26/06/20 Earlier in the week we had an independent ‘pre-plaster’ inspection done, and since shared the results with the site supervisor. Today spent time with him on site walking through items in the report, as well as other questions I had. (The ‘independent inspection’ topic deserves a blog post all on its own. However, the builder & inspection firm seem to have struck a decent balance of calling out items, and addressing or mitigating them, so for us I would say it’s been worthwhile.) Per the previous post, there is insulation in all the outside walls as well as the ceiling. However, for internal walls they seem to only do the laundry & cloakroom, I guess because these rooms don’t have heating ducts & lead to the outside. None of the internal walls upstairs have any insulation which surprised me – not so much for thermal purposes but sound. Our household sounds like a fruit market for the hard-of-hearing, so ….
27-28/06/20 … without telling the site supervisor I went & bought some sound insulation batts (8 bags of Earthwool R2.5) and did all the remaining internal walls over the weekend. I’d like to think I did a very neat job, mostly because I didn’t want the plasterers to come in & start whingeing about insulation to the site supervisor & he cottons onto what I did. Spot the difference between the work of someone who gets paid per square meter & the person who has to live in the house. This is the bit where you go “Wow! The person on the right is really good.” …
But the downside of measuring & cutting to size for each cavity took time …
And I had to work into the night to get it done because I was thinking the plasterers would rock up first thing Monday morning
I also stuffed some batts around the waste pipes running through the downstairs ceiling cavity – it might be my vivid imagination but I was thinking of Mr Hankey making his way through the waste pipes whilst one is sitting downstairs watching tv or having a conversation. Hiiiiii-de-ho! Anyway, I think it was worth it. Those 8 bags only cost me ~ $550, and they’ll help keep the ambient noise down between rooms (e.g. people talking, tv etc). Impact sounds downstairs (e.g. people walking/kids rough-housing upstairs) are difficult to reduce. We are putting in carpet upstairs with a thicker, sound proofing underlay which will help. If we had our time again, we would’ve looked into the possibility of adding resilient channels rather than only the normal furring channels (which are more for levelling rather than noise). Anyway, time will tell how bad it is.
29/06/20 Material arrived for the eaves, and some of the weatherboard façade,
and the TV aerial was installed – took all of 20 mins. Is it just me or does a TV antenna in the world of ‘streaming’ sound antiquated to you? Having said that, it’s more reliable the internet service!
Sometime in the afternoon someone came by & started doing the flashing. Not that one will see a lot of it but it matches the roof colour
01/07/20 Plasterers arrived – a team of 5-6, not a word of English, but no need because, again, it looked like they had done this a million times. By the time I got there around noon they had just about finished the ceilings. In the big open space areas, e.g. downstairs hallway, kitchen, dining & living room they used the furring channel (below middle 3 photos)
e.g. study, or upstairs they fixed straight onto the I-joists or trusses (below)
They were making good progress on the walls. Was interesting watching them work. Working in pairs, one would measure & cut whilst the other would go & dab on the green glue on the studs. The sheets were then pressed onto the studs & screwed in at the borders using a collated screw gun
By the end of the day they had gotten to most areas. Below left looking from the entrance up the hallway, and right is the laundry.
Blue plaster board for all the wet areas (toilets, laundry, bathroom etc). They used little square offcuts at intervals on bigger sheets to brace onto the studs whilst the adhesive bonded. Below left the en suite, and right the master bedroom.
Mea culpa. In a previous blog I said the plaster sheets were all 6.5mm, however that was only the ceiling sheets. The wall sheets are all 10mm. I feel a little bit better about being able to hang a picture and reducing the number of holes the kids will punch into the wall. Below right, looking from kitchen towards the family room and study
02/07/20 Work had started on the eaves. We’ve gone for 45cm eaves, the maximum we could get without running into overshadowing issues for our southerly neighbour (because the main part of the house is closer to that boundary than on the north). Below right (& bottom right of picture) someone removed the yellow tongue that was acting as a ‘roof’ for the portion of the lounge (home theatre) which juts out past the rest of the house.
03/07/20 Next day they continued with the plaster. Whilst some finished off adding plaster to ceilings & walls, the rest started covering the joins & edges. For the sheet joins they use the finishing compound & a box tapepro which is very quick. For the edges, as with the render, they use a trim.
With the plaster going on the rooms are starting to take shape. Below left to right, study, laundry & dining and stairwell area.
As you can tell from the photos these tradies also swept up after themselves which was a first. Previously I used to sneak in & sweep up, not because I like things tidy (I can hear the better half coughing in the background), but because I was worried that all the woodchips, dust, dropped screws, and even leaves from the tree etc would be sealed in behind the plaster with the insulation. Anyway, below left looking at the master bedroom towards the games room, and right looking down the dressing/walk in robe area towards the en suite.
06/07/20 The flashing got installed on the aforementioned lounge/home theatre roof
07/07/20 Nothing to do with the build. R.I.P. Ennio Morricone … so many great tunes. If I had the know-how, I would’ve added “Man with a harmonica/death rattle” to the first 2 blogs, then “For a few dollars more” & “Fistful of dollars” for the next couple. And the day when we move in …. “L’estasi dell’ oro” obviously with Susanna Rigacci in full flight!
08/07/20 Outside work had commenced on cleaning & neutralising the bricks – was looking much more even
Inside a team of 3 started mounting the cornices. These will go in all rooms bar the bathrooms, which are square set finish.
09/07/20 Materials arrived for the stairs, and the void platform & ladder got removed
10/07/20 Outside there were 2 folks finishing off the eaves on the gable sections, and making a start on the façade cladding. As usual the work was very neat.
With the façade going on we’re getting to the ‘lock up’ stage/milestone. Simply put, ‘lock up’ just means that roof, walls, doors & windows are in. The reality, as you could tell, is that they started on the plaster before then, and also the work outside doesn’t stop – they still need to seal & paint the eaves & façade, and the garage roof will go on once the scaffolding comes down. What it means (apart from another 6 digit invoice hitting our inbox) is that the focus will shift to the internals aka ‘fixing’ stage. Chat to you in the next post.