02/06/20 – Bricks were delivered (Homestead Mushroom).
For those that read the earlier blogs you may recall the external look. These bricks will be visible around the side & back of the house both upstairs & downstairs. At the front upstairs it will be a weatherboard façade (it partly wraps around the sides). Front downstairs rendered. I’m boldly assuming they’ll use a cheaper, or second-hand, brick where the render will go. Colour swabs below. We thought (think) the brick works well with the Colorbond roof (Ironstone), and the whitish window frames (Surfmist). Again, bugger if it doesn’t because that’s what we ‘re stuck with
Banksy must have come through the house marking out the rooms, door swing & widths. Strange, don’t recall Massive Attack touring Melbourne?? Let’s hope I’m not humming Unfinished Sympathy when this is all done.
Later in the afternoon, someone came by to solidify the structure around one of the steel columns on the slab corner. They obviously found out that I’ve packed on weight during the COVID-19 lockdown! Doesn’t everyone roast their potatoes in duck fat??
03/06/20 Two chaps came around to start putting the bricks in piles around the house. Apparently, it will be a team of 5 laying the bricks so at that rate the pile of bricks will only last a day or two.
04/06/20 Drove past today half expecting to see a little army of brickies but instead there were 2 sparkies running electrical wires through the upper storey.
Not unlike gas & water, the electrical wires start downstairs front southern corner, feed up straight to the upper floor ceiling, then down to the garage (fusebox location), then back up again and then distribute through the upper storey & ground floor. As I did with cold & hot water, gas & waste, I’ll try map out where these wires run through the house. However, looking at the spaghetti of wires, I’m wondering how long this will take me.
05/05/20 was a busy day. More bricks delivered. What I thought was going to be a team of 5 brickies was in fact 8, and the progress showed. In one day got to about 6′ most of the way around.
Started around the side side & back ….
Knowing nothing about the trade it was amazing to see how level they got the bricks, and how they fastened them. Basically, depending on the brick sizes, they have these notched/marked poles attached to metal braces (below left) which they put at the corners of the frame, and then use a plum line (below left & right) to get them level. As they finish a row, they lift it to the next notch. This crew has worked together for 10 years, and it showed. All working in pairs on different sides, making the same progress with minimal fuss or talking. A lackey regularly goes around delivering fresh mortar. The first in the pair to finish a row will grab the roll jointer. By the time that chap has done the roll joints the other person has finished & gets ready to move the plum line up a notch.
As far as I can tell they used 3 types of fasteners. Red ties/concept wires for perpendicular brickwork (e.g. below far right is where another brick column will join meet that wall). Silver used at regular intervals to the frame (below 2nd from right). The other type (middle) is used for expansion joints.
Inside things were buzzing too (bad pun intended). Electricians (L&O) continued running power cabling downstairs, and there were also the technicians (Argus) for the data, coax, etc running their leads. Both firms have the same owner, and do work for other volume builders e.g. Boutique, Latitude 37 etc, but seemed to work quite independently. Looking at all these wires below, you can tell this is the part of the design consultation where the better half rolled her eyes, muttered “boys & their toys” and indulged me.
Firstly, doubled, in some rooms tripled, the number of powerpoints, added several external powerpoints/junction boxes for e.g. external lighting, electronic gate, garden lighting, pool heating (40amp), pool lighting etc. Never, ever, heard anyone complain that they had too many powerpoints
Secondly, whilst we didn’t go hardcore propellerhead with home automation, we did choose the Clipsal Iconic range for powerpoints & switches. They are somewhat future proof – the skins, mechs & rockers can be changed easily without rewiring. We added Bluetooth mechs which allows some programmability via an app, and we can add the wi-fi interface which means you can connect it to the network or Google Home etc. The skin indicated below is the one we’re going for.
