We offically have a double storey house

This week we have had a lot of progress on our house, they have started work on the first floor and its starting to look like a real house! I have had a chat to our supervisor who has confirmed that their planning to have the roof trusses up by Wednesday and then the roof, gutter, plumbing and house wrap will be completed before christmas. Then bricking will start in the new year when tradies start working again.

Our building inspector will be going through on Wednesday morning to inspect the frame work and the slab. Once that is done our supervisor would like to organise an onsite walk through of what has been found and what they will be addressing and how they plan to rectify anything that is picked up.

Some progress photos :)

...

We have to stop saying "going to the block"..

Much to our delight Framing is well underway! This week the frame has really started to take shape within only a few days we now have a ground floor and some walls on the first floor! I have had a quick brief from our BC who said that their hoping to have the roof, walls wrapped & plumbing done by christmas. I will be calling our Supervisor tomorrow to confirm when he believes Framing will be complete so that we can get our inspector back out to take a look at the work. 

From what we can tell it looks pretty good, we have taken a few photos of things we want to have checked that its ok but overall looks like their doing a pretty amazing job. 

Below are a few galleries of photos recently taken, enjoy :)

...

Here are a few photos of somethings that we have picked up that we are not 100%

...

The start of Framing

We had put in our contract that our slab needed to sit for 2 weeks before they could start to frame as we wanted to make sure our slab had a chance to settle. There has been some issues with slab movement in the area we're building in so wanted to try and avoid any troubles in the future.

We decided to check out our block today to see if anything had happened and we discovered that frame material had been delivered and that they had started to cut and place parts of the frame. Its great to see the rooms starting to take shape. We could see where all the doors are going to be but couldn't see on for our internal garage door, so will be interesting if it does appear when they start the real work. The rest of the framework should start to take shape from Wednesday this week. :)

This was taken just a few days after the slab was laid. Ryan is standing in what will be his study - the big thing with this photo was that he had been in hospital for the pass three weeks and unable to walk due to a rare virus that he got, all he wanted to do when he got out was to walk on our new slab :)

Our theatre room:

Our entry:

 Pantry:

Study:

Bathroom & Laundry:

Garage:

Family room, Alfresco & Dining:

Pantry & Fridge space:

Alfresco:

Slab

As you might have guessed from the title - our slab was poured today! Boy does it look huge! Got a call at 9am to let me know that it was being poured and after today we have a new site supervisor who will be seeing us throughout the rest of the build.

Below are a few photos that i took tonight when I went to the site. I only really have one concern regarding the pipe holding up the metre box being exposed through the side of the slab - I've emailed our inspector to see if it is something I should bring to the attention of Porter Davis or not. When we do our Frame inspection our slab will also be looked over.

Our Garage:

Front Porch:

Exposed metre box pipe:

Alfresco:

Looks like two different lots of concrete has been laid and one has dried before the other was laid:

Foundation Inspection

Its great to finally see progress and to see how quickly it all goes together! Today they boxed the foundation and managed to move the massive pile of waffle pods and get them to look like the beginning of a house.

As mentioned we have organised to use an independent building inspector throughout our build and the first inspection is Foundation which happened today - if you don't get the slab right the rest of the build could be a nightmare.

I set out to our block this afternoon to meet our inspector and for him to go over the site to make sure everything is ok before they pour the slab tomorrow. When I got there he had beat me and was straight into it, I could see that he noticed a few things and the guys working were great and amended what he pointed out straight away.

Once he had finished he came over and his first words were "I don't like to tell the builders this but this is the best slab I've seen, its very well engineered and the work the guys had done was great". This is great to hear specially for how much extra we have paid for the slab work! He picked up a few things but the guys on site fixed them straightaway, so this means the slab will be poured tomorrow :)

Even though everything was fixed before he left the site we still got a written report of what was found and photo evidence of what was wrong. David discussed with me an inspection he did last week where he found that many things wrong with the foundation that they had still not poured concrete and it was five days after he did the inspection. While everything was fine for us it is always great to get a professional opinion as this is our future we're investing in.

Here are some photos I took today:

Building Inspector

One thing Nicole and I thought was vital during the build was to hire an independent building inspector to oversee every stage of the build. While it is a considerable cost, should hopefully be worthwhile with keeping the builder accountable and ensuring Nicole and Myself get what we are paying for. A Stable and Good Quality Home.

We had several recommendations for building inspectors over the last couple of weeks. Deefeez46waldorf from H1 Forums recommended a company called Darbecca 

( http://darbecca.com.au/ ) to oversee the build. 

My Cousin has also recently used them on a build and highly rated them them in terms of their professionality and quality work. 

So here is their contact details if anyone in the Melbourne is interested in using them.

Progress!!!!

So we have had some movement since our last post. Things should start to flow a little faster now that all the Finance has been approved and Council Approvals received.

Over the Past week we have had a bit of progress now that construction has started.