Get with the times

This is another catch up post but chockablock full of building goodies. I left you all hanging on the detail while we were madly framing and stacking bales. Today, I'll go back over the framing period and **sometime soon** I'll get up details of our bale stacking.

So, to backtrack: we'd assembled and erected 2 walls in the lounge / study area. Sol got back a few days later and we started by skinning the E-W lounge wall with 7mm structural ply. This will form a large part of the diagonal bracing for the whole building. With about 5 bazillion clouts in it (all to engineer's specification...sheesh), it aint moving a millimetre.

count the clouts...

Next, we got onto constructing the wall betwixt bath and bed rooms. Standard procedure is to measure up the space, draw out the stud / noggin configuration and calculate the member sizes from there. Then we cut the lengths, removing the dodgy knots and uber-curvy bits and lay it all out on the floor. That way, you can see any obvious whoopsies before sinking a single nail. Stud frames this size soon take on a fair bit of weight and the bed/bath wall needed some sturdy ropes over the rafters to get it vertical. Ditto with the previous lounge/study wall. We purposely left out a few key studs, nogs and jack studs to allow room for the drill to screw and bolt this baby to the steel posts. I tells ya - drilling or screwing into 8mm thick steel with a battery drill is sloooooooooow work. Just ask Dana...:)

nearly ready to lift

and now in place

Anyway, Sol and I next moved on to building the wall between bedroom and pantry/linen cupboard. This time we had to leave a big hole in the wall to allow the whole shebang to fit around the eastern bed head column. Once she was flying, Sol took off for a few more days and Dana and I continued with the boxing on top of the rock walls. This carpentry was pretty straight forward but I/we did forget a few times to either put insulation in the boxing BEFORE attaching the top lid, or remember to put insulation in but forget to lay the pallet strapping under the boxing before locking the whole thing down. I hate doing things twice...

watch out for that rock

have we remembered everything?

I sure hope so

phew...all present

So too does Sol. His original coil nailer had been playing up on the early sheeting and he'd taken the plunge on a new one. Getting the bugger to nail to the right depth took a few hours of nailing, adjusting and nailing again. Meantime I just kept on boxing. After lunch that day, we moved on to the wall between pantry/linen and the outside world. Measured and cut, Sol got the thing attached and I finished off the *new and improved* window bucks in my study. A few stout applications of the universal adapter saw these babies wedged firmly between roof structure and wall boxing. Another item never going to move again!

pantry wall skinned

they staying for good now

The final part of the puzzle before our lovely carpenter retired to the mad pre XMAS rush of his other jobs and businesses was the walling around pantry/laundry/kitchen. We made these in 3 parts - laundry/entry, laundry/pantry (both N-S) and then the E-W wall to the kitchen. Of course, I had misplaced the dimensions of our fridge, so I got Dana to measure at home and text me the sizings. Fridge nook will now happily accommodate our food preserving cold box and a few brooms, etc to boot.

the belt adjusting shuffle...it's the new craze

We were also in a bit of a rush. We'd made the decision to pull the pin on city life a bit early. Running two dwellings, two larders, two gardens and two separate lives had been taking a large emotional and financial toll. Dana was packing boxes every night and running up with a full car every weekend. I was toiling on the tools all day and writing/blogging/bucket-washing/reading by night. So; movers organised for the big stuff, 3T truck booked for the garden stuff and helpers booked to clean up; we took the plunge and relocated to the shouse.

bucks galore

getting pretty solid looking

Sol fixing my f**kups

Although we spent a lot of time organising our new abode (well, new for Dana...I'd been camped there for quite a while), we still found a few hours here and there to keep on with the big build. Best of all, Sol had left his compressor and air tools behind for us (what a guy) and I wanted to make best use of them before he repo-ed his gear and we had to resort to hand nailing again (like it used to be done in the good old days!).

John's study takes form

like a forest...

...that gets filled in

The final bit of today's story is the-workshop-that-never-was. A few months earlier, I'd booked in the building inspector to check off on our framing. Delays from slab finishing, house moving, life in general (and my eternal underestimation of the time and complexity of bespoke building) had meant that we were becoming unlikely to get the framing ready before inspection. Blowing out the inspector was one easy phone call. Blowing out all of the good souls who'd agreed to put aside a December weekend to help us stack our straw bales was a little harder. However, common sense prevailed and we rescheduled our baling workshop for the indefinite future.

Dana's study shaping up

the devil is in the detail

sticks and more sticks

Further common sense is that I've written enough for now and will leave the rest of the framing detail for the next post. Until then, ciao...

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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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