Exterior completed

The exterior cladding and painting have now been finished and all the plastic protecting the windows removed .


The scaffolding will be taken away tomorrow. We have been very impressed with Texmark They have gone out of there way to make sure everything is as we wanted and have left the site extremely tidy which is not easy considering they are working with polystyrene. Thank you Brent.

On the home front

We have been filling nail holes and sanding the skirtings, window and door frames, we are roughly half way.

The builders are almost done just a few mouldings to go, and then all the door hardware.

The plasterer starts this week.

More tree pictures

Spot the difference.

No not the house, the pine tree is missing.
Unbelieveably our neighbour cut down our pine tree with out our consent!

This huge 40 year old pine tree is now lying across our top track having crashed down the bank leaving a huge track of damaged native bush.

Adobe walls and Internal Doors

 

The final plaster coat has been added to 3/4 of the house today. We have chosen an Adobe finish to try and achieve a slightly rustic look. There are three coats of acrylic paint yet to go over the plaster.

All of the Internal doors have now been fitted. The doors into the lounge are 2.4m high. We have chosen higher doors so that the hot air in summer will flow from the lounge and up through the skylight in the centre of the house without any obstructions. The doors to the left of the lounge are for storage cupboard and a utility cupboard where all the underfloor heating and solar panel controls will be situated.

Disguising the Chilly Bin

The North and South walls now have a plaster and mesh coating over the polystyrene.

The house  is cement coloured instead of bright white and now blends into the surroundings. All the interior doors have arrived and the builders are probably going to start installing them tomorrow. Both the showers trays have been fitted into the bathrooms ready for the plumber to connect.

The painting begins

Today I took advantage of the scaffolding to paint the soffits. Thankfully this is the only exterior painting we are responsible for.

And now for something completely different

This evening we attended the opening of a art exhibition at the Ngaruawahia Arts Centre. All of the artworks are by local ladies and inspired by the up coming pink ribon day. June exhibited two pieces.

 

All wrapped up

I just love working in the rain, today I finished fitting the polystyrene around the base of the house. I needed to get it done so the insulclad guys could get on and finish all the preparation work.


The builders are making great progress with the gibbing, all the ceilings done and probably half the walls.

Silence

All the poly on the exterior now and batts on the inside, combined with double glazing makes for a very quiet house.

Gibbing has started with the ceilings in bedrooms 3 and 4 done already.

Roof window is all framed out ready for gib and batts.

We have a Chilly Bin

The South and West facing walls now have 50mm thick polystyrene sheets attached. These sheets give the walls an insulation rating of  R2.55 once they have been rendered and  R2.6 wall batts installed. The go ahead for lining the inside walls was approved today. The insulation will be installed tomorrow.

Water proofing the foundations.

Boring I know, but it had to be done.

The polythene around the foundations was full of creases and damaged in places which will have created problems when fixing the polystyrene insulation. The solution was to cut the damaged polythene back and paint the concrete with Mulseal, a black gloop which dries to a rubbery membrane.

Luckily for me Andy and Gregory did this job, leaving me free to finish a lot of other smaller jobs, like putting up roof ladders for the Insulclad installers and tidying up some more of the wiring.

Last thing today I went around every wall taking more than 60 photos. I'm sure they will be invaluable if we ever need to work out where things are in the walls.

Electrical wiring almost done

Luke and I have just spent the last 2 1/2 days installing all the electrical and data cables, we are almost there.
This needs to be done by Monday when the Batts will be installed, and the installation of the wall linings will begin. Not much to see though, the picture shows the all the cables hanging where the switch board willl go.

You can also see the materials for the external cladding; a stack of 50mm polystyrene panels and the piles of bags of plaster.

The first few 50mm polystyrene pannels for the Insulclad exterior cladding have been installed. I am going to install 70mm polystyrene on the concrete around the base to further insulate the floor slab to reduce the heat loss from the edges of the floor.  Although polystyrene is not a "green" product it does improve the insulation rating of the walls and therefore the energy efficiency of the house. The polystyrene can be recycled at the end of the buildings life, so we are reliant on people a long way in the future doing the right thing.

One month so far

We are now one month into the build.
Today the roofers were flashing the roof window and fitting guttering.
Inside the plumbers were finishing up the pipe work.
Some pictures from the inside this time.
First; looking up at the roof window; this will provide light and more importantly ventilation. The controls have a clever function that will automativally close it when it rains.
The hot water cylinder can be seen; this $2000 beast has ports for the solar panels, wetback and hydronic underfloor heating.








Second; looking from the front door across the dining, kitchen and family areas,

and third looking from the kitchen out the family room stacker

The windows

The windows were installed today. These are all double glazed. We decided to use stacker doors in the living areas because they have a very narrow frames giving the least obstruction to the view. I constructed a platform in the ceiling for the hot water cylinder to allow the plumbers to complete their pipe work.

Another weeks progress

Just back from a rain free week in Surfers Paradise, what a difference 35 deg yesterday, 7.5 deg and rain today.

Called in to check out progress on the way home from the airport.
The progress never fails to impress inspite of the weather.

We now have a roof, and the building all wrapped up it is starting to look like a real house.