I CAN'T BELIEVE HE TALKED ME INTO IT!!

We have walls...

2009-09-16T22:59:00.000+10:00

well we have some walls!! It's the entertainment room - a glamourous name for the room that will house the TV!! Currently housing our oven!!

The original plan was to get this room gyprocked then move all the stuff Dale has everywhere into this room but the plan is always changing and we are now getting the whole lower level done first (so hopefully I'll be doing something in the form of painting soon).

Labourer Luke

2009-09-16T22:44:00.000+10:00

Doing a fantastic job!!

I Can't Believe it's Been So Long!!

2009-08-22T20:20:00.002+10:00

I can't believe it's been so long since my last post. But I find frames and electrical wires boring and that is all that was happening for ages.

But now we have tiles and granite and I LOVE it!!! How great is our main family bathroom. Well so far anyway!

We've been shopping!!

2009-06-24T12:24:00.010+10:00

A couple of weeks ago I saw an ad for a carpark sale at the local bathroom shop so we stopped past on our way to Westmead for a family meeting day. We picked up a sink for the main bathroom, vanity unit for the ensuite and our laundry sink. Best of all it was all really CHEAP!!!

Then I saw an ad for a Harvey Norman Clearance centre. So we got up at some ridiculous hour in the morning and headed to the sale. We were 18 and 19 in the line and it paid off. We got so much stuff and spent less than $1500.

Tallboy for the main bathroom

Shaving Cabinet for the main bathroom

We got three of these toilets and they were only $50 each!! And in the growing QLD beach theme of our house they are called Bribie which is the name of a beach I spent nearly every weekend at growing up.

Vanity for the downstairs toilet

Our last minute luxury item - heated towel rail for the ensuite

We even got ourselves a kitchen sink - it's so cool it comes with heaps of accessories including chopping board and colander!

We got most of the tapware

Finally, a big thanks to Tony for getting us our internal doors - a big 920 wide

We're all locked up!

2009-06-10T14:17:00.003+10:00

How cool is our front door? It went on yesterday and I can't wait to go over there this afternoon and see it in real life. We had the glass door at the back of the house fixed the other day too so we are officially locked up.

We also had the frame inspection this morning and everything is good. So I guess that means we keep building. Dale tells me lock up is about half way... which is great but still a loooooooooong way to go!

A Very Important Piece of Metal

2009-05-16T21:46:00.005+10:00

These piccies are from a couple of weeks ago. Dale was very adament that I would want to get a photo of the Barge Capping. So I loaded the children in the car and met Dale at "The Block" as it is so affectionatly called.

So here is the Barge Capping that Dale was so excited about (this is actually one of my favourite views of our house, it's so much nicer than the front view and the only place you can see it is from the neighbours driveway!)
Here is a close up - now I thought it was that the side of the roof was finished off with the whole side panel but he is only talking about the smooth piece of right angle metal that sits on the top! I went all the way to the block with two cranky kids to see this!!

More photos of the front of the house

Our broken door :( It really seems to be true that things take ages when you're an owner builder. This door was broken AGES ago and the guys who did it said they would pay for it. So we rang the company we bought the door from and asked if they could give us a price. They insisted on sending someone out as "there are many different types of glass and we need to make sure we quote on the right one". Doesn't matter that we had only bought it a couple of weeks before and there was no way they could just give us a ballpark figure. Anyway the guy that comes out to inspect the door so we can find out how much it will cost to fix needs to be booked 2 weeks in advance. Then everytime he comes Dale is in Sydney or Newcastle and can't let the guy in!! Still waiting to find out how much to get the glass replaced......

It seems so far down now that the scaffolding has gone!!!

We also have an outside tap!! YAY!!

The place where our front door will be, hopefully sometime in the next week or so. I love that you can see the trees as soon as you walk in the front door!

And finally, here is Dale in front of the house that he built! As much as I Can't Believe He Talked Me Into It I think he has done an awesome job. He really is amazing, the amount of hard work he has done so far is mind blowing. I really am proud of him and will be so happy when we finally get to move in.

It's All or Nothing

2009-04-25T18:49:00.005+10:00

It felt like there was nothing happening for so long but that's all changed! I finally have more to look at than where the pipes are - Dale took so many photos of where all our water and gas pipes are in the walls for future reference. I might appreciate it later when he doesn't drill through the gas pipe but there are only so many pictures of frames and pipes you can look at and still be excicted!!

But in the last couple of weeks the bricks were finished off then they were cleaned

and both garage doors are on. It looks great! I can't wait to get the front door now!!

So much has been happening, it's all exciting again!

