Thanks for all the fish...

Here's a quick thanks to all who made the trek to our Bogie Wonderland over Easter to help stack bales. We were quite amazed at how hard everyone worked and how much we got done with the available bodies. We were / are also overjoyed at constantly seeing so many smiles. Dana's cheeks still hurt! A few people also report some sore and forgotten muscles! We are glad to save you some gym time.

I'll do a full update one day soon but, in the meantime, here's a teaser...

Thanks again.
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Good news...times 3.

Here's a quick note to share some love. Council building inspector just came to tick off the framing work. We've been given the all clear on our framing. Even better, he said that our work is "excellent". I'm chuffed.

I've decided that I will not apologise any more for tardiness on blog posting. I'm busy building (and loving it) and will update when I get a chance. No more, no less... Next update will see heaps of pics of timber framing, the joys of a tree change relocation, a bit of tool talk and whatever else I think up. It will be online soon..

My eye has healed up well ("it's only a flesh wound"). And for those who have asked: yes, I was wearing all the PPE gear (muffs, goggles, mask, steelcaps and kneepads). Just got a little unlucky...

Good cheer #3: these ramblings received an honourable mention in Renew magazine "blog of the year" competition. Woot...

Finally, we are inviting all and sundry to assist in stacking straw bales over Easter. If you are keen, leave a note in the comments and I'll contact you with details.

mmm...details...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An attempt to catch up on proceedings...

My last post was nearly two months ago. Some might call me a bludger but, oh boy have we been busy. Pre and post Xmas madness, packing up city house chaos, Dana finishing full time work craziness, moving everything 2 hours up the highway insanity...oh, and we found time to do heaps more on the house. I've also banged out another Owner Builder diary entry and a review of Tiny Homes - Simple Shelter for the same mag. The book is gorgeous, as is the rest of the author's back catalog. Lloyd Kahn - I salute you. Anyway, back to the grind. Literally...


It took Dana and me a day and a half to finally finish off grinding the slab edges. Oh how happy were we to put this behind us. While we were on site together, Dana mixed up some sub-soil, sand, lime and straw in varying quantities and plastered it on the side of some bales that I'd sourced. I'd had a visit from a guy who renders in lime and clay for a living and he was of the opinion that our sub soil was "totally crap" for rendering. I was ready to go with that until he presented us with an estimate of $20-25k to spray our bales. Well, turns out our soil works just great. The pure clay patches didn't stand up too well to the weather but the lime based ones are hard as rock even after torrential downpours.

we gunna build our walls with this stuff

lime renders to the left were still hard as rock ... clay ones to the right went mushy

I stayed on to seal the concrete while Dana went back to town for the last few weeks of her job. I started by hosing off any residual dust and then squeegee-ed off the remaining water. Next trick was to don the golf shoes (a tip from the pros) I got for $15 at the oppy and roll on a coat of water based epoxy. I'm with Winston Churchill when it comes to whackfuck but the spikes on the Niblicks kept me from sticking to the epoxy and lifting it before it dried.

golf sucks but golf shoes are stylin...

At first, I thought it looked pretty crapola but it was (only a) little better after it dried out. Two coats of water based urethane sealer followed and it started looking slicker. We are trying to avoid the glossy showroom look but it still looked a little shiny for my tastes. Next time I'll read the label that says "Gloss" a bit better. Ahhhh...bugger it. It's done and we can move on. Here's a balloon John...so you can...Let It Go!

first strip of epoxy

all epoxy-ed now

bit ordinary for my perfectionist eye

but in the right light it looks schmick

and I'll live with it

My man Sol, the carpentry wizard we used for getting the main frame up, came over the next day to get me under way with the internal framing. Pre-injury, I probably would have just done it all myself but, thanks to the Bank of Mum, it made sense to get another body and some pro help. Plus, he came with all the good tools - compressor, frame nailer, coil nailer, extra ladders, 2.4m straight edge, etc and 30 odd years of experience banging sticks together.

I'd done all of the take-offs several weeks previously and sourced some good cheap MGP10 pine in Shepparton.  I also got them to send us 40 sheets of CD-A Ecoply. Only $35 delivery charge too!! Not bad for 730 metres of timber on a 2.5 hour round trip. While we had the grinders in action, I had started constructing some of the boxing that will sit on the rock walls and support the straw bales. Sol cast his eye over it and said "Not bad but have you considered how it joins at the corners, how it supports the structural window bucks etc". Mmmm...good point fella. Guess I'll be re-jigging a fair bit of that.

Anyway, after a few hours of measuring, drawing and head scratching, we got started on the first of the internal walls. This was the N-S wall between our studies. It took 2 of us to get this thing upright. No way I could have done it alone. Nor would I have done it as well. Next day we knocked up the E-W wall bounding studies and lounge. Big-small-big became small again. Sol was only available 2-3 days per week, so I went on with wall boxing and various round trips to town.

first internal wall (pic quality ornery but it's the only one)

E-W lounge/study wall (note my redundant mistakes against N wall...ooops)

contemplating the next step...

