Talk about being in the right place at the right time…

There is a house behind my work that has been lifted and is the process of being built in under, like what we want to do with our place. At the same time a friend from work, who is also my boss, is having a house built next to that house. My friend started talking with the builder about all the trouble that we have been having and arranged for me to have a chat with the builder about our house.

Well, to cut a long story short, he is going to start enclosing our house on Monday next week! It’s amazing!

Because of the delays caused by our previous builder (almost a year to finally complete the front set of stairs) based on our initial budget we can no longer enclose under the house and fully complete it. The building market in Townsville is booming and costs have increased about 30% in the 15 months since we first tendered bids on our construction.

We will be getting under the house completed to lockup stage, so it will have the windows, doors, security screens, roller door and external walls finished. The internal framing will also be complete, but none of the internal sheeting will be done, most of the plumbing won’t be done, the electrical will not be complete and there will be no flooring or internal staircase. We will need to do the rest of the building room by room when the time and finances permit.

The whole thing is not exactly what we had planned (it was supposed to be completed by Christmas last year!), but we finally feel like we are making headway.

An advantage with the builder doing work on the house behind ours is that we have been able to watch him work. He seems to do a great job, and the owner of the house is very happy, even wants him to do more work for him in the future! That is always the sign of a good builder.

The construction should only take about three weeks, which will be amazing, and I will be taking photos along the way for posting.

We are excited about this and we feel a far way from how we were feeling in December when our son declared “The house is killing us“.

Tags: Building, Construction, Contractors, Renovate

The day finally came this week when the stairs were complete. In our original discussions with the contractor this was meant to be done back in July of last year, when we were down in Adelaide visiting Tamara’s Pop when he had a stroke.

We are glad they are finally done, but they are interesting in how they have been completed so that the second set of stairs complies with council regulations. Check them out…

This is the first flight of stairs, with the original normal treads.

This is a closeup of the tread from the first flight of stairs.

Here is the second flight of stairs, with extra reinforcement added to the treads to make them extra thick at the front. Also notice the radically different colour of the strair treads. They are the same kind of timber tread, but some have been weathered a lot more.

Here is a closeup of the tread on that second flight of stairs. Notice that it has the extra attachment added to the front of the tread. I think that might be because the tread was plained down too much and made too thin, but that is only speculation.

So they are finally done, and should pass council inspection, but they aren’t real pretty. The third flight of stairs is similar to the first flight, so the second flight is the odd one out.

Tags: Stairs, Contractors

We just got back from nearly four-months overseas and on Monday got a phone call from our builder saying that he will be by this week to finally finish our stairs.

When he has completed them we will get council out to approve them and then finally move on with finding a new builder to enclose under our house.