Up the roof

The brickwork is all but finished now. The brickie has only got above the back windows to go.

I bought some structafloor to put up in the ceiling so I would have a platform to work on when I'm putting up the sisalation. First I tried to put the whole boards up. They're 3600 x 900 mm (ie. 4 x 1 yd) and they weigh a tonne. I tried to lift them up into the ceiling by myself, but that was impossible. I wish I had taken a photo so you could see it. Instead I cut a few 300 mm wide planks to use as catwalk and I cut a wider 600 mm plank into two work platforms.

Anyway, my mate Dave came around and gave me a hand putting up some more sisalation. Now I've used most of one roll. I'll probably need another two or three rolls to do the whole roof, but at least it's starting to look like I've made some progress.

Where have I been?

Ah well, had a bit of a holiday. The house is still chugging along though -- it doesn't need me there to hold its hand. I've got some new photos though so you can see the progress (in case anyone is still reading -- thanks John). The brickie has started bricking up the front bay. He has also done the piers for the alfresco at the rear, and at least some of the window sills. There's probably only two or three days work left for him now.

They have put steel posts in between the sliding doors and fixed windows at the rear. At first I thought they had replaced the timber posts with steel ones, but the timber posts are still there on the inside. They have put this post here and welded it in place (check out the scorch marks on the window flange) into a shoe which is dyna-bolted to the slab. This is a good thing really, as I was a bit concerned that there was not much strength in this part of the wall -- in particular there was probably nothing attaching it to the slab! I'm still a bit concerned about how exactly they are going to conceal this post and cover the gap between the windows.

Finally, for those who are interested, this is what my grey water outlets look like now, after bricking around. Might need a bit of polyfiller around the pipe to keep the insects out.

This and that

On the weekend I finished the network cabling, including threading one cable through the conduit I had installed. I used fencing wire as a feeder which I then taped CAT6 to so I could pull it back through the conduit. Thinking about putting in some speaker wires for surround sound -- how many channels does surround sound have these days?

I also finished taping clear plastic over the windows to protect from mortar and render. That took a lot of time. Don't know if it was a waste of time or not.

Finally, I bought a roll of foil builder's wrap to try to put under the roof. I know it would have been easier to put this on before the roof, but that would have made roofing impossible. It really needs to be put on by the roofers, but Coneheads wanted $2000 to do that. Anyway, I managed to get one 3m piece up on the inside and now I know how NOT to do it -- it's bloody hard work. I could really do with some sort of platform up there to stand on. Thinking about buying some MDF sheeting to cut up and lay down as a moveable catwalk.

Nuff said.

Bricks and mortar

The brickwork is progressing. Not exactly fast, but it's getting there. I took the day off to do some cabling and saw that there was only one brickie working. I guess that's why it's so slow. Looks good though. Today the steel arrived to brick over the window openings. I have started taping clear plastic film over the windows to protect them from grit and mortar and at the front, render.

And they have finally lowered my fixed windows in the glass wall, although they couldn't move the posts. Apparently they are required to support the span. You see even though the lintel is wide enough to span all the windows it is not strong enough to span all the windows. It would need to be much thicker to span the extra 1800. In addition the posts give additional transverse (ie. in/out) strength. The window installer reckons the entire section would have had to be built into one frame. I'm still not sure what the outside of the posts will look like. I presume they wont be sticking on brickettes.

Also this week I put one inch PVC pipes through the walls in the laundry and bathroom for grey water. Hopefully by doing it this way the brickie and tiler will just work around them. I'll have to work out a way to attach the washing machine outlet to this pipe in the laundry. In the bathroom I plan to use a pump. You can get a 12V, battery powered, submersible pump which you just sit in the bath to drain the water. On the outside I will have a permanently attached watering system, either independent or with a no-return valve in between. A simpler suggestion was just to drain into buried slotted pipe under the garden, but I don't like the idea of roots getting into them. It's too late to put one in the ensuite, but Mrs Rewind didn't want one there anyway.

And finally, as I mentioned above, I have done some network cabling. I was there when the security cabler was there and he convinced me to just lay the CAT6 cable and forget the conduit, since it would make three times the work. As a result I have now installed most of the network cables.

What a difference a roof makes...

I don't think I've mentioned yet that the bricks and roof sheets were delivered last week. I was vaguely promised (although I'm learning not to expect that to mean anything) that they would start roofing and bricking last week. To be fair, they did start bricking. They did three courses on one side of the garage, then I think they saw the long weekend coming and went home to watch football instead.

Not to worry. Today they really did start the bricking and roofing. In fact the roof is finished, in just one day! This isn't a great photo, but you can perhaps see the dubious colour choices. Hopefully it will look better once the front is rendered. They haven't done an awful lot of bricking yet -- about half the garage wall. At this rate it will take two months, but I think they'll probably speed up now.


I didn't get too much done on the weekend, but I have done some window rearranging, and placement of a few strategic extra noggins to support curtain rods later -- I did learn something last time we built!

This is a small fixed window in the walk-in-robe. It's supposed to be above the 'shelf', but the height wasn't shown on the final plan, and I didn't notice it was wrong until it already had a window in it. So 'Rewind' did a little bit of rewindowing. It's a bit of an insult to carpentry, but the camera hides a multitude of sins. And gyprock will hide them even better.


I asked the window man to come and fit the window again because I was worried I would break it, and he took pity on me.

We are going to be away for a few days, so when we come back maybe the bricks will be done. And then it's probably time I installed the rest of those conduits, or whatever I'm doing there.