But first lets go back a step or 5 or a year or more!!
Last time I posted about our build I said we were about to have a lot more rocks removed and a large spoon drain installed by a company who gave us guarantees and a fixed price quote............
Well to cut a long story short that ended up with me having to take them to court as they went to the property and quickly discovered they were well over their heads doing the job, broke their machine and left without actually doing the job. But they tried to charge us anyway!!
It went to court and we managed to pay them what we thought the work they did was worth, not the amount they were trying to rip us off for.
I wont mention names but here is the broken down excavator and the half built drain they put in.
What a disappointing and stressful saga it turned out to be. Not to mention a waste of money and time. They set us back a few thousand dollars and at least 4 months.
We had to go through the whole re-quoting process and employ another company to remove the rocks.
This time I will mention the company because they did a great job, very competent and got the job done. It was Paul Hawkins at H & A Contracting. Look him up if you need any big work done in Tassie. He will price it and stick to the price and he wont leave until he has completed the work to your satisfaction.
Heres some pics of him in action.
I dont know how many 100's of tonnes of rocks he broke and moved but it was an epic job.
So we finally go the ground to where we could fit our house and shed. Or so we thought!!
We spent quite a bit of time plotting the house site with the builder and tossing up ideas of how to make it all work and we settled on a location that allowed us to make us of the massive drop off and give our house or outside deck the feeling of being up in the tree's.
Here we are marking the final location, everything fits and we have the 4 mtr gap between the house and shed that we wanted.
We even did the 3D model of the area to make double sure everything works as we asked.
But then we went to council, had everything approved but the engineer decided at the 11th hour that he wouldn't sign off on the house being so far out on the massive fill site without an epic amount of pier work done before hand. The costs involved in that extra pier work were more than we were willing to spend so the compromise was to move the house over 3mtrs which only left us a 1mtr gap between the house and the shed!
It wasnt ideal as we also had to move the house back so one fo the bedrooms still had light coming in through the window which in turn removed some of the back yard.
We eventually got over it....well i doubt we ever will but thats life. And to be honest everytime we go out and see the house grow that one thing still annoys us.
Oh and also to meet the BAL fire rating we were also told we had to build a massive 23mtr long x 2.4mtr high colorbond fence up on the hill above the house in the worst possible location.
I asked 8 different fencing companies to quote it and not one of them wanted to do it.
The only person willing to do the job quoted $15100....yes you read that right.
Just as I was thinking id have to work out a way to do it myself I came across a Facebook post about a small private fencing bloke that was recommended.......he quoted it reluctantly and got the job done.....$6400. Still a cost we had not budgeted but had to be done. Trust me a rang anyone and everyone trying to get out of it.
Here it is by the way.......we hate it but we will plant some tree's in front of it at some stage. I wouldn't mind meeting the boffin who said that we 'had' to have it.
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But around the end of January the build started.
Electrical and Plumbing rough in
Slab formwork
Slab Poured
Shed started
Shed built (wrong colour roller door, they will change it later) and frame started
Frame mostly complete
Roofers done and house wrapped
Windows in and brick work started
We then had our electrical placement meeting on site. This was the first time we had actually been inside the compound and therefore inside the house since they started.
It was really rushed which we later regretted but none the less we got some inside pics of the framing.
One conciliation was that even though the house was moved over 3mtrs we havent lost that suspended up in the tree's feel.
And not too much time later the brick work went up and from what we can see the plaster etc is going on inside.
They have also brought in a lot of top soil and spread it out on the lower level. I think it is for the treatment plant waste water run off.
And here is the house today. End of March. No render on the front yet but it is well and truly going up.
The next step is for us to have another meeting on site with the tiler. So the next blog post will most likely be when it is finished or very close.
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