Frames Nearly Complete

Framing appears to be getting close to the end. Looks like some minor roof framing left to go and a few windows and doors to fit. A pallet of mortar has appeared at the block. Hopefully that means bricklayers aren't far away.

Frames - Continued

The framers are back from the Christmas break and have made steady progress. The outline of the house is really starting to take shape. There have been a few rainy days, hence the mud, but it doesn't appear to have slowed them down. Windows are in. If they keep up the progress and the weather holds, they might be done by the end of the week or early next.

One day of framing and it's starting to look good already. Some real progress and we can start to see the house beginning to take shape. The roof trusses won't arrive this side of Christmas, so looks like we'll be at mid-January with the Christmas shutdown before the framing is fully completed. Looking good.

Frames Delivered

We have frames! The site supervisor says they are planning to get them up this side of Christmas. We'll be on track if that's the case. Outside of the frame delivery, the external drainage was completed last week.

Slab Done

On schedule, the slab went down today. Looks good. Starting to get a good sense of the spaces.

Polly Waffles

Plenty of activity these past few weeks. The form work is complete, the polly waffles and steel are in place. All things going well, the slab is due to be poured tomorrow. The question then is whether the frame will be up before Christmas. According to the site supervisor that's the current plan. It would be impressive to see the frame up prior to the Christmas break. Here's hoping! Some good drone pics courtesy of my son.

Internal Drainage

We have internal drainage started. Looks about half way done. Good to help us get a sense of where the rooms will be.

Form Work Started

The Formwork has started. Internal drainage to be installed on Thursday at present. Starting to get a good view of the dimensions.

Colours

Clarendon has a neat facade builder on their website that lets you visualise roughly what the home will look like. It doesn't have all colours, and the Bowral doesn't have the loft option, but it gives a pretty good impression of what it will look like. These aren't our bricks, but are close enough to visualise the finished home.

Our brick selection is San Selmo Smoked - Cloudy Silver.

Most Bowrals with the Hamptons Facade are rendered. I recall the total cost to render was ~40K. The brick upgrade was pretty pricey in any event (I recall ~22-25K), but still cheaper than render. We're hoping it'll have a good Hamptons feel. We managed to find a house not far from us with the same bricks. It has the same Iron Stone roof that we have selected, so should look similar.

Excavation and Piers

Here's where we're up to to date. Excavation was done a little over a week ago. Piers have been installed. I was expecting traditional bored holes filled with concrete, however, they appear to use blade piers. These are steel tubes with a corkscrew style blade on the end that are twisted into the ground until they reach the solid ground. Our soil is very clay heavy. I'm not sure how I feel about the blade piers. From what I have read on the net, they are stronger than concrete, are faster to install, and avoid the need to remove spoil, get a council inspection etc. I'm not sure how they go with corrosion. From some reports they're good for 40 years, longer if they are galvanised. They don't appear to be galvanised. Anyway, they'll outlast me, so....

Demolition

A few snaps of the demolition.

Goodbye house. No turning back now!

And We're Off!

Exciting times. After a little over a year in the planning, we've made it to the start line on our build of a Clarendon Bowral 42 with loft! We've made a few alterations, both to make it fit our block, and to increase the size of the living room. We began our journey of looking for a replacement home in August 2021. We hadn't intended to do a knock down, but as the estimates for renovating the existing home came in, it stated to point us in that direction. We'll pay more in total than the renovation, but we'll get the home we want, without the restrictions of the existing floorplan. We first got to the display home in August 21 and signed contracts somewhere around October 21. The journey through council was slower than we had hoped. We had weeks of delays due to the need for an arborists' report. We should have got the chainsaw out before putting the plans in. Final council approval didn't come through until ~April 2022, and then the demolition was to come. Demolition took a little over a week from start to finish by Site Demolition. The firm got the job done fast at a time we needed them to do it. They were 4-5K more expensive than other quotes, but they were the only ones who could get it done on time. We made some compromises during the planning stages. Our block is half a metre too narrow for the house, if we want to maintain a 2/5M driveway to the side of the house to give us access to our yard, so we made the difficult decision of cutting our a metre in width. The only place we could reasonably do this was in the master bedroom, so half a metre has been cut out on the Walk in robe side and another half metre has been cut out in the parents retreat/study side. We also needed to recess the air conditioning in the bedroom, and the laundry. It means that the master ends up being smaller than we'd hoped, but the compromise was necessary to fit the home. The laundry is also smaller due to the recessed air conditioner, but it'll still work out being spacious enough.

As a trade off, we added some extra space to the rear. This gives us a 2 metre patio running the full width of the house underneath the main roof, and extends the living room out by a couple of metres. The patio is tiled and there are 4 Hamptons style columns holding up the roof, which are similar to those at the font of the home.

In addition, we also get an extra 2 metres of depth to the rear loft dormer, as the roof line comes further out to cover the rear patio.

Overall, we're pretty happy with the floor plan. It would have been nice not to compromise, but the rear access is important, particularly given our large shed at the back of our block. One area that I wish I had persisted with was the loft. As you can see from the area in the red square, the subfloor of the loft continues beyond the loft area. I had asked to have the area converted to a storage room, but was advised that it couldn't be done. Since then, the display homes at Lochinvar and Braemar have both opened, and both include this loft storage room. We'll likely end up boarding this out some time after handover. The space is as large as the dining room, so it's a real shame to waste it.