Frame

I took Tony to work today, so i could pick him up and then head straight out to the block as we knew that our frame would go up today, also Jim had organised a man to come out and quote a few of us on decking.
When we arrived at the house (yes, it had now graduated from a block to a house) i think my jaw dropped open....we knew we had a 'tall' house but really didn't realise just how darn big it was going to be.
Q.  Do i like my house?     A. No.......I LOVE it.  I kept looking and getting really excited....'this is my house!' (sorry tony)....my house.....i think i was almost hopping up and down like little kids do.
Everyone keeps telling me that when the frame goes up it looks small...oh dear...we thought it looked huge, so heavens help us if its going to look bigger when the plaster goes on.
As per usual we took squillions of pics.
The decking guy turned up and tony told him what he wanted, now we just need to wait for the quote to get back to us.

Mia showing us the long side of her house

front of the house, looking at the veranda outside the master bedroom

Entertainment side, extreme right - Home theatre rm, dining rm beside that, alfresco, lounge to the left then garage.

Slab Inspection

MONDAY 22nd


We had decieded to use our own Independent Inspector along with Porter Davis's one....just for peace of mind.
We had an appointment at 10.30 to meet our inspector out at the block.  When we got there Alex was waiting for us and to our surprise there were workmen on the block cutting the wood for the frame, now this really was a surprise as our SS had told us that work would commence on the Tuesday.
The inspection went really well, the only issue he had was that the slab had been pushed back into the block by 6cm...it really didn't faze us, Alex explained that all the pipes were for in the slab and how things should be done which we liked.....if you are complete novices it would really be piece of mind for you....but lucky for us we have been going on the Homeone forum for months and months reading all the stories so we were pretty much up to par on that account.
Alex promised to email the statement to us and told us to let him know when the roof trusses arrived so he could book us in for the next inspection.

That night we went back to the block to see what the men had done and to go walking on it....oh boy! does it look big and where we excited.....just a smidge...okay okay so i lied! we were excited heaps!! now are you happy?

the slab in the morning

and later that night...all ready to go

Slab Party

SUNDAY 21st

Finally it was our turn to host the slab party, we decieded that an afternoon one would be best as we tend to go on forever and last time we were trying to pack up in the dark...not good.  So 2pm it was! we headed out there at 12.30, giving us an hour once there to organise ourselves.
I had bought a new gazebo complete with walls for the dog shows, so this would be the perfect opportunity to test it out......didn't allow for how windy it was when we got there......very windy in fact, it took all 3 of us to erect it while trying to hold it down with sand bags, then we tried to erect a wall.....no, not good! we turned the gazebo into a parachute....so strike that one down as a bad idea....back into the car the walls went.
We had just finished organising ourselves when our first guests arrived............these slab parties are BYO then we share...so thank you to our guests who turned up; Jan & Terry, Rita & Jim + kids, Chris & Paul + child, Bec & Rob + Wendy (Bec's mum), Ian and finally Glenn & Julie our over the road neighbours who we all went and introduced ourselves to on the day.
We thouroughly enjoyed ourselves, eating, drinking and looking through some of the houses (mainly our groups). 
The only downside to the day was the horrible winds....as you can see in the pic below there is a house on the alfresco side but unfortunatly on the other side there are no houses at all, with the wind we kept getting hit by dust storms...in the end alot of the food didnt get put out due to the dust...everybody was covered in it...I had the misfortune to be wearing white on that day.....oh dear, when i took my top off at home it was brown all over, even inside it!

Oh yeah, we had to tie the gazebo down so it wouldn't blow away.

The Slab

Went to the block today so Tony could have a look at the finished slab and what a surprise we got, PD had been there this morning and cleared the block of all the dirt around the boundry, pushing some of it against the slab.  They had also cleared up the excess waffle pods.
It now looks very neat and tidy.
Ran into our SS as he was visiting the house across the way, so Tony went and introduced himeself.  Our SS informed him that our frame would be starting on Tuesday.  Yay!!

The before shot

The after shot

SLAB !!!!!

Yes, we finally have a slab!
After Tony finished work at 1am we organised to get up at 6am so we could have breakfast and leave by 6.30 to get to the block by 7 to watch the pour.
We got there about 7.10 to find that the first cement truck was just leaving, the smaller garage had its concrete. Yay!!
While watching we were very excited to see our porta loo turn up, they even dropped off our crossing protection.
After numerous trucks ( i lost count) our slab finally had its quota of cement. By this time is was 12.30pm.
The men started pulling the boards off after approx 2 hrs and started giving it it's final polish and edging, at this stage we had to go home and organise a cooked lunch for Tony before he went to work.
Kelly and I will head off there again tonight and take some more pictures without the trucks being in the way.

Well, Kell & I went to look at our slab....it's soooo pretty :) It's hard to imagine all the rooms on it, but we should get an idea next week when they start putting the frame up.

Everyones favourite...the portaloo

The concrete.

The concreters putting the finishing touches to the slab

Mia on the front porch, from here you can see the garage over her right shoulder, lounge behind that, alfresco the dining room and rumpus room.

Alfresco, flanked by the lounge on the left and dining rm & rumpus room on the right

It's big....and..white....

The internet has been playing up, so i'm running a day behind, hopefully i can catch up today.

Since we knew that our pods had been delivered, it only made sense that they would put it all together the  next day, so out we went in the morning before Tony had to go to work in the afternoon.

