The first three weeks of building are under our belts now.

The first couple of weeks consisted pretty much of demolition. I must say that I did not realise how much of the existing house had to come down. You would say that for all intent and purposes we are building a new house. Although there are some advantages in the Basix regulations where renovations are treated differently from new buidings.

I have posted a number of photographs in the gallery for week 1 click here.

Week 2 involved getting all of the footings in and starting the block work. All of the building blocks and concrete for the foundations came from Boral one of our partners. I bought all of the blocks ex the works in Sydney. The firt load of blocks came to 35 tonne and was transported down to the site by Bobbins Transport at Pambula using one of thier B-Double semi trailers.

Check out the week 2 photos here.

Week three has been a bit slow. We have hit a hitch with the windows. Until we can get the exact sizing of the windows we can go much further with the blockwork. There are a number of companies quoting on the provision of window, Boral, Vantage and the local Merimbula Stegbar agent. The windows will be one of the major costs of the project so it is important to get this right. In the meantime John Bennett (Our trusty builder) has managed to find some great sandy fill for the site. The excavator man is doing a job about 5 kilometers away where there is a large amount of excavation required. So we kill two birds with one stone. We save $15 a cubic metre in fill costs and the other party saves $30 a cubic metre in dumping charges. What a deal!

Check out the week 3 photos here.