Frame, Roof and Wrapping

Wow, I did have plans to do more updates on our build, but have fallen behind, so here's a long one on progress from February and March into early April.

As with everything else in the World, Australia has closed down for everything except essential services because of the COVID-19 virus, BUT luckily for us, CONSTRUCTION is still an essential service, so our house build continues! 😅

February

Towards the end of February, our frame started going up. It was great to see the rooms taking shape and get an idea about space in each room. As Oscar was in school around the corner, we could do a quick drive-by every afternoon to see what progress had been made.

27th February, excited to see chippies on site building the frame 😊

28th February, Oscar and I check out the house after school. First walk-through to see room layout and sizes.

So excited to finally getting an idea about how tall our raked ceiling will be!!

House seen from backyard, the open corner will be our alfresco.

29th February, weekend trip in the nice weather so Kasper could check out the frame.

checking out the laundry area.

Woop woop, excited about the tall ceilings in living room!!

March

In March, the rest of the frame and ceiling trusses went on, along with windows and sliding doors. It was great checking out the quality of the windows and doors we have upgraded to, much better quality than the usual crap they use in house building!!! We are excited to see the performance of these when we move in.

6th March, drive-by in the morning shows the builder is on site finalising the frame/roof trusses.

Afternoon 6th March The rest of the frame with roof trusses have gone up. 
Here's a view from our alfresco into the big kitchen/living area with the raked ceiling.

checking out windows in the front room.

Entry hallway. We came by after school pick-up. As you can see, we've had a lot of rain and there is mud everywhere on the concrete slab 😒

Our big kitchen/living area with raked ceiling. With the roof trusses on, you really get a good idea of how tall the ceilings will be 😃

Roof trusses and scaffold in the kitchen area.

Oscar checking out his future bathroom.

View from front bedroom over the street.

From mid-March to the end of March, the fascia and gutter went on, and then our Colorbond roof (metal roof).

It was exciting to see everything after the roof had gone on, and scaffold been removed from kitchen area, we could really see how nice and big this room will be 😃

15th March - Fascia and gutter going on the garage.

Fascia and gutter on the front of the house, we can begin to see the roof outline.

Back of the house seen from garden. Spectacular sunny day 

Back of the house, alfresco area

Back of the house and side.

26th March, roof is on 😃 another spectacular sunny day!!
Mum and Oscar went for an afternoon picnic at our house.

Excited to see our BIG living/dining and kitchen area with raked ceilings without the scaffold. 

Living room and alfresco at the back of the house.

The big kitchen/dining /living area seen from the other side.

Oscar checking out the kitchen area.

Wow look at the high ceiling mum!

Front of house with roof on.

April

As we now have restrictions on what we can go out for, we planned a "take-away lunch trip" to check out the house and the wrapping that we were told had been put on. 

It makes such a difference with the wrapping, as you get a really good idea of how the rooms feel/look, but also the frame is protected from the weather until the outer walls go up.

We have been told the outer walls will go up this week (Easter week), so fingers crossed that will happen!!

5th April, wrapping is on house.

House wrap is on, you get a really good idea of how the facade will look.

From the alfresco.

From our kitchen / living / dining room

Oscar's room at the back of the house.

Where the kitchen will be.

View from living area to alfresco.

Kasper and Oscar walking from kitchen into hallway to Oscar's bedroom.

Living area with door out to alfresco.

Entry and front 2 bedrooms.

View from garage to the street.

Oscar and Kasper standing in the doorway from garage to house.

Hopefully, we will be able to do another update later in April 🙏

We're building!!!!

YAY! Words probably can't describe how excited we are to finally have started building our new house! As of the 22nd January, our builder was on site doing a site scrape, and preparing for the slab. We have visited the site quite regularly since, and as Oscar started school in Riverwalk in early February, we are now doing a little drive-by daily if we know something is happening.

The images below are from 28th January through to 14th February. 

Pool feature after site scrape. Big square to the left is where our garage will be, smaller square at the front is where our front porch will be.

Oscar and I went by the block on Tuesday 28th January after we had seen the excavator in full swing the previous week. We'd had a lot of rain over the weekend, and as a result we had a couple of swimming pool features where our slab was going in... I have put some description on the pictures.

Front porch area. The house next door is almost complete.