We seem to be striking it lucky with catching the workmen at their job....same thing happened yesterday, the men were still working on putting our boxing together when we arrived, so we stayed awhile and watched them put the reo into the garage and alfresco.
Tony went and had a chat with one of the guys who was reading the plans, asked him about when the slab would be poured to be told come rain, hail or shine it would be poured today at 7am.  Were we excited at the prospect?.....of course!!! silly question.

That night Kelly and I went out so she could have a look and so i could see the finished project.

Part way through doing the pods.

Later that night...ready for the pour

Lookin' good

Popped out to the block yesterday to see if anything had been delivered.
Oh, boy, oh, boy.....we have waffles!!!!  a ton of them in fact, all held together in their pretty fluro pink netting, all the reinforcement and the little stands for them had been delivered.
Wow! this means that they are definately going to do something and soon.
Our block had been re-scrapped and it looked all neat and pretty with the scoria all mixed in.

The waffles and reo

Neat and pretty site ready for boxing

Should have known better.

Should have gone by my own rule..."take note of what the SS tells you not your CSC"...  :(  Our slab is going ahead this week but is not booked in to start until wednesday, looks like the CSC got the wrong end of the stick.  Still hopefully we can still have our slab party on the weekend.

What a difference a day or so makes....

After all the rain on the weekend, we didn't go back out to the block until Tuesday....boy oh boy...the ground was dry...and the water had started to disappear.

So out we went again on Wednesday...still alot of water in the dug outs but it was slowly going away.  That afternoon we got a call from out CSC telling us that we had been put on hold....that was understandable considering the amount of water that was still in the cutouts.

We elected not to go on Thursday, so Friday lunchtime we headed off to the block after Tony had finished work, prepared to bail water out of the dugouts, took Mia with us...went to KFC to get some lunch and out to the block.

Surprise, surprise! They were in the middle of putting our pipes and our meter box in, so we sat in the car on the block next door eating our lunch and watched them working.  The water in the garage, porch and veranda must have gone cos they were dug over, meanwhile the alfresco was still underwater, they were actually going around the 'pool'.

Tony called our CSC while we were at the block and left a message for her, so when we got home i sent off an email letting her know that we had work happening on the block...she called me back within half an hour, she'd gone chasing info...so, now we have a forcast finish date for the slab...next wednesday....
...we looked at each other and thought...'holy crap' the alfresco is not going to dry out before then, so back we went to the block at 5, it took us just over 2 1/2hrs to empty the alfresco out.
I was helping until i kept getting stuck in the mud..fell over and nearly ended up in the water...luckily i was near the edge and landed on the bucket with my arm...smashed it to pieces...uh ha..no more i was not going to end up wet.  We found a couple of empty plaster buckets on the site next door so we used them, Tony in the water filling up two buckets, then giving me the third bucket to empty...this went on until 7ish then we had visitors to the block so i played hostess while Tony kept on working...Adee and his fiance had arrived by then after visiting their block at Mandalay so Adee helped his father finish the water.
8.30pm they finished it was getting rather dark by then...we deceided that pizza was in order for dinner..too late to go home and actually cook something.

Thank you Adrian for your help :)

The offending pool of water in the Alfresco

View from the back of the block, note the pipes on the RHS

The now empty waterhole.

And a little bit more...

As promised we went up to the block today to check on the condition of the block...and bugger me if it wasn't alot dryer than we thought it would be.  After 2 days of heavy rain, we thought we would have a quagmire up there but the only water on the block was sittiing in dug outs where the alfresco, porch, garage and veranda are going.

We were also surprised cos they had put out the markers for the slab, we are assuming that we wont get our pipes until the water has disappeared.  So keep your fingers crossed that it doesnt rain a whole lot until after the slab has been poured and is set.

The only partcially wet block, the large pool is actually the alfresco.

View from the driveway, not as wet as two days previously.

...but wait, there's more....

Sunday we drove upto WW for a slab party for the latest slab....I know, I know, it was pouring with rain, but that doesn't stop us....we ended up across the road in Bec & Robs house sheltering from the rain.  With kids running around an empty house it sure does echo.

We were so surprised when we arrived to see that more work had been done on our block on the Saturday, now we have a definate scrape done and a load of scoria had been delivered, it would have looked great if we could have gotten out of the car to have a look, so i will apologise now for the photo as it was taken from the comfort and dryness of the car.

Later during the day we did manage to go for a walk around the estate and look at some of the house designs....we managed to walk onto our block and check out how deep the alfresco and porch scrapings were....ankle deep in the alfresco and a bit deeper in the porch.

We shall endevour to go there this afternoon and try and get more pics for you.

As you can see it was quite wet

Hooray for the Red, White and Blue....

Yes! after more than 12 months work has started on our house...well the block really.
Adrian and I went for a drive early this afternoon and I almost had a heart attack when we saw the digger on the block next door and a fence around our block and what was in the middle of the fence...our site scrape, mind you you do have to look twice to actually see the scrape but it is a scrape none the less  :)

We are now very happy campers.

View from atop Mt Berner

In this pic you can see the veranda (foreground), front porch and alfresco scrapes

Signs....

We've been waiting with baited breathe for something to happen on our block, so we decided yesterday to venture out, as we know that PD often start before logging anything onto 27/seven....so out we went.....and what do you know?......we have a BIN....Yayyyyyy!!!!!!
And whats more on the way home our SS rang us to introduce himself and says that we should commence in the next few days.  Fingers crossed please.  :)