Dale keeps working but it seems like nothing is happening!

2009-04-14T21:34:00.007+10:00

Everytime I go to the Block lately Dale is keen to show me what's been done. So I eagerly take the camera only to find that I can't get a decent photo because it doesn't really look that much different!! Like the built in wardrobes he spent a day building I show up and the only thing I notice as being different is a tiny little wall I can't photograph (all the frames just blend in together on the picture). So I am resorting to showing you a photo of the termimesh!!!
And how our backyard is so overgrown it's beginning to blend in with the view!!

At least Leilani's having fun...definately worth photographing if I do say so myself!!!

The eaves were another boring thing to look at, think about etc. I did notice that they are huge and I have to paint them!!!

The great news is our new brickie has started and is nearly finished - YAY!! Hopefully by the end of tomorrow all the "wall" bricks will be done then by the end of the week all the window sills will be done too. Then all we need to do to get to lock up is finish the cladding between the split, put the window in up there, fit the front door and garage doors and a little bit of capping. It seems so close but when I write it down it seems like so much!!

The first half of the cladding at the split - I wish I had of chosen the Surfmist colour now. Oh well maybe later....

It's so good to see the brickies working I feel like something is happening again.

The Right Tiles & the Front Door

2009-03-20T11:42:00.006+11:00

I put the wrong picture up the tiles are actually this colour:

It reminds me of the water in the Whitsundays which goes well with our bricks (like that should ever be a consideration when you're talking bathroom tiles!) which are also inspired by the Whitsundays being called Daydream.

Well if I can't live in QLD I may as well build my house like it! LOL

This is the front door we are thinking of:It's a Hume door and its 1200mm wide which is bigger than a "normal" door.

Wadda ya think???

The Kitchen Guy and Bathroom Ideas

2009-03-17T21:34:00.008+11:00

We met with the kitchen guy on Monday. We already had a plan which we are pretty much sticking to. The local radio station had an Auction late last year and we bid on and won a $15,000 kitchen (installation not included) which we paid $7,500 for so we are pretty happy. The kitchen guy said our kitchen is pretty basic so we should get everything under cost but it may be extra for soft closing draws but we're still hoping we can get it all under the $15,000 limit.

This is the colour scheme I am liking at the moment. What do you think? Leave a comment and let us know. You can see a bigger picture here: http://www.polytec.com.au/thermo_doors_introI just love the dark cupboards with the white and the red splashback is gorgeous!

Now we are at the stage where I can see the rooms and how they "fit in" to the rest of the house I am starting to really think about colours and finishes. I've always loved a plain white bathroom and kitchen but now that I'm actually getting closer to choosing I'm loving black and white and colours!!

We've already bought the feature tiles for the bathroom.Whilst I was flicking through the Ikea catalouge I noticed a bathroom that had wood features - I can't tell you how far away from what I would usually like that is but I love it - I can't find a picture of the bathroom online and my scanner isn't working but if you have a 2009 catalouge it's on page 268 or if you're really keen the Ikea website (http://www.ikea.com.au/) has an online catalouge. Here's a taste:At the moment I am loving the idea of the aqua feature tiles with white walls and the wood shelving and accesories. I am a bit nervous that the wood and the tiles will be too much??? Am I crazy or will this look good?

Anyway, that's where I'm at with the house. Dale is still working over there all the time doing all the little things to get ready for the next stage but nothing major - all the rooms are still in the same place!

Until next time.....

Brickie Trouble

2009-03-06T10:58:00.006+11:00

Why is it that every trade seems to bag out the others? You'd think they'd have some sort of tradie bond!! Each trade seems to say that the other trades did a bad job or didn't think about other tradies. So much whinging!!

We are having a bit of trouble with the brickie - he has decided the job is alot harder than he thought - the scaffolding is too far away from the house, the slab is not even, there isn't enough room at the sides of the house etc etc etc. So he now wants a daily rate instead of a per 1000 rate.

We are currently looking at other options ie. new brickie and getting quotes in. We just can't afford such a big blow out and it looks like there are other brickies around who don't see the problems in the same way ie. not problems at all. Unfortunatly this will delay everything by several weeks as the new Brickie can't start for another 3 weeks. Oh well there is still plenty to do!! Here are some more photos.

Looking past the dining room window.

Looking back the other way down the side of the garage.

The bricks are not as nice wet.

Our bricks dry - note the mortar colour is just like Surfmist!!!

We Have Bricks and a Pantry!!

2009-03-03T19:17:00.003+11:00

The scaffolding went up on the weekend in prepration for the Brickies...

