taking shape

Lots to report on since my last entry. Though things have felt like they're moving in slow motion, as I put this blog together, I can see lots of work has been done. Best of all, we can really see our house coming together...and it looks great!

After the slab was poured, the brickwork around the garage door and big column at the front were built to first floor level. After this was in place, the framing guys came on site (for a around 5 days in total) to build the entire frame of the house. This part was awesome. After they'd leave for the day, we'd walk through the site seeing our rooms coming together, along with views from windows and shapes of ceilings.

Now (some) windows are in, the plumber has "roughed-in", and scaffolding is up to complete the brickwork around the house (I think this will start tomorrow - weather pending). Soon the roof will be on and we'll be much closer to lock-up.

This hasn't been without some major hiccups...we're still to resolve some window sizes (due to the framer using the wrong set of plans), have the slab cut (due to the concreter's f*%# up) and get the roof re-measured (due to a misinterpretation of the elevation drawings e.g. missing an whole section of our roof!).

I cannot imagine what our house would be like if we weren't paying attention to every detail. I can only imagine it would be very different to the one we planned and designed. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a professional builder / architect / engineer by any stretch of the imagination, I just know what this house should look like and what we negotiated in our fixed price contract (more on that another day!).

If you're going down this same path of building a house, or thinking about building, my advice would be: document everything! Changes agreed upon and suggestions made...it all needs to be documented and signed off by both parties.