Sunday 1 March 2015

Tiling Bathroom/Ensuite, toilet, and laundry (January 2015)

During January I had the bathrooms, toilet and laundry tiled. The floor in 300 x 300 tiles, and the wall with white porcelain 300 x 600 tiles horizontally (landscape) laid.

After the tiles were laid and grouted, I picked up some cheapo vanities from the Big Green Shed (Bunnings) for just $200 each, and whilst they aren't 'designer' vanities, they are all we need and they don't look out of place. :)

So now we're ready for the plumbing fit off.

Garage door and painting (December 2014)

Ordered a sectional garage door, only to find on the original install day they sent out a uninsulated door even though I had ordered an insulated door. This meant they had to take the wrong one back and get a new one manufactured.

This delay meant they couldn't get back up to install it until the week before Christmas. But it all went up fine so I could start to bring stuff to store in the garage.

As mentioned in the last post, I had started to paint the house with undercoat/primer, and then the top coats in the Dulux colour of Hogs Bristle, which is really starting to make the house look more like a home.

Kitchen and Laundry installed (December 2014)

Following on shortly after getting the gyprock put up, we were able to get our kitchen and laundry cabinets installed.

I was able to put a undercoat/primer on the walls before the kitchen was installed.

We decided to go rather simple and straight forward kitchen, with a breakfast bar, fridge alcove with small cabinet above it, corner pantry.

It's just a laminex benchtops, as the thought was not to spend heaps on the kitchen now, as we're going in to a new home with a new lifestyle from the last home of 28 years and built way back in 1980. I'm figuring once we get used to the new home, we're likely to do things a lot differently to what we used to, and we might find the kitchen isn't going to work as good for us. We can think about re-doing the kitchen in about 5 years or so, but since it has been built by cabinet makers that know what they're doing, it should last a hell of a lot longer. K & K Cabinets at Logan Village built and install it all.


Laundry has been done to lift the front loader washing machine up off the ground by about 350 - 400mm, so it will now be a lot easier to load and unload it. The tumble dryer will be above it to keep both together. A broom cabinet to the left of the washing machine and to the right a reasonable sized sink and cupboards below them all.

Gyprock done (November 2014)

Apologies for not keeping this blog up to date, and a lot has happened since I last wrote on this blog.

Early November had the guys in from Ornamental Contracting come to put up all the gyprock, square set throughout the house.

Had 13mm multistop (similar to soundcheck/firecheck) gyprock put all through the home theatre room, which I may or may not at a later date add another layer of 10mm with green glue inbetween the sheets.

The rest of the house is the normal 10mm gyprock with 6mm villaboard in the wet areas like bathrooms and laundry.

Under the back patio (alfresco) and front verandah I've had done with 13mm water resistant gyprock, as it looks a whole lot better the fibro with plastic joins all the way through it.

During the following after they put it up, and another crew came in the did the finishing off to bring it up to painting ready.

One thing they would rather I didn't do, was not to cut holes in the walls for the powerpoints/light switches, as it makes it a lot harder to do the joints and sanding. ...now they tell me. :)

Sunday 26 October 2014

All Bricked up

We had our Boral Sandstone Gold double and single height bricks delivered way back in August, as we'd ordered them just before the price rise at the end of June, and they simply had to be paid for and delivered back then.


20 pallets of double height, 2 pallets of singles

After many delays of getting the doors ordered and finally delivered, followed by having them installed, as the bricky we'd chosen to use said he would lay them until all the external doors were installed, the bricky emailed us advising he was pulling out of the job due to commitments to his regular employer, a project builder. Not much we could do, as our job was a 'one-off' to the bricky, and the project builder provides him with employment for the rest of the year.


front verandah with front door and external door to HT room

I've stained and put clear top coat on both of these doors, as I knew when the bricking was being done, the bare wood of the door would get messed up.

front pivot door
After a bit of hunting around for a new bricky, we ended getting one but his quote was nearly $4000 more than the original quote. Knowing that the original bricky may or may not be able to do the job after Christmas, it was decided to pay the extra to get it done now, rather than pay more in rent over the next few months.

bricks stacked and ready to be layed back of house
We went with off white mortar and pleased that we did so, as we were pointed to another house with the same bricks as us, but using regular mortar.

The side of our house, off white mortar

The other house with standard mortar same time of day
It appears the bricks are different, but in reality are the same.

front of house

As you will see in the photos, we put galvanised lintels above all doors and windows, and it does look so much better than the alternative of fibro above the windows/doors.

Looking down front verandah from garage end

Back of house

Back of house
The garage and laundry doors are half glass, as it's always good to see what's going on outside, as well as let some light in.

Never been a big fan of sliding glass doors, as they lose heat quickly, get hot in the summer sun (even though this is on the southern side of the house). Also you lose bench space in the laundry if you have a sliding door, and things fall down between the bench top and sliding door.

Friday 3 October 2014

Special Site Inspection

I was just in doing some agi pipe extensions around the house and grabbed this image the other day of a special Site Inspector doing his inspection of the site.







He did have a question that he asked :-

"Where is this amateur tower thingy they said I could climb ?"


Had to tell him that paranoia had won out at this stage, and that the $6000 tower would not be appearing due to the tin foil hat brigade, that thought that amateur radio was a lot more 'dangerous' than having a mobile phone stuck to the side of a persons head or a leaky microwave oven in a kitchen.


Here's the photo that indicate the total height of the tower, taken by Logan Council officers from the street, that clearly show that the tower would not have been higher than the surrounding trees, and not much would have been seen from the road. I might add here that the pipe they held up was only a 100mm pipe, so the actual width of the tower would be less than 4 times the pipe (380mm) width.





I might add that the neighbours in the right of this photo were quite supportive of my AR hobby, even though they would have been the closest to the tower.


Friday 27 June 2014

The Roof is now up

It's plodding along bit by bit, and it is allowing me to do bits and pieces before we get in there.

Just last week the roof finally got finished on the house, it took quite a while to do, as the roofing guy had other jobs going at the same time, and I made the mistake of telling him no need to rush for us and he could do other jobs at the same time.

At least this roofer did quote correctly and did not come back later to tell me that there was additional costs involved. The first one I got from either service seeking or hipages, and so far every time I've got a quote from them, they've always misquoted or not bothered responding.







A view of the house from the road with the surfmist roof now on, but still no bull nose verandah, as that was to take another couple of weeks to get a 110mm batten up on it.





A view from the back of the house very late afternoon, which also shows the SW3000 Solar Whiz fan.

I'll try and get another lot of photo's now the roofing has been finished.