Bendigo Advertiser Article

These images were taken by Brian Semmens a photographer for the Bendigo Advertiser our local newspaper. Our new house was featured in "Your Home 2012" a publication that showcases Bendigo's new homes and and renovations. (Atticle written by John Holton)

 Mild steel staircase balustrade (clear powder coated) and door handle designed and built by Yvonne George.
More of Yvonne's work.

Master bedroom view

Views of the deck.

Lounge room picture window.

Ground floor sitting room.

Polished concrete, ground floor.

Guest bathroom

First of the steel stair cases ready for powercoating.

Adrian has done a great job on the single stringer staircase. A bit of a fiddle as it has to fit in an exact space - no room for error. Built in two pieces, it will be a bit of a task to get it inside and assembled.

The timber treads and landing (New Guinea rosewood) will be ready when the steel is back from the powdercoaters. The timber we saved for the job when we sold our furniture manufacturing business.

Spray foam insulation

The spray foam is installed. A slow process, but it should result in a very well insulated house that will be inexpensive to heat and cool.

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Watch the video on their website      Insulfoam website

 Dean and Fraser hard at work. Two techniques at play, free spraying of the foam product into open cavities (as in the ceiling pictures above) and spraying the foam into contained cavities. This gives a neater finish, less wastage of product and quicker clean up time.

The painters make their mark.

The external paint work gets under way. Powdered Gum (a blue gum green colour) on most of the external surfaces, some Shale Grey on the ground floor walls on the north side. Rust paint still to be applied on the front of the building. The scaffolding will come down in the next few days, will make a big difference to the look of our new home.

The decks are well under way

The renderers make a start

It is so good to see the white foam disappear.

An acrylic render and fibre glass mesh  is applied to the foam to for strength, the render is allowed to cure for two to three weeks and then painted.

The bricks arrive

No way will this go together!

It looked very complicated and it took some time to get the steel organized
A few minor adjustments and it all eventually went together.

Where will we put the bloody steel?

The steel work for the decks finally arrives and after considerable discussion about where to put it - just crane it over the fence boys!

Corrugated iron is fixed over the foam

We are using a small amount of corrugated iron on the house. Just around the kitchen dining walls on the deck and around our walk in robe on the western side.

The external foam goes on.

100mm of high density foam is fixed to the stud walls. Nice to get to this stage after all of the research and planning. The foam has a rating of about R 2.6, along with the spray foam in the in the stud walls, we should achieve an overall R rating of around 5 for the walls.

Windows arrive

The windows arrived today and Gavin and Shay get started on fitting them. They did a great job as the windows were very heavy (large and double glazed).









Oops - this one didn't fit, only by 100mm.
Back to the factory to be cut down!

All wrapped up

All wrapped up ready to go. Just need the windows now so that the exterior foam cladding can go on.

Roof Trusses

Roof trusses arrive at 7AM and after a very big day the boys have most of them in place.

Scaffolding under way

Makes the house look a lot larger with the scaffolding around it.

First floor framing

Starting on the first floor

Very exciting now to see work start on the first floor. All of our living space is upstairs, including our bedroom, so we are really looking forward to see how it all works out.

Framing

Dave and his team are back on the job today after their Christmas break. Having the slab poured was exciting, but once the frame starts to go up, we know the building is well under way. It will be nice at last, to be able to walk through the rooms and see if we are happy with all of our deliberations.

31/1/2011

First minor alteration - lift the height of the window that will be over the bed in bedroom three. It will make the view from the lane/park a little more private.

After more interupions with rain, the slab is finally poured.

We are now 4 to 6 weeks behind because of the rain, Dave had hoped to have the frame up by now

.Because we plan to have most of the concrete slab polished, we spent a lot of time looking at polished concrete floors and concrete mixes. We finally settled on  a mix of one third river sand and two thirds 7mm Pyramid Hill granite with a tiny amount of 7mm  blue stone and using the standard gray cement.

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It was fantastic to see the slab poured, it was a frantic job, they had to work quickly as there is more cement (it sets quickly) in a slab that is being polished.

Concreters return!

The rain finally eases and preparations for slab pouring gets underway. A few interruptions with the on going rain, but it is finally happening.


The waffle pods are delivered and set out.

The pods reduce the time and labour needed in setting up a concrete slab. The moulded void formers are arranged on the building area in a grid pattern and reinforcing bar is laid in the voids. Reinforcing mesh is then place on top of the waffle pods.

This system uses less concrete than the conventional methods. The polystyrene voids function as insulation pockets, significantly reducing heat loss through the floor