Photos from week starting 19th September

Again great progress is being made on lots of fronts; timber floor, lights, window installation, rainwater tank installation and the retaining walls.  On Friday, when I went up there, I counted 11 utes in the car-park!  It makes us think that completion can't be that far away; but then again there is also a long list of jobs still to do.

The timber floor in the hallway is complete and looks great.  Tonka was definitely the right choice of timber

Timber floor in Peter's room

Timber floor in the study

The skirting boards have also now been fixed

This is the light in the bathroom (there will be a mirror underneath it)

The dining room high level windows have been installed.  The light is our 'space ship' light that we brought with us from London.  It is too high up at the moment and needs to be lowered by 1m (but to do that we need to fit it with new hanging wires)

The north windows in the lounge

The east windows in the lounge

The north facade is now complete (apart from being painted and fixing the lights)

The terraced area to the west of the house

One of the raised vegetable beds sitting on the terrace

The rainwater tanks have been placed under the walkway

The tanks look great.  Just need to connect them to the roof

This is part of the soak away on the east side of the house for the retaining wall on the east side

Posts for the retaining wall in the car parking area.  The wall is only about 0.5m high,  I am not sure that it really needs such a substantial structure but we can be sure that it is going to last for a very long time

The driveway retaining wall has now been backfilled

Also the extract vent for the range hood in the kitchen has been installed.  It looks like a really serious piece of equipment

Kim and Amy were working down by the dam this week and created this great channel to allow the rainwater that runs down the drive to soak away into the bush

This is one of the areas on the north side of the gully where we cleared the lantana this time last year.  We did really well as there has been no regrowth and the native plants are starting to come back

This is a recent area of cleared lantana along the south side the gully and is where we will be working again this summer (you can see the cleared area in the centre, the native plants along the gully on the right and the remaining lantana on the left)

Photos from week starting 12th September

Things are starting to get pretty exciting. The timber decking along the east facade has been completed and it is really great to be able to walk out of the bedrooms and stand on the walkway elevated above the surrounding bush.  The LouvreSpan pergola has been completed.  There have also been some lights installed which look great, especially the LED strip light in the bathroom.  And then the builder has been getting ready to put down the timber floor.

The timber deck walkway

The next jobs are to fix the handrail and to install the rainwater tanks

The completed pergola above the terrace

At the moment the blades are in the full upright position.  When we have power we will be able to adjust them from this position to fully closed

The installation work is really neat

The fence posts at the end of the pool terrace have been installed

Ceiling lights in the laundry

Close up of one of the LED downlighters

The LED strip light in the bathroom operating.  It looks awesome

The first plank for the timber floor has been laid along the corridor

The planks in Peter's bedroom have been cut to length and are ready to be laid

The hallway planks are ready to be laid.  Hopefully next week this same shot will show a finished floor

The lift top box in the bathroom is really neat

Toilet and handbasin in the WC

This is the first time that I have seen both doors in the lounge open. You can see how the pergola provides shade internally

Spring must be here because I came across this water dragon having a sun bathe 

Photos from week starting 5th September

It was great to be back after being away last week and to see how much progress has been made.  In particular the kitchen and laundry joinery units look fantastic.  The biggest steps forward this week have been that the second shipment of windows from Sweden arrived and work started on installing the shading system over the terrace.  The system is made by LouvreSpan (http://louvrespan.com.au/) and will enable us to have a shaded area on the terrace in the summer and in the winter it will enable us to allow the sun to penetrate into the lounge.

The truck with the windows' container

Off-loading the windows straight onto the lorry that took them to site

The windows stacked in the garage

Work has started on installing the cladding around the steelwork that will support the louvre span unit

The battens that will support the walkway decking have been installed

The walkway is going to be a great feature of the house

The retaining wall alongside the car parking area

The terracing for the vegetable beds are nearly complete

The water line tiles and bullnose edge tiles for the swimming pool have been installed

The joinery units are so good that I wanted to show them again.  These are the laundry units

The transformers for the downlights in bedroom 3 have been installed

These are the transformer wires for the window openers

The east facade of the house has changed again now that the walkway has been installed

It was a beautiful day today and the marsh area by the dam looked great