All set in concrete!

As soon as Bruce was erect and holding up his end (the ridge beam) it was time to put up the poles and fix the fascia which all happened very quickly.

Next came the rafters and end gables. Some mornings were a little chilly with frost across the paddock, rain occasionally and a rainbow ending at our pot of gold!

I love timber, the smell the feel and the colours of a good rich wood. This is a branch piece from Bruce that I've planed, sanded and oiled ... just gorgeous. 

We're hoping to slab a limb and use it for the collar ties in the main room. 

I also love looking for the faces that live in the timber grain.

 

The entrance timbers are book ended after discarding a couple of other pieces. It's still to be stained the cedar colour.

A sign saying "Muddled Up Manor' will be carved and used as a collar tie and hung across the entrance.

This morning we arrived at the house after an horrendous night of gusting winds and rain to find it a little on the piss! Which would have been just fine if it hadn't been the day the concrete was coming to secure the poles in place for ever. After a very hectic and stressful 45 minutes which included a rope tied to the car and driven very slowly, the poles were back in place. 

The truck arrived and the pour went without a hitch with a huge thank you to our new T A Clinton running with the barrow.

Mel also worked as a T A helping with the new valley timbers at the entrance, not realising that she needed to read minds, anticipate and run just a bit faster up the ladder, the timber she was expected to be holding onto ended up bumping into Darren... nothing broken lol.

Bruce's Erection!

I had planned and expected to update this blog each month with a 'Monthly Round Up', it's obvious now that the build is moving along so fast that weekly updates are more likely, so .....

Bruce was chopped off at his ankles last week, it fell exactly as planned, the post area was selected and trimmed, strapped to the back of the car and dragged to the site.

The top 'Y' junction was notched with the chainsaw.

The facia was bolted loosely to the pine pole and Bruce, set under a tripod and lifted with a block and tackle then propped.

A higher tripod was put in place and lifted Bruce a bit higher.

The straps, fulcrum and car winch took over, the car needed to be chocked as the weight was greater than the car!

Slowly but surely Bruce was erected into his place of honour in the centre of the main room.

PS. I rang Clinton to confirm we could take a tree from the farm for the centre pole, he wanted to know which tree we had in mind... I sent him a picture and told him it had the least top story of all the trees around and was at the back, more out of sight and least likely to be missed on the horizon.

He looked at the picture and declared "Oh Nooo!! That's Bruce, you can't take Bruce he's my friend!! It would have been lovely if a more tree like name had been his first thought ... but there you are ... it's Bruce!!!

Thanks for your sacrifice Bruce and welcome to our home.

Not even the middle of June

The planning how to cut the notches in the pole tops took a little while, we tried the drop saw, it was very slow. We bought a reciprocating saw with a 300mm blade, Darren made a jig that looked like it came from a medieval torture dungeon, it worked a treat. The two internal cuts were started with a circular saw and finished with a multi tool, very neat!

We hired a mini excavator with a power head and 600mm auger attachment for the weekend, it worked a treat to strap the waste and storm water pipes to for the trip home ..  wasn't overhanging the car or trailer if you don't look between the vehicles!

As soon as we get to the farm it's unload and start playing. The moon was full (we'd watched it and the incredible sunset all the way home) which gave plenty of light, headed home to sleep after 4 holes dug.

So the weekend has been a wonderful success, all holes dug, waste plumbing and storm dug, laid and covered, the drain for Agi pipe is dug (waiting on pipe), the drive ways are excavated and gravel coated.

The weather has been stunning, even a bobtail managed a cruise through the site.

The timber was delivered today, the truck driver had coffee with us and during the chat about the house build he asked 'When do they start?' in regard to the builders!! Hahahaha Tag we're it!!!!

Building the model

Darren had been working on the paper plans for a couple of weeks as we travelled Queensland. It had begun to get ‘sticky’ so we started heading south to New South Wales. On the way he decided we needed to build a model to make sure the gables and entrance worked.

We picked up a couple of packs of popsticks and superglue, got some cardboard from the little shop at Teresa Creek Dam near Clermont and headed south. The location tags on our pictures tell a story of stopping on the side of highways to work on the project – Bruce Highway, Gregory Highway, Arcadia Valley until we parked up in Culgoa National Park on the NSW side for a week. The most draught devastated park you can imagine in the middle of nowhere. A Bungarra would wander through each day looking for the slim pickings that perhaps we had left. There were few birds as there was no water anywhere, goodness knows what the flies were breeding in.

We set up the caravan with the mesh room and started in earnest. Darren concentrated on exacting the roof structure including bird mouths on the rafter ends. I helped by sticking together popstick rafters as straight as possible (straight popsticks are not as easy to find as you may think), I also made the strawbale thick walls from cardboard and the furniture, kitchen and front door (which is still a work in progress in my head).

The model did show up an area of roof that would have been unsupported which was easily fixed on the plans and model.  Also a need for another window in the bathroom.

Once the model was finished and adoringly ogled for a day it was cling wrapped and stored under the bed for the (maybe 8,000km) journey home which it made without a break!

It has been an invaluable asset to the final planning stage, taking pride of place beside Darren as he drafted in Librecad.