Author Archives: Bill Hutchison

Our Finished Open Tread Staircase

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Our Open Staircase with Metal Frame and Timber TreadsI had a comment from a friend that in the last photo that I took of the staircase you couldn’t actually tell that it was an open tread design for the stairs. They were a bit surprised about what it looked like when they saw it in person.

So here is a photo I just took of the staircase from below. You can much more easily see how the open tread design looks.

The area under the stairs will make for some great storage, but because of the open treads we will have to make sure to keep them nice and tidy.

One thing about the rich colour of the stairs is that they make for some great photo opportunities with the kids …

Kids on the Stairs

Owner Builder fined $1500 for no Licence

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In some recent inspections of building sites around Townsville the inspectors issued three fines to people doing work without the proper licence. This is a reduction from the last time that they did the inspections of licences when they fined a lot more people for improper licensing.

All three of the people fined for not having the appropriate licence were all working on the same owner builder’s building site.

The owner builder himself did not have an owner builder’s license. An owner builder license is required for any work where the total material and labour cost would exceed $15,000 if done by professionals. The owner builder course is a relatively short course that I had to do before starting the work on our house.

There were two other carpenters working on the same house that were also fined for not having the appropriate license for the work they were doing.

To avoid getting fined for improper licensing of tradespeople you should make sure to do the following:

  • Check the license of any and all contractors that you hire
  • Always check if you need a license before starting any building, renovation of home improvement projects. Even a seemingly small project like putting in a shed requires council approval in some parts of Australia (including Townsville)

If you are unsure about any of the licensing, and if your contractor does have the proper license it would be worth giving a call to the local building authority. Here in Queensland you can check out any licensed trades person on the BSA web-site as long as you have their license number.

How Much Does a Driveway Cost

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We are getting a new aggregate driveway put in when we replace our existing driveway. As we looked at what to do with our driveway, how much of it to replace and what sort of driveway we were going to get put in cost obviously played a part in making our decision.

To get our new aggregated driveway installed over our existing driveway, including removing portions of our existing driveway and preparing the site, will cost about $85.00 per square metre.

My wife was always been a big fan of the aggregated driveway, and the cost difference between it and a regular driveway is negligible. Here in Townsville it seems to be the most popular type of driveway to put in with new homes being built in the older areas, or in the new areas.

I have heard aggregated driveways also called "pebblecrete", because it looks like pebbles on top of concrete.

Taping off the Construction Zone

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Construction Area Taped off from KitchenWhile they were cutting out the floor and building the new staircase we taped up some black plastic tarps to block off the construction zone openings from the rest of the house. When they had to demolish our old concrete bathroom floor the entire house got covered in concrete dust. This time we didn’t want to take any chances, so we put the black plastic sheets up a few days in advance (last time they were a day early, so I didn’t get to put the sheets up).

Taping up the black plastic worked well and kept most of the dust out. I would recommend it to most people if you need to keep living in the house, and / or if you want to keep the rest of the house clean.

The biggest problem that we had is that the bathroom is on the other side of the black plastic. This made for some rather uncomfortable mornings, and a lot of trips out for lunch so that we could use the bathroom at the mall or the restaurant.

In the evenings we would peal back the tape and plastic a bit so that we could squeeze through for the bathroom. Not ideal, but it worked …