The brickies came today and started on the Home Theatre room (I really need a better name not sure it's really a Home Theatre perhaps TV room!!). After a last minute grilling from me last night Dale was happy to see that the grout colour is a perfect match to the Surfmist colour I want the garage door to be (at the moment anyway!). The bricks and mortar are still quite wet in the photo and it doesn't help that Dale waits until he leaves (he got home at 9pm!) to take the pictures.

I was very pleased to see my pantry just about finished. I have a much better perspective of the kitchen now. It's a lot more "boxed in" than I thought it would be but am happy to see that it is still inclusive of the whole downstairs area so I'll never be left out if I'm in the kitchen :)

I think I'll need to go out and take some more pictures in the natural daylight!!

The Garage Door I Still Can't Decide On.....

2009-03-01T15:48:00.005+11:00

No photos today, I've hassled Dale that because he has been taking the camera with him everyday that we will have hundreds of photos of our house and no photo's of the children to look back on - so he's left the camera at home and I've only taken photo's of the kids once!! There is a reason though, I've spent the last few days trying to decide what colour garage door I want.

It should be easy when you consider that I had already decided. When we started I was going to have blue garage doors but as the building has progressed I've changed my mind - bad idea. When you drive up to the house all you see is this massive blue roof, I think it would just be way too much to have the garage doors the same.

Then I thought we could have the charcoal colour that matches the window frames until I found out they don't make garage doors in that colour (we could get them painted that colour but I just don't trust paint on a garage door that is going to get the full western afternoon sun everyday).

Then I found the homeone forum (http://forum.homeone.com.au/) which I now love and someone suggested we have timber or timber look doors. At first I wasn't at all sure but then I Googled it and LOVED the look. Which is great but I needed to see it in real life. Took a while to find somewhere that did the wood look (real timber is too much hassle to maintain and is way too expensive for us at the moment). In real life the door we saw was AWEFUL it looked like a painted brown door and it wasn't even a nice brown.

I kept looking and found some that I really like but it's nearly 4 times more expensive than a standard roller door. So now I am thinking of matching the garage door to the grout of the bricks which is going to be quite light.

I am not making a final decision until the bricks are finished but am leaning towards the colour Surfmist. Here are the colours blue roof, Surfmist Garage Door and the bricks (don't have the charcoal window frames but you can see them in earlier posts).

Anyway the brickie starts on Tuesday so it won't be long and the decision will have to be made. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

A Flushing Toilet and the Rest of the Roof

2009-02-24T20:08:00.005+11:00

Dale is very happy to have a flushing toilet up and working! Up until this point we have had a camping toilet in the shed. Yep one of those toilets you have to empty yourself!! YUCK!!! I did tell him it was worth the money for the portaloo but for under $100 including chemicals we could have the camping toilet and save heaps of $$$$$$ so he decided to have the disgusting job of cleaning out a camping toilet instead!! So everyone is now very happy that our ensuite is currently housing the NEW temporary builders loo. It just needs a door now!! Think I'll wait until I get home.
The second half of the roof goes on......

Better hurry, those clouds don't look too promising.

Half a Roof and a Visit from Dar

2009-02-24T19:21:00.004+11:00

January saw the first half of the roof go on.

We've got a real perspective now on what things are going to look like. I've already picked out the spot where the Christmas tree is going to go!

We are loving Eric, one of Dale's oldest friends (not in age in years known :P). He brings so much knowledge to the table. What would we do without him??? Thanks Eric.

Evie loves going to the block - how much more fun to go with Dar!!

Nearly ready for the rest of the roof.

We had a meeting with the slab guys to discuss some of the problems like the slab was too high which affected the back stairs and ramp including extra platforms etc - seems as though they are prepared to fix everything up which is good. They are talking about bringing some dirt in to raise the level of the yard.

What ever happened to that nice man I married???

2009-02-23T12:25:00.005+11:00

Oh, that's right he's owner building our house!!!

December was the start of the "real" work for Dale. He left home between 6am and 7am and was getting home around 9pm 6 days a week. I did insist that he take Sundays off as a church and family day, which he did most of the time.

We built the shed in our bedroom - I didn't want to have bolt holes on the garage floor and seeing as we are having carpet in the bedroom no one (except you) will know there are filled in bolt holes under the carpet.

The Home Theatre (really it's just our lounge room) was the first room to get frames.

Then everything seemed to happen fairly quickly after that after all he was there from 7 til 9.

This is the view from the dining room.

Dale took quite a few photos like this one to show me how much he'd done ;P

The home theatre with the ceiling on.

