Photos from week starting 20th December

In the space of a week there has been another transformation in the house.  The timber framed walls for most of the rooms have now been installed and we can now understand how each room will feel.  This house is going to magnificent!

The timber frames were erected in a couple of days

These are the central corridor walls to the study and bedroom 2

View of the south facade

The external wall of the bathroom and WC

The garage internal brick skin is nearly complete

The timber frame for one of the reverse brick veneer walls on the east facade

The back filling and top soil grading has been completed on the east side of the site

The slope is much shallower than it was before.  All the excavated material from the house is buried here

The  only slightly unfortunate thing is that the builder is now on holiday until the end of January so there won't be any further progress to report until then.

Photos from week starting 13th December

Progress is really starting to speed up now that we are out of the ground.  There is activity going on all over the site.

The walls of the garage are at about half full height

The swimming pool walls have been cast and the retaining walls along the east and north sides have been built

They are working on the water proofing behind the west retaining wall

And at last the east side of the site is being regraded and the top soil replaced

Photos from 11th December

Wow!  If you compare the photos from today with those of last weekend you will see an amazing leap forward.  The floor slab has been cast, a significant amount of the west retaining wall has been completed and the steelwork has been erected.

The guys are making the most of the good weather and are trying to get as much done as possible before the summer break.

The retaining wall around the garage

The steel frame for the lounge roof

Formwork for casting the swimming pool walls

We can now get a real sense of the scale of the house against the bush - it feels right

The north end is the tallest part of the house but it doesn't stand out from the scale of the surrounding trees 

Photos from 7th December

So at last, 4 months after we started, the ground slab of the house has been poured. This is a really big milestone - it feels like the house is now permanently integrated with the land.  We have finished the roots of the house.  The rest of the house is something that is lighter and less powerful.

It was a  perfect day for pouring concrete - no rain and not too hot

The pour started at about 6:30am

The concrete pump and one of about 15 concrete trucks

The  pump arm needed to reach 30m

This is the slab at 5pm

It is great to finally see the reality of the floor plan of the house

The finish of the concrete is really smooth; maybe we don't need tiles!

Photos from week starting 29th November

I think that the weather gods are conspiring against us because it pretty much rained very day this week.  This means that progress towards pouring the ground slab has been slower than we had hoped for.

The swimming pool is filling up - again!

The reinforcement for the slab has now been fixed

Hopefully the slab will be poured next week