeks ago and since then have been impatiently waiting for work to commence.  Firstly, the asbestos removal guys took about a week to do their thing. Then the builder scheduled the demo. After a few false starts, this afternoon we watched the heavy machinery roll down our little street and with startling speed, began tearing through our old home. In the hour that followed, we experienced a mixture of sadness, fascinat...