I'm actually writing this post extremely belatedly. This was the last shot I showed you of the area under our house, on the long-awaited slab-pouring day.
What I failed to mention when I rejoiced that the slab was done, was that the next day we had carpenters on site! A builder that we had talked to about helping us with the renovation called that day, and said that he had a couple of "chippies" with no work to do that week, and asked if we were interested in them coming around. We agreed, and they arrived within an hour, and said they would start the next day!
Given that it took us 18 months of living in this house to get to the point of simply having the slab poured, all of this sudden progress was making our heads spin!
Allie wasn't affected.
The first carpenter day involved a lot of welding, because our structural engineer insisted that before the frame went up, all of our posts with their 'bolt-on' extensions (from when we had to re-raise the house because it wasn't raised high enough the first time) had to be welded... taking this...
To this.
Fortunately one of the three carpenters was a qualified welder, so Tom grinded off the little plates on either side of the post (that were bolted together holding the extension to the pole) and the carpenter followed with the welder to create a nice seam.
The other carpenters got to work measuring and marking where all of the walls had to go.
And then we experienced a pretty serious panic when we realised that two of our posts were actually positioned in the middle of rooms, instead of within the walls where they were supposed to be. We were pretty furious at the structural engineer who should have known exactly where the walls were going to be based on our original plans, which he had full access to. We'd just positioned them according to his plans when we hung them all. Silly us for assuming that he could read the building plans and position the posts accordingly! You can see both problem poles in in the shot above. One in the middle of the corridor, the other in line with it on the left in one of the future bedrooms.
Thankfully we managed to solve the problem by repositioning the poles along the beam that they were supporting into positions where they would be hidden within walls, and Tom grinded off the leftover little stumps in the middle of the concrete.
And then, in what felt like no time, our downstairs area looked like this!
That shot above is with me standing in the future living area, looking at the front door.
This shot is taken afterI backed up a bit and turned a little to the left, showing that same living area.
Here I am standing in the garage looking at the kitchen on the right-hand side, and one of the bedrooms on the left (where one of the carpenters is standing on a beam).
And here, I'm standing in the kitchen, looking down the corridor. The bedroom from the shot above is off to the right, then there's the bathroom (where you can see the plumbing sticking out of the floor), and then there's the other bedroom further over. The garages are to the left.
This is the built-in wardrobe in that far bedroom.
And this is the view from the front yard, looking at the front door (with the window gap to the right of it now installed).
And this is the front wall on the other side of the front stairs, with the door to the garage.
I find it pretty incredible that I'm now talking about rooms downstairs! Isn't it amazing how fast walls go up?! Now we've just got to scrape together a small fortune to actually finish the thing!
One step at a time, as always. Perhaps some actual walls and doors and windows would be a good start.
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