This is at the back of our block, as you can see our car is parked out the front, and I asked Oscar to stay out there so he didn't get muddy shoes. The pool feature here at the back will be our alfresco area.

Other side of our block where living room and bedrooms will go.

The following week, we went by after I picked up Oscar from school on his first day, Monday 3rd of February. Even though we still had a bit of a pool feature, you could see that the piers to secure the slab in place had been put in (the blue metal plates sticking up).

Metal piers have been installed 3rd February 2020.

Excavator there to do some more work on the following days...

At the end of the week, we checked in again to see if any progress, and all plumbing pipes and gravel base for the slab had been done. You start to get a feel for where the house will actually sit here.

plumbing and gravel base for slab has gone in 6th February 2020

Front seen from our neighbour's driveway

Electricity cabinet is up as well. You get a feel for here how close the houses sit... not much room down the sides of the house, but it's how they build here.

The very next day, we were so lucky to all go and check out the work, as Yasmin had been to an event all day, and wasn't sure if I could pick up Oscar in time from school, so Kasper worked from home in the afternoon so he could pick up Oscar (I was done in time though). 

We then decided to go by to see if anything had happened since yesterday (Thursday 6th February), and we were very surprised to see almost all the prep work for pouring the slab had been done. The workers were still fitting some metal sheeting inside where the concrete was going to be poured. 

Friday 7th February, frame for concrete slab being prepared with metal sheeting.

here you can see the waffle slab material being used.

We normally get an email update every Friday from our builder about the week's work and what they plan on doing the following week, but no email on Friday 7th February. However, as we had seen all the work going on, we though they might send us an update Monday, maybe they had been too busy Friday afternoon.

Surely enough, Monday morning 10th February at 7.20AM we receive the following two pictures from our site supervisor, sending us pictures of the slab being poured 😃 What an awesome start to the week! Oscar was just a little disappointed that there were no pictures of the concrete truck!!  

Slab being poured Monday 10th February at 7.20AM.

Obviously being quite excited about the slab pour in the morning, Oscar and I went to check it out after school pick-up. We didn't have time to go by in the morning because it's difficult enough to get out the door 30 minutes before school starts in order to get our 20-25 min peak hour drive in, and get there on time. 

We were very surprised to see the workers had already taken off most of the timber framework around the slab, and was cleaning it up nicely. Amazing that is actually dries so quickly. The longer the slab can sit and dry/cure, the better.

workers getting rid of the timber framework that was in place to shape the slab.

Now you can see where the front porch and garage will be, as it is slightly lower than the rest of the house.

Knowing that the slab will have to sit and cure for a while, we didn't expect anything else to happen this week, so did not visit every day, also because Oscar managed to pick up his first cold a week after starting school, so he was home sick from Tuesday to Thursday. Luckily, it was a quick cold to get over this time, and he was happy to go back to school Friday 14th February.

Friday morning after school drop off, I went by the block to see how everything was looking, and the slab looked nice and dry (this was before the massive thunderstorm and flash flooding we got Friday afternoon just in time for school pick up)...

Friday 14th February in the morning, slab looking good and dry.

We received an email from the builder that the next step next week is termite protection. This is a barrier they put in around the slab to prevent termites to get in and munch on the timber frame.

Kasper went to see the electric panel heater company on Saturday, so now all our heaters are the right sizes for the rooms, and a schedule is set up for that company to come and work with electricians to get the power points in the right spots for the heaters.

We are really excited to be off to a great start. From here on, it will be much more interesting when the frame starts going up and we can get a feel for how big the rooms are going to be 😄

I will try to update here regularly as the building continues!

Have a lovely weekend peeps 😘
Yasmin xx

Take 2 on house plans - getting close!

So it's been a long time since our land titled (July 2019), and we have been busy getting out of our first building contract (as the builder was not able to build what they promised us), then arranging a new builder who can build the house we want...

We had to start from scratch with our floor plan, but luckily our new builder G J Gardner Homes does custom homes, so we could pretty much get the floor plan we wanted :-)

This is the (almost) final floor plan. 

We are very excited to have a great layout with our large family/dining room with raked ceiling, and a wood fire place!!! Morso of course ;-) We also have an extra living area in the retreat with access straight to the garden, which has gotten bigger thanks to shrinking the house after re-assessing how much space we needed.

