The roof...the roof....the roof is on!!!

Guess what - the roof is on!! 100 square metres of Headland (also known as red) colourbond now tops the extension and replaces the old corrugated iron over the kitchen and dining room.

The roof came a day early and a bit unexpectedly. As we live on a road with a no parking zone from 6.30am till 9.30am, scheduling the arrival of 18m spans of iron was a tough call. It was set for 5.30am on Thursday morning and everyone was set for an early start. Surprisingly the roof turned up on Wednesday. The poor truck driver had to park around the corner till the builders and roofer arrived on site at about 7am. And then had to wait till the no parking zone ended. It's a testament to the quality of tradesmen that Brad uses as well as his own team that the roof still went on in a day.

The blue board went on down the side of the house, side windows went in and plumbing and electrical cabling as well. A big week! Rather than inching towards completion we are striding with seven league boots!

Next week another exciting chapter.....excavation of storm water pits and building of a deck and pergola....oh yeah the fun's all here...

The roof - looks like Hunter 'magicked' it there!

Side view in the dark with blueboard...

Beams End

All the roof beams went in this week. And all the internal framework has been finished. It's a real structure now! It still feels ginormous even though is partially enclosed.

I went to Ikea today to buy our bench tops. I had priced wood bench tops and they were in the vicinity of $4800. Way out of budget. Luckily I found some at Ikea that will suit us and they were only $1700. The drawback is of course that you have to go to Ikea to get them. I thought I had it sorted, go on a weekday, only take one child, know what I need, make it quick.....

Well....the one child decided he wanted to go the creche at Ikea (looks like heaps of fun to be honest) - "Great!" I think naively. But after filling in the form, taking off the shoes, getting a sticker, a locker and a beeper he decides he doesn't want to go. After 10 minutes of coaxing I think "He doesn't want to go - that's OK" so we hand back the beeper, remove the sticker, replace the shoes and empty the locker. 2 minutes later "I want to go!" Too late...the wait is now 30 minutes.

So now I am dragging/carrying a screaming 3 year old around Ikea. IT IS HELL. People are staring, I do my best to ignore them and the screaming thing attached to my hip. One lady kindly tells me I'm doing a good job. If only that were true.

I try distraction which only works to a certain extent. I try tickling, food and bribery with limited success. Finally we arrive at the kitchen section. Luckily they have a play section there for kids and off he trundles to show the other little kid how to play memory on the touch screen.

"Great!" I think naively "He's settled, I'll just talk to this guy, order my stuff and go"

I get a ticket. The couple two ahead of me are in the initial stages of planning their kitchen. It takes an eternity and they need the one attendant's help every step of the way. I ask the attendant politely if there will be someone else coming to assist in this section soon. "No - not for a while" he answers. "Bugger" I think.

I look around at sinks, and decide to buy one. I select the 34 cabinet handles we need. 30 minutes passes. Luckily the child is still engaged in the play stuff.

Finally I get served I've been waiting about 40 minutes. My order takes about 4 minutes - tops.

We make our way slowly through Ikea to get out - why do they make you trek the entire length of the store to get where you want to go? Forgive me, but I don't really want Ikea to be a journey - I just want to get what I want and go. Nope - we have to check out the unaviodable children's section, select a toy (part of the earlier bribe), another 20 minutes passes before we get to the check out which is 4 deep.

We make it to the register. Spend a measly $2000 and walk through to organise delivery. Child notices the creche.....repeat the first 20 minutes of the trip.....

Here's the lesson....

I should have just bought the $4800 benchtops.

Looking back through the frame

Frames and Bricks

We are now at week 5 - although really it's only week 4 of building- the first week was just the asbestos removal.

I have started to look forward to getting home in the afternoon/evening just to see how much the boys have achieved in throughout the day. It's like being in our own episode of a home makeover show!

This week the brick boundary wall went up, and the bricks under the back end of the house. The original piers were pretty dodgy so for the last few weeks the back end has been supported by acro props. It feels so much better to have proper support there now.

Today we were down a man on site. Stuart's wife was rushed to the eye hospital last night with a detached retina - luckily they were able to operate and it is all looking good now. How amazing is that? She comes home today and the recovery is to wear dark glasses and sleep propped up at night. Apparently she will be back to normal early next week. 20 years ago she would have lost her sight. Modern medicine is just incredible!

The timber frame work is now close to completion. Next week Brad will be away but Stuart and Matt will still be onsite most of the week getting the roof framing done. Brad and I went through all the kitchen cabinetry today. We are doing a flatpack kitchen just because it is so much cheaper than custom built. Our budget has blown out significantly from the original estimates so I'm trying to find ways to reduce our costs while still getting a good end result.

This week we also bought our bath - there is about a month lead time for delivery, on top of which it was 20% off for this week only so we've saved about $300. I also bought 2 heated towel rails at Gray's Online this week for less than half the price of other similar ones I've looked at. Grays also have frameless shower screens at ridiculously cheap prices. I'm not sure about them yet though...I'll have to talk to the plumber and tiler about them before I'd buy them. Ahhh the dilemmas....

Brick Boundary Wall

Framework

Slab - the concrete kind

Our slab is in and it looks great! It's been a massive 2 weeks onsite to get to here. I think it's happened really fast all thanks to Brad, Stuart and Matt who have put in some incredibly long hours and hard work.

We had a day's down time after the reinforcing was in before the concreter could come - the cats WERE NOT IMPRESSED that they couldnt get in or out!

The boys had a great time riding their scooters around on the slab on Thursday. They haven't been allowed out the back for a week - they were about as impressed as the cats about that. But it was nice for them to have a little taste of freedom from the house.

It's weird looking out at the huge expanse of concrete and trying to imagine a kitchen and living space in it. But I'm getting over the weirdness...

The Slab from the back door looking out...