Upper floor frame

The speed building continues! Upper floor frame is up, revealing the room layout on that level. My owners are considering re-purposing the carport to a music room, where they will put a grand piano and some other musical instruments they have. The wife is an accomplished piano player and composer. A few years back she won the best keyboard player in a band festival in Sydney. The husband plays guitar but not anywhere close to her calibre :)

If they go ahead with the plan then the carport will be moved up the site on a specially built platform for 2 cars.



This is when builder needs the next progress payment to complete the enclosure stage, so my owners have sent the payment instruction to the mortgage agent to forward to the bank. The home loan is with ANZ Bank, and the mortgage agent is Mortgage Choice at Indooroopilly.

I highly recommend this mortgage agent. Mylene took care of the land purchase loan, and Warren patiently work with my owners through the building approval drama, adjusting the loan amount as the design and construction estimates changed each time the city council rejects a plan. They were very patient and accommodating throughout the 1.5 year process.

There was a funny moment when they've had to submit the latest loan change request, that the date was EXACTLY 1 year after the first loan application was submitted. I was born thanks to these people's persistence!

Upper floor completed

Upper floor frame has been completed, including the front section for kitchen, study, and main entrance porch. There is nothing underneath this front section because of the sloping land. However, they did enough cut and fill to fit a small living room underneath the front porch. This will have to be built later as it's not included in the builder's contract.



They use a different steel structure for the upper floor front section as it has no indoor space underneath. i.e, no need for frames to hang ceiling on or to run pipes and cables between the upper floor and the ceiling below it.



It's quite amazing that most of the sub-floors and the frame installation thus far were done by these two guys. There was a third guy when they worked on the lower sub-floor, but for the past three days the works were apparently done by these two.

Upper flooring

People say that once a construction's sub-structure gets completed then the upper frames will go up relatively quickly. I didn't expect it to be this quick though! Upper flooring is now installed on top of the lower level walls. The upper flooring beams remind me of railway bridges. They must be quite strong to be built that way, and installed in such close rows next to each other. But hey, the stronger they build me the happier I am!



The protruding structure in the middle is the stairwell. It will become one of my defining visual feature, when seen from the conservation park. There will be some pretty big windows there for people to enjoy the green scenery while walking up and down the stairs.

Frame up!

Ooo, my lower floor frame has gone up! Apparently this was completed by two guys only today as we know the frames got delivered yesterday. Look at those blue steel frames. It's probably made of Truecore steel from BlueScope Steel company. Here's their sales pitch that I like:

Treading lightly on the earth

Steel framing made from TRUECORE® steel delivers a range of environmental benefits, both immediate and long term.

The relative light weight of steel framing, combined with its design versatility and flexibility, means a steel-framed house can be built with minimal site impact.

Quite literally, it ‘touches the earth lightly’.

This is especially apparent on sloping and difficult sites where it can be used in conjunction with suspended flooring systems, reducing the need to cut into the site and thus leaving a much smaller imprint.

And because steel frames are fabricated off-site to exact specifications, there is minimal cutting and wastage onsite - making for a cleaner building environment.

A recyclable material

Steel is one of the most recycled materials on the planet.

Not only is TRUECORE® steel 100 per cent recyclable, it is made with a component of recycled steel.

Base stage

The tree cutting permit was issued in March 2009. The construction was finally ready to begin. One last hurdle: the original builder pulled out of the project due to slow economic condition, and has had to pass on the construction to another builder.

Luckily, the replacement builder did not waste time starting the construction, so ground breaking happens late May, starting with the land clearing you've seen in the previous posts. Here's their details if you want to employ their services!



Where are we now? We're close to finishing base stage and I'm hoping this week my frame would go up. Yay!!!



The base stage consists of laying out the foundation and building the retaining wall around the car port. I'm to be a pole house (as opposed to a brick house built on a concrete slab), so the foundations are basically columns of concrete poured into the ground. Pretty easy to make really, they used a drilling tractor to make the holes in the ground about a meter in diameter, put in the reinforcing steel and poured the concrete mix over it. They've had to use concrete pump as the concrete mixing truck couldn't come close enough to the site.



Parallel to this the Electrician started to install the temporary electrical meter cabinet so they can get some electricity supply needed for the next stages of the construction. In the mean time they've had to borrow the electricity from our front neighbor's house (thanks Rob!).



Base frames consisting of steel columns and beams for the flooring were shipped from the frame fabrication factory, clearly marked and labeled to guide the construction crew assemble them on site.

Final design

Today is Queen's birthday holiday in Australia, so there's been no construction work happening. Never mind, I can entertain you with my building approval story.

My third and final design was completed around October 2008, that's one year after my owners bought the land. Squeezed left, right and front by the building regulation, it's amazing that they can still fit a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom and 1 car port design. One advantage of this really compact design is I have plenty of outdoor space around me. My overall dimension is around 12 x 12 meter while the land is approximately 20 x 25 meter.

Ground floor has the combined kitchen/living room, a master bedroom, a guest room and a bathroom. The guest room does double duty as a study. The car port sits on a cut and fill land with retaining walls around it.



Lower floor has the children's bedrooms, a shared bathroom and a small laundry. There will be a door, not shown on the plan, that connects to the outdoor area.



There is a small porch at the entrance, to serve as a welcoming space for visitors. There will be some usable space underneath the porch and kitchen, shielded from the sun and rain, that could be used for clothes hang drying and maybe outdoor barbeque area?



On the left and rear elevations, you can see the decks on both ground and lower floor. These decks are located on the north/east area facing the conservation park. A perfect location to catch the morning sun while enjoying the forest view.



Did this design got approved by the City Council you asked? YES it did! They finally got it approved just before Christmas 2008. There's one more problem though. When my owners told the builder to start construction, there was one tree that had to go as it sits right in the middle of the land. When the tree-lopper came, they told the builder that the land is within a plant protection zone, so they need to get a City Council approval for cutting down the tree. And no, the people who approve the building had nothing to do with the people who approve the tree cutting. Sigh.

More time spent waiting for approvals...

Surveyor's markings

There are orange spots all over the land now, made of square wooden pegs nailed to the ground. I think that's the surveyor's marking where the concrete should be poured to make the pole foundations. You can almost figure out my room layout based on those markings.

Okay, back to my building approval drama. After the first design got declined by the City Council, my owners got a help from an architect who made sure the design satisfies the height restriction, and for added measure put enough distance from the left and right hand side neighbor. The new design was gorgeous. You've got to love this architect's sketches.



The builder and my owners were confident this design will get approved in no time. Not so. After waiting for another 2 month, the City Council sprung a new restriction that they neglected to mention in the first design review. It turned out that I must be built at least 6 meter away from the borderline with the conservation park. The architect's design is such that you can't simply push the whole house back by 6 meter without part of the house going straight into the front neighbor's land.

This is where my owners almost gave up and seriously considered selling the land. They were wondering if I was just not meant to be. They have persisted for 9 months, and to be given a new restriction that forced them to start the design from scratch at this stage was just too much to bear.

But my owners finally decided to have another go. They were both born on the Chinese year of the Ox you know, not easy to give up, a bit stubborn more than they care to admit. The husband happens to have a bachelor's degree in Architecture, although he never practiced that profession as he worked in IT industry as soon as he graduated. Still reeling from the two knock backs from the City Council, my owners made the third design. I will show it to you in the next post...