The Dining room , kitchen and sitting room (or the other lounge room).

With Christmas coming and everything shutting down for the holidays we had to order bricks, roofing etc so we had everything ready to go. (This is the best photo I could find all the other pallets are pretty badly chipped!)

We went camping the first week of January so this is how we left everything....

Plumbing, Slab and Two Very Dirty Girls!

2009-02-21T16:01:00.004+11:00

November 08 was a busy month. The plumbing was laid (is that the right terminology????).

The preparations for the slab were done and the concrete was poured, FINALLY. Sometime back around August we were told it would be about 2 weeks. There were so many problems and mistakes along the way. Perhaps they meant to say 3 months. Every week it was the same - about another 2 weeks. At last the longest 2 weeks of our lives were over and we only had to wait TWO more weeks before we could start building. Note to self...don't recomend Owner Building to anyone - unless of course you think the buzz of having built your own house outweighs the stresses, dramas and hassles. OK, OK, I still can't believe he talked me into it but it is pretty cool that my husband is going to build us a house!!

We wrote our names on the concrete in the garage but I can't seem to find any pictures :( Dale & I wrote all our names and Evie drew a picture!! The girls had a blast and got incredibly dirty!! I had taken the girls to Sarah's baby shower and on the way home stopped past to write in the concrete (it was quite late about 6pm). This stuff is soooooooooo BLACK. They had good clothes on, oh well isn't that what washing machines are for?????

Concreting, Evie & Leilani!!!

2009-02-21T15:46:00.005+11:00

It's October 08 and at last we have some concrete down!! After much discussion and debate about whether we should be having a dropped edge beam or a block wall it was decided that a block wall was the go and up she went.

And we can never have too many pictures of my beautiful girls, even if they like playing (Evie) and eating (Leilani) rocks!!

Tanks, Tyres and Finally the Foundations!

2009-02-21T15:19:00.006+11:00

September 08 saw the arrival of our tanks. We had to get them delivered so early because it would be extremely difficult to get them into the backyard once the slab gets poured. Aren't they great, my brand new, dirty tanks.

We got a nice surprise when they were digging the foundations:

Some pictures of that really important stuff that you'll never see again - the foundation metal stuff:

Finally, Evie and Dale - Evie loves coming to the Block SOOOOOOOOOOOOO much!!

The Bibles & the Kids

2009-02-21T14:58:00.008+11:00

We decided we wanted to symbolize building our house on the rock (Luke 6:48) by burying Bibles under each of the rooms. We had 12 Bibles, one for each room. The Bibles were ones we already had at home, some very special ie. our very first Bibles from when we first became Christians. Each Bible had special meaning and were carefully chosen for each room.

Nearly done!!

And we couldn't resist getting some pictures of the girls on the machinery!! We all had so much fun that day!!

The First Sod

2009-02-21T14:41:00.006+11:00

In August 08 we finally turned the first sod!! Doesn't take long to change the terrain....just like Sims!!

Bye Bye Trees

2009-02-19T23:17:00.006+11:00

Finally, some real work!

Hey we have neighbours!!

The Plans

2009-02-19T23:03:00.002+11:00

We finally came up with something we loved that was also accessible with the help of a lift for the 1mtr split. What do you think?

The Land

2009-02-19T21:50:00.000+11:00

In the beginning was the land, with all our dreams and hopes ahead of us!! Great location, lovely outlook, close to good schools, private access road with only 5 houses. Perfect, except for the slope. We spent the next 18mths trying to figure out how to build an accessible house on a slope within our very tight budget.

A Little Background

2009-02-18T23:00:00.000+11:00

We bought a block of land in July 2006 and sold our house in December 2006. We didn't start building until August 2008. When we were renovating our last house I quite firmly (well I thought it was firmly) said that I didn't want to renovate again until we were old and had more time (not sure if you actually have more time when you're old but at least it meant putting off the renovations for several more years!). When we bought the land I again quite firmly (so I thought) said only if we get someone else to build it. Then we got pricing and the tiny little house with no garage that the project homes were offering just wasn't going to cut it. So we embarked on finding another way. We actually put the land on the market for a couple of weeks...maybe months... the real estate was hopeless though, never advertised, never showed anyone. So we thought we'd better find a better way to build a house that would see us through the next 20 years or so. So Dale (hubby) quite firmly (I guess he meant it) said we were going to build a house and he was going to be the builder!! AAHHHHHHGGGG.... What were we in for.... I'll try to catch up as we are now 1/2 way though building - not quite at lock up. Dale has run out of holidays but he keeps telling me there's not much more to do.......