Well it had to happen eventually. Wellington’s perfect weather which has lasted for most of the build to date, abruptly stopped. This week saw Wellington with some of it’s heaviest downfalls and a depressing 6 minutes of actual sunlight!
Unfortunately the roof hasn’t been completed and the entire first floor remains still exposed to the elements. As you can see from the photo’s there’s more than a little standing water.
Next week is the scheduled Plumbing and Electrical walkthrough which prompted us to contact an architectural lighting company Moth Lighting to assist. They are now designing a full lighting and switching plan for the house with some really modern products.
Cladding installation has started this week. Eventually they will be painted but for now they’re a very beige…. beige.
Also the laundry exterior door and window has been installed – this has the cat door in it and because it’s double glazed it had to be done from the factory. A good thing to know!
More ground floor roof installed but first floor not started yet, luckily beautiful sunny weather all week.
This house was designed long and narrow with lots of windows on the north side to maximize sun and natural light into most of rooms. And big windows at that.
The black anodized finish looks very sharp and modern and it will be great to see when the cladding starts going on. Most opening windows have vented latches to allow for secure opening and ventilation, only the ones on sliding doors don’t.
One of the changes we made during window walkthrough was to have a tint applied to the sidelights either side of the front door, it’s a nice privacy effect but it’s hard to photograph!
Checking in this week, the flashing tape has been installed for in preparation for the joinery installation. Also the support framing has been removed from the garage and open plan living room so we can see the full scale of the room. And the roof has begun to be installed over the ground floor.
Quick visit to site today. More wall underlay on the first floor now. It starts to highlight the size of the windows in the individual rooms, and they’re quite big!
Also the framing that was supporting the pillarless corner in the living room has been removed, and it now really opens up the family/dining area.
On Monday 11th May, the PM announced the alert level would change from level 3 back to level 2 starting Thursday 14th, so a level 2 weekend meant we had some freedom to get out and about.
We headed to the house to see progress since our walk-through two weeks prior. Fascia has begun to be installed around the roof line and while the house is still mostly framing, the addition of Thermakraft wall underlay on the exterior helps you get a better feel of room sizes.
Friday of this week we all made a trip to site for the framing and window walk-through with our builder and site manager. Being Level 3 there’s now new H&S measures for visiting site. We were required to digitally sign in via the HazardCo app on our phones which is a QR code at the gate. Sanitize before going into the house and when leaving and keeping distance between our respective ‘bubbles’.
This meeting is a bit of a milestone as after today it gets expensive to make structural changes! It’s an all of building walk through to see if we want to make changes to framing anywhere and to go over every single window, the size, opening and for sliding door’s, the direction of opening.
Framing wise we made no changes. One change that had already been committed was to change the door into the pantry from a hinged door to a pocket door which will require additional framing work to do.
With the windows, the majority of we made no changes to. One of the sliding doors were flipped to open in the opposite direction. Ava’s room has a large window and we looked at different profile options to have an awning opening. We’ve added two windows to the garage to get natural light and ventilation. Several of the windows which are 2200 high we’ve made a change to take the window flush to the floor so it’s seamless.
The flow on effect of this change is that making the large window in Bedroom 3 flush to the floor puts it too close to the roof over the garage door. To resolve that, we’ve change the roof profile from hip to a gable so it doesn’t wrap around the front of the garage.
Monday 23 March – Alert level increased from 2 to 3 and will move to alert level 4 in 48 hours. Level 4 means full lockdown for at least 4 weeks. For us this means working from home as offices are closed, remote learning for Ava as schools are closed, all businesses and public venues closed except for essential services and supermarkets.
Our house build will also be on hold. I managed to get up for one last look on the cold Tuesday morning the day before full lockdown. The builders came up later that day and the next day to tidy up the site and secure everything for the lockdown duration. We were scheduled to have the framing and window walk-through today but that has been postponed. Building resumed for level 3 on Tuesday 28 April.
We visited over the weekend and the builders were hard at work installing the first floor framing. The house appears big because it’s really long, 21.5m from front to back and narrow to fit on the 32.9m long x 16.9m wide section.
The entire north side of the house made up of 5 rooms/spaces on both floors with lots of glazing to maximise the natural light and sun.
Alert level 2 was announced this weekend for Covid. Under level 2 building work can continue however the announcement to move to level 3 and level 4 was to come and this was to be the last weekend of building work for at least 4 weeks.
Not much happened the week prior except that scaffolding went up around the building. This past week, the joists for the mid floor were delivered and have been installed.
It outlines the first floor quite well as you can see the floor area marked out by the joists where it runs from the stairs across the garage and forward over the living room.
Also interesting is that the framing is no longer pink!