...which was to get hm vertical

I'll keep the rest of this framing story for the next post because I'm having a little trouble typing and squinting at the 'puter with only one eye. One eye, you say? Yes, I got some grit in my eye drilling out holes in the block walls and the doc today had to use a needle to dig it out of the cornea. It was most disconcerting but I thank the pharma-gods for topical anaesthetic. Otherwise, I probably would have grabbed the needle for a little impromptu surgery on my new country doc...

arrrrrrrrrrgh...or something pirate-y

As you can tell from the intro, there is heaps more to tell. Stay tuned...


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Updates galore...

Yet again, it's been a while between posts. If it seems that I've been a little slack - not so. Much water has flowed under the metaphorical and literal bridges. We've spent plenty of time on site, Dana has been madly packing up the city house and I've been finishing another OB article. I've been meaning to write more but have been fairly drained come the end of the day and needing to fall in a heap. Besides, when I've had some energy left it has been consumed by the crack-on-paper that is George R.R Martin's Game of Thrones.

Here's a quick summary of what's been going on regarding life around the build.

...Scrub-a-dub-dub
Dana and I got the hire pressure washer again (do we own it yet??) and spent a day washing down the external rock faces. Jason had done his best to leave moss and lichen on the faces so we had to be a bit careful not to blast it off. As ever, it looked bloody marvellous.

more wire brushes

power squirter

yummy enough to eat

more yum

...Starter bars extended
We have 60-odd starter bars poking up through the blockwork. Engie spec called for a ring beam at the top course and then chem-setting bolts to tie down the bottom boxing that the straw will sit on. I figured that welding all thread to the starters would give a much stronger bond between slab and wall, so a couple of hours with Wally from McKernans saw 16mm threaded rod attached to all of the starter reo with 3-4 inches of double fillet weld.

South

North

North East

...Core filling blocks
Blocking required core filling with 20MPA concrete. I looked at getting in a mini-mix and trying to shoot the sloppy grey into the wall cavities. However, it worked out cheaper to get Jason and Jess back to mix at 28MPA, then transport and fill by hand (or bucket and barrow). I made up some formwork that allowed EZ-pour and the guys were very thankful.

...Back to the grind
Next step was to finish off grinding the slab and get it sealed before we did any internal framing. So we booked the mower again and dragged it up to site late Friday night `to get the floor surface done and behind us. KnJnCrew came to help and we all had a good fight with the noisy wobbly gouge maker. Dana got blistered and bruised and Jon did his wrist in the process.

what a grind

looks like hard yakka

Not only that, the beast left horrid gouges everywhere and the slurry got all over the once beautiful stone work.

grrrrrrr

even more grrrrr

"Oh Mr Hart - what a mess"

Harried call to the hire company on the Sunday got the response that machine was sick and needed to make the return 4 hour trip for a Monday replacement. Bugger... So, back out to Clayton and swap over for a better machine then 4 hours back to site to keep at it. Jon and Dana came back on the Tuesday to avoid a stoopid horse race and finish off the slab. Not so. Towards sunset time we realised that it would take another 3-4 days at this rate to (maybe) get the finish that we were after. At $500 per day for the mower, this was getting silly. Time to call in the pros. In the meantime, I got out the 9 inch grinder and flattened the tops of the walls where that bale supports will live. Very messy...very fun!

this was fun

flat-top

...Professional grinding help
Todd from Smoothstone gave us a good rate and Matt came out for the day with a real grinding setup: truck mounted 3-phase gennie, 3-head grinder, the biggest commercial vac I'd ever seen and a crane to lift it all on and off. 8 hours later and we had a winner. Phew...

shoes for every occasion

this thing sucks big time

a real proper grinder

the whole kit

Now all we needed to do was grind down the edges that the big machine couldn't get to. Surprisingly (or not), 4 inch 100 grit flexible grinding wheels are not that easy to come by. Hours of google-age and many calls later, I found some in Wangaratta. I knew where to get them in Melbourne but it seemed a long trip for one item. If time was no object, this would be annoying but ok. However, I'd set a deadline to get things done so that we could get all hands on deck to get framed and baled up before Christmas. Farting about finishing the slab was seriously eating into the project timeline. Besides, we were both very much over concrete and just wanted it finished. I took the grinder with me to Wang to check that all would be good with it. Supplier man says yes to all. Got back to Bogie, fitted the disc and started grinding away at the slab edges. About one hour in, the adhesive backing on the disc let go and the disc took off to who-knows-where. What a saga: I could only laugh. I wasn't laughing much when it took 2 hours of searching to find the mangled disc. More phone calls worked out that variable speed grinder should have been used as 14000 RPM was about 10000 RPM too fast for that particular disc. Oh joy. Cup disc duly sourced in Melbourne and delivered to Dana's work. Best thing is that this supplier is now a customer for Dana's workplace. Win-win.

There has been much more go on since then but I'll leave that to a subsequent posting.

Ciao for now...

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