We will hopefully sign the contract this week, then we will just be waiting for paperwork (council approval etc.), and then hoping we can get our slab in before Christmas!!!

Our final colour choices was made this week, and we are very excited about our Scandinavian look choices. It will be great going back to our roots!

Here are the colour combinations;

The whole house will have engineered timber floors expect for the bathrooms and laundry, will be so nice to NOT have carpet anywhere!! Light Scandinavian timber floors :)

Our kitchen colours changed a few times, but with cabinetry staying white throughout. We did look at getting a glass splashback, but it turned out quite expensive, so we've changed to a beautiful subway tile for splashback!

Kitchen colour combination

The kitchen colour combination ended up with white cabinetry throughout the kitchen/pantry, with the light grey marble look stone benchtop for the kitchen and the light grey laminate look benchtop for the pantry. The Union Green Gloss subway tile for splashback, can't wait to see this, will be so beautiful!!

We will also get our handle-free kitchen happening!! This will be the profile on the kitchen cabinets, so no more getting caught on the kitchen handles when cooking dinner!!

In the bathrooms, we are being a bit more adventurous with both floor tiles and cabinetry colours... 

Bathroom / Laundry floor tiles, with the dark blue cabinetry for the bathrooms

The bathrooms will have this beautiful light blue and white floor tile (called the Majorca Provicial ;-))  We will combine this with a simple white subway tile for the walls, a dark blue cabinetry colour, white stone benchtops, and the dark blue feature tile in the shower niches.

Dark blue cabinetry, white stone benchtops and the dark blue tile as a feature tile in shower niches.

Simple white subway tile for bathroom walls :-)

For the laundry, we will have the same floor tiles as the bathrooms, however to break up the colour a bit, we have gone with a light oak colour for the cabinets, and simple white laminate for benchtops.

Laundry cupboards and benchtop

Can't wait to get started!! I will update the blog throughout the building process, so stay tuned for updates...

Yasmin xx

Trip to Adelaide - November 2019

A while ago Oscar and his dad where watching a documentary about The Ghan - an iconic Australian train route between Adelaide and Darwin. So using a combination of farmor's gift and daddy's frequent flyer point we decided to go on a trip to Adelaide to see The Ghan!

We departed from Avalon Airport on Sunday 3-Nov at 9.10am. Oscar can't go anywhere without Stampe so of course the globetrotter rabbit had to come along on this journey as well.

To our surprise there was an Antonov 124 at Avalon Airport. The Antonov is another "familiar face" from watching plane documentary movies.

Once in Adelaide we went straight to the ibis Hotel Adelaide to drop off our bags, and then jumped back into the taxi and headed for Parklands Train Station to inspect The Ghan before its departure to Darwin.

Link to Videos:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q5-Pp-XMmrqXHk-Npiygfg4F_emFdnLM/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b4TR3djTBS7VQpHnmLjjLN-jpmmbx36-/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZAhlpxt1kjLBrpCU4j51CkOVbC-jAFoA

After The Ghan has departed we walked back to our hotel to check-in and relax. We got a room on the 13th floor with a magnificent view of Adealide and surrounds.

 As we were relaxing we saw a lot of airplanes coming in for landing, and we also had the departure and arrival timetable on our TV, so we decided to play Air Control Tower.

Link to Video:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13pFqwC25dE9mr97fCxM9_EF_lj4F_kB1/view?usp=sharing

We also did a short walk around the Hotel and saw the Adelaide Arcade, which was very nice and then it was dinner time. We had pizza and spaghetti, then we went back to the ibis hotel and went to bed.

The next morning we had a big breakfast buffet. We had muesli, bacon, eggs, sausages, mushroom, hash brown, waffles, and cake. Loaded up on energy we walked to Adelaide Zoo.

After the Zoo, it was time to head back to the airport and get ready for our flight home to Melbourne. We had an awesome trip and will definitely go back to Adelaide and bring mum next time.

New Business Adventures

So I've decided to start this little site venture as a photographer, mostly for the fun of it, but also for the chance of making some pocket cash 😏

I've set up a photography website, check it out here: Yasmin Tordal Photography

1st album I've published is from yesterday where I went around the local area in Point Cook and took photos of all the Christmas lights that people have decorated their houses with, you can see the album here: Christmas Lights Point Cook 2018, just click the photo album on the page 😄

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!