29th March Progress Report

Another massive week has seen some serious progress made. A bit of a scheduling problem saw the vinyl plank flooring installed this week.  Unfortunately we haven't finished plastering as we had hoped so we have to be careful and cover the floors with tarpaulins

The door frames have all been installed.  3 piece metal frames.  I got some tips from Chris the carpenter and the install went smoothly and easily

Plastering is progressing well.  The process of plastering in a steel or timber frame house involves taping the joints in the walls and ceilings.  The tape is applied to the joint with a small smear of plaster behind it.  The tape is then smoothed over with a trowel to push out any air bubbles. Once the tape and plaster drys a second coat is applied designed to fill the joint.  Then a final coat is applied to make it all smooth and pretty (a little bit of sanding is also thrown into the mix). 

The beauty of this build is we got a really good deal on some Tapetech Flat Boxes.  These are the go for getting plaster into the joints in a smooth and ready to go.  This is what the professionals use and even amateurs like us can get a really good finish using these things.   Flushing joints by hand really sucks.  These flat boxes make it an almost pleasant experience (especially the final coat box which takes premixed plaster straight out of a drum).  You basically fill the box with plaster the run it along the joint applying pressure and like magic you have a really nice plaster job

In between second and final coat you also need to tape and plaster the internal and external corners. The tape has a crease in the middle that naturally folds to form the corner.  There is a bit of a knack to it but they are generally fairly easy.  External corner have a steel trim that you set into the plaster.  A little time consuming but generally fairly easy

Once the plastering is all done the cornice can then be installed.  Cornice has to be one of my least favourite jobs.  If anyone can explain to me the secret of cutting nice matching mitre joints with cornice and then installing them I would love to hear about it.

In between all this I have dug the trenches for the gas and water lines and laid the water pipe from the tank to the house.  I have also installed some more storm water pipes.  

Anyway the tiler starts on Monday.  We will be continuing with plastering and hope to be mostly complete by this time next week.

 Flooring Installed

  Flooring Installed

 Door Frames Installed

 Taping in the open area

 Flushing Box in Action

 Cornice close up

 Buttering Cornice - Smallest Room in the house

 Bathroom Cornice

Storm water leaf catcher in action(keeps mosquitoes and vermin out of the pipes as well as diverting leaves away from the system)

Plastering

What did the Wall say to the Ceiling?

Lets get plastered ha ha ha ha ha

So the new taping machine works a treat.  Super quick and smooth with a good finish, $95 well spent. Around 70% of the house taped over the weekend.

It probably wasn't our most productive weekend. A lot of time spent cleaning up after the plasterboard install and a bit of difficulty getting out of bed. I guess a bit of an anticlimax after the massive push to finish the plasterboard install just to be confronted with another massive job.

Plasterboard install complete

So after a marathon effort all the plasterboard sheets are now connected to walls or ceilings.  The culmination to this saw the herculean task of sheeting the raked ceiling area over the last two days.  Installing the raked ceiling was not without dramas.  Having the sheet lifter breakdown at 7pm when you are on a roll and have yourself set to finish the first half that night is pretty soul destroying. Getting the sheets into place and attaching them would be impossible without the sheet lifter as we quickly discovered.  Thankfully we were able to get a replacement lifter the next morning and with some improvements in our system we powered through and finished the job.

Now comes the job of flushing (filling in all the joints with tape and plaster to produce a smooth finish), installing door frames and cornices.  Flushing a house this size would normally take us weeks but we lashed out and purchased some top end flat box finishing tools and an auto taper.  This should speed things up significantly as well as leading to a better finish than we could achieve with a trowel

Job done

First sheet up in the raked ceiling

Three up how many to go?

Half way

Officially at Lock Up

Although we have been working inside for some time now we weren't technically at lock up as we didn't have front doors and a laundry door.  This has caused some concern, most notably when we came across a half meter long dugite in the house the other day (venomous snake for those outside Australia).  Time to source some doors and call Chris the carpenter from Lyall Building.  First thing Monday morning Chris arrived on site and in next to no time we had the doors installed. The man is a genius.

The front doors

The laundry door

With the remnants of tropical cyclone Olwyn heading for Perth and a forecast of upto 50mm of rain the pressure was on to connect up the gutters to the tank. As the north side of the house is going to be going into a seperate 200k litre tank which we are unlikely to purchase for a year or two we decided to buy a little poly tank and plumb one side of the house to that. We will then transfer water from that to the bigger tank. Unfortunately the rain hit before we got most of the pipes connected but we managed to get some runoff into the tanks.

The secret to a comfortable climate in the house is good insulation

Plasterboard day 9/9

Another massive effort means that at least 80% of the walls have plasterboard on them.  The only walls without plasterboard are still waiting for plumbing.  Work continues on installing ceilings.  We have 15 days to have the plasterboard installed and all the flushing completed (covering all the joints with plaster) and all the cornices in and ceilings painted.

The electircal run from the meterbox to the house and across to the shed is complete and we now have live power to some power points in the house and shed.

Master Bedroom

Walk through Robe to the right into the parents retreat

Passage way

Wall in the open area.

Power points

Plasterboard install, Day 3 of 9

The big plasterboard push is on.  We are at day 3 of a 9 day contiguous run to install as much plasterboard as 2 people can possibly do.  A picture tells a thousand words so here is some pictures. We are still dealing with the  way the sheets were stacked on delivery.  Invariably the sheets we need are always on the bottom so we are throwing up panels all over the house in a rather random fashion. Ultimately there is a plan (get it all off the floor and onto walls and ceilings) but at the moment it might not look like it.

 T's Room

 Ceiling

Nan's Bedroom ceiling was the first ceiling sheets to go in.  Time to reacquaint ourselves with the panel lifter

 J Bedroom completed

J's bedroom was probably the most awkward due to the lack of easy access.  Sheets couldn't come in through the door due to the passage so had to come in via the wall frame or window.

 Window pre cut out

 Cutting out the window

trimming the door