After living in a shed for 4 years, it's time ol' Ian built himself a 5acrehouse. My cat deserves better.
When things start to happen, I'll add photos and text so you can follow the process from go to woe !

Click here to
open PDF File
of floor plan

Step 1. Early 2007. First get the bulldozer man in to level a building site (pad). It's about 15 metres wide and 45 metres long. My block slopes away from the road which is towards the right of the photo, to the left is south and where all my nice views are. In the background is my neighbours 5 acres though we are separated by a vacant 5 acre block.

Step 2. April 2007. This is just a fill-in job I can do when I have the time. This stone wall is about knee high and will end up as long as the building site, 45 metres. It goes along the righthand side of the pad at the bottom of the bank. In this photo there is only about 3 metres done and I need to get a lot more rock. One of those hard but fun jobs.

August 16. and finally something has been started. Not an exciting photo but this is the formwork for the concrete slab which was about half a days work for the two guys. The reinforcement steel came the next day, the delivery truck got stuck in the greasy mud but managed to get out.

August 23. Today the plumber came and installed the pipes that go into / through the concrete slab. Good ol' Ian was the labourer doing a bit of shovelling and cutting plastic pipe. It's not really possible to know exactly what you want so I plied the plumber with many questions and we worked out what's best and where everything goes.

September 4. What I've always considered to be the first big step of getting the concrete slab poured happened today. It all went quite smoothly with the concrete guys working together like clockwork each guy having a specific job. The exciting part of the day was when one of the truck drivers came oh so close to rolling one of the concrete trucks !

So here it is, one concrete slab, a bit more than $6000. The smaller 'stepdown' area at the front is the verandah. The pouring of it started at about 8am with 2 truckloads of concrete, about 8 cubic metres I think. It was hard enough to walk on by lunchtime so there won't be any wombat tracks permanently embedded into it forever and ever.

October 11. Here comes the frames and trusses so we're almost ready to go. Several minor but important things were changed and resolved since early september when the slab was poured and some unexpected delays which is to be expected.

November 2. Finally underway after a few delays. This much of the frame up in one day, two builders and a tiny bit of help from me. One of the delays was getting a steel post made for the front lefthand corner.

November 13. And here we have the skeleton house. Next step is the roofing and guttering which could be done in two weeks time. Labour costs to put up the frame was nearly $2200, two builders for three days. During the building we talked about the Japanese language and now I have been given the nickname of  'Okinawa' by these two guys.