Thirdly, added wi-fi points (one for each floor), and data for Study, Lounge, Family & Games room – that’s the blue Cat6 cables running through the roof trusses from the garage (where the NBN box will sit). Not that impressed with NBN since we were forced across, with it generally underperforming our old cable, certainly in peak hours. Maybe we need to upgrade or jump to 5G – a problem for another day but for now better off having everything wired in. Will also look to put our NAS in the garage.
The site team lead for Argus happened to be doing our lounge (pseudo home theatre) when I popped my head in. At the design stage I wasn’t too taken by their range of home theatre equipment & the technology is changing so rapidly, so we went for a ‘pre-wire pack’, i.e. they only install the wiring, and pull them through, and then we can go buy our own equipment afterwards. Whilst there is a plan for what goes where, there is some room for interpretation, so it was good to hear him talk through his rationale around where to position projector & speaker cables etc. Below left all the wiring for projector & speakers, data etc to multi-socket point or base. Below right projector wiring with 4K HDMI
09/06/20 Wiring for the stair lights. You will notice the zigzag pattern. Because at this point in time the sparkies don’t know exactly where the stair treads & therefore stair lights will be, they cover their bases by running wires for the whole range.
Outside the brickies were putting up the platforms for the next 6′ of brickwork
And they also got the front of the house to 6′ in height – they don’t roll joint these as this section will all be rendered
10/06/20. Team of 9 on site, and they were motoring along (or should I say ‘mortaring’ along …. Ok bad, but still better than anything the Herald Sun comes up with!) on the platforms.
A couple also got started on the front columns
11/06/20. They were working on the back of the house. In the bottom right of the picture (closer to the ground) you can see all the wiring added for the pool, namely 40amp junction box for the pool heater (electric heat pump exchanger), normal junction box for pool lighting, gas riser (yellow pole) for spa heater, data cable (in case it’s needed for the pool system). That’s in addition to external powerpoint, and junction box for garden lighting etc
Along with more bricks, more T-bar lintels arrived (to support the bricks above windows, doors etc)
Below they’re getting ready for the next day when they would start on the garage
12/06/20. Busy day today.
A couple of the front facing façade (aka colonial) windows got lifted. The plans did have them slightly lower in the elevation drawings but you did have to look very closely. For a start I had to cock my head sideways to look out through them (& I’m average height), and it looked odd having other windows in the same room (different wall) which were 35cm higher. Anyway, paid the variation fee to get them adjusted – cost less than the physio who would have had to fix my neck looking out the windows.
Someone also came to install the shower bases & backing for niches for both ensuite & main bathroom. The material they use for the niche backing looks like foam but has the texture of a painted nylon scourer.
Someone else had come & run some cables for the home security system. I wasn’t allowed to go for the infrared motion sensor machine gun system …. something about the cat potentially setting it off. Please Marge, won’t you let me live!
Front door & lockset was delivered along with some sliding door rails.
Outside the brickies continued their work finishing off the back, sides & front to the height they could reach with their platforms. Middle of next week proper scaffolding will arrive to do the final lot of bricks plus weatherboards up to the eves.
In the meantime, others got started on the garage. Pleasingly they informed the neighbour, and also took care to lay out protection not to damage their car port or cover it in dirt. This wall will effectively act as the fence between the two properties. It worked out well because the section of fence that was removed (which was relatively new & saved) can be used to replace the section where our old garage wall (now demolished) used to act as the fence (~ 5m further along).
13/06/20 – Thought they might have taken the weekend off after a solid week of progress, but to my surprise they were working Saturday. When I asked why, their response was to finish off the garage wall so the neighbour could use their car port again. Quite considerate given all these folks live out past Broadmeadows!
They also got started on the window ledges. Needed to slice the bricks for some of the gaps to windows. Windows around the sides & back will have the slightly angled look below as they will remain visible.
Around the front downstairs (where the render will go) they will have a square finish.
By the end of the day they had done all the garage, window ledges & doorsteps
I’ll stop it here for this post with the ground floor brickwork seemingly completed. Stay tuned.