More frames

Some of the wall frames are up for the bedroom area. Now is the time when I find out if I've got the windows and doors in the right places.

Frames

We finally have some wall frames.
It's been a while - hold ups and a whole bunch of other orders in at the same time at the manufacturing plant meant we didn't get them last week as expected.

It's starting to look like a house now!

               Tea at the site...

So this is the living area on the north of the house. We should have some of the bedrooms done tomorrow if the manufacturing plant has them ready..

Roofing panels are in the container and on the ship from Auckland and should get here Monday or Tuesday.

We have a floor

Very exciting day yesterday. At 1:00 we just had all the bearers fixed and ready to go. By 2:30 we had a whole floor!

And the sun came out just as the truck arrived with our cross laminated timber floor slabs from XLAM. The whole house consists 7 panels. The largest two over the living area are 13m long.

This will be the finished flooring.

All done, and I gave it a coat of polyurethane last night to protect it from moisture.

Bring on the wall frames!

Concrete slab & bearers

We are ready to get the timber floor slabs down tomorrow. Concrete slab is done and bearers are all in place.

This is Steve, our builder. He's awesome. Great job with the concrete floor bro.

And here's josh, Steve's younger brother.

We like to be site safe, so only those who can balance on the bearers can walk out on them.

... Oh, and good work Katrina!

Ground work

Just over a week ago we concreted the piles in and dug out for the concrete slab.

So we have a few piles of dirt...

And today we have the steel frame concreted in

Really want to get the concrete slab poured tomorrow. Hopefully the weather is good!

Starting!

Ok, so the first thing that most people do when building a house is the ground work.
I built the doors...

Jesse & Matthias are helping to hold up the door

 

I will glaze these Alaskan Yellow Cedar door frames and they will be external sliders. It took a long time, but I am really pleased with the finished product. There are five slider doors all up.

The Design

As soon as we bought the section my wife & I were going through so many different designs... We didn't want to go big. Good design doesn't have to be big. So many of the ideas that we like are actually based on being economical with space: built-in furniture, versatile rooms, and using volume rather than just floor area. Also, our budget is pretty small, so we had to figure out the best way fit our four kids in and make the most of the sun and views.

Check out this video I did last year as a presentation to everyone in my office. It's changed a little now, but you get the idea.

It's really a bit of an experiment as I am incorporating some non-standard materials.
The floor will be cross laminated timber. Essentially this is big slabs of timber glued together in layers like plywood. This gets rid of the need for joists and flooring as it sits right on the bearers and is the finished flooring. It also saves a whole bunch of labour on site.
The walls will be standard timber framed with redwood board & batten cladding.
And the roof is structurally insulated panels. These are mostly used for cool store rooms, and in industrial situations, but I want to cut the time on site right down. The panels are the roofing, structure, insulation, and ceiling all in one. This means the whole interior will have sloping ceilings. Also, I'm not really a fan of Gib board, and I don't want to have to gib stop and paint. So the whole interior will be lined with plywood, and there will be no skirtings, architraves or cornices anywhere.

The Section

This is the view from our section... It doesn't do it justice, but it's a pretty nice view out to the Western ranges.

And we get to enjoy the awesome sunsets

It's gonna be such an upgrade from our rental property!

A new begining

A year ago Me, my wife and our four kids moved back to Nelson. We had been searching for a house in a good location - close to schools, shops, a nice sunny spot, a great neighbourhood... We wanted something that was middle-of-the-road, but with potential, so we could renovate and make it our own. For whatever reason the right place just never seemed to come along, and the houses we did like were over-priced or got snapped up by others.

And then we got this crazy idea that we should just build a new house...

This is the beginning of a new and exciting adventure for our family. It started with a dream but we're making it happen.