After a long delay, the frame went up really quickly. It was built on site by a large team of chippies (carpenters), and only seemed to take a couple of days. Amazingly quick.
But as per usual with new folk on site, they did take the time to take a look inside the fire bunker.
The timber used for the framing is chemically treated to be termite and borer resistant – synthetic pyrethroids and boron, hence the blue colour. It’s water based and said to be non-toxic. The same type of stuff that’s used in dog and cat flea collars, and headlice shampoo!
One big surprise for us though when the framing was complete – we had specified minimum 2.7m ceilings so we assumed the raked ceiling in the living room would start at 2.7m and go higher. Nope – it starts at about 3.4m and goes higher!!
We’re really happy with that – it looks great (although might make the kitchen seem a little more claustrophobic with its low ceiling fully open to the space). The higher ceiling doesn’t show up on any of the concept drawings that we had – only showed in the engineering drawings, done after contract signing, although ceilings lower than 2.7m did show up. Mmm, we probably should have known, and asked some more questions.
Building inspector came, asked for a couple of tweaks, and approved the frame. All good to continue. (Still glad we chose the inspector).
A couple of week delay, due to issues sourcing the roofing – colorbond corrugated nightsky, and it too went on quickly.
Starting to look like a house. But I still don’t believe in it. It’s been such a long time.
PS. long time since I posted – bad case of covid, followed by heavy involvement in federal election campaign to get an independant elected. So a few quickly to catch up.
Off Grid Living - Building the Dream 