Documenting my house builds
The engineer has been to site to check it all out. We now wait for a DCP test as the soil wasn’t looking great for us to build the foundations on – this means two things: more time and more money.
But I have been assured that this is one of the few variables in the construction process that we cannot plan for entirely.
The day has arrived and the men are at work. Finally the digging begins. Maybe we’ll find hidden treasure underground – I am hoping we find nothing but solid ground.
It feels like this moment has taken about 2 years too long but the wait is/was worth it. Structure done in 6-8 months if all goes well. Then the finishing.
Step 1 is almost complete. The site is now pretty much ready for the building work to begin.
We couldn’t save the Strelitzia tree as it was much too big to move (bigger than originally thought) and there doesn’t seem to be a huge demand for the poor things.
I employed the services of Bruce Beyer and his Co-Creators at Beyer Honig landscapes. Great people doing good things. He also started the Peace Garden in Woodstock. 
I thought I should put up some photos of the site before we start hacking at it. New “official” start date is now March 17th 2010.
If all things go according to plan I should soon be posting pics of my foundations.
In preparation for the site clearing and house building, I am getting someone in to have a look at this enormous Strelitzia tree (Strelitzia nicolai). It is in the middle of where my lounge will be.
I might save a portion of it and re-plant it in my yard, but it is off to a new home – the plants find it easy to settle into a new home if handled properly. I have good tree people on the case.
Next up on things to go are some roof tiles that were left behind from the previous house that once occupied both my plot and the one it was subdivided from next door.
They too need to find a new home. Any takers?
It’s been an action packed 12 months of work, travel, stress and no building. With the start of another decade comes the hope of a new home.
The answer to the often asked and more often unanswered question “When are you going to start building!?” is now: February.
Many meetings later and hope has re-entered the building. Elvis is not dead.
First step – site clearing and tree relocation. The thought of moving anything around on the site, or actually digging a hole in the ground excites me more than a one-way ticket to New York, which had become plan B for a few miserable days in winter.
Exact start date is not set as I wait for the world to continue it’s orbit as the drones and drivers return to their seats, commencing the task of driving the beast that is 2010.
Let the games begin.
Plans have been approved by council. After 10 months of waiting, grinning and changing roof plans, I have finally received council approval.
The flat roof idea is no longer in play as it doesn’t fit within the UCU guidlines for this area. The compromise was an assymetrically pitched roof.
The next debate has been wether to construct the first floor in masonry or to build in timber. This has been both an aesthetic and a financial debate. Does the design still hold it’s integrity if you build in masonry and then clad that structure in wood – or is constructing the whole first floor in timber in keeping with the general aesthetic of stick building. The answer was both financial and tactile. It is as expensive/cheap to build with either method and the idea of having solid walls was more appealing.
That said, if the budget was bigger the timber construction method would win hands down as we could then explore full internal cladding and expose all the timber elements.
So now I await the final engineers drawings and final cost from my builder.
Hopefully construction can begin early 2009.
I will be posting photographs, news and general developments.
This process started about 2 years ago when I decided to sell my house.
I then bought a plot with the wild-eyed idea of building a home that I could call my own.
I employed an architect, Wolf, and thought this should be the easy part – planning and getting council permission.
The planning went fairly well, but then we entered council hell. That’s another blog entirely.