The new under-floor has been laid. In the foreground of the photo you can see the new balcony hanging over the original front roof.

The other day Kayvon had just finished his morning business when a hole suddenly appeared above. It turned out that the apprentice builder forgot where it was safe to step and put his foot through the ceiling. Good thing Kayvon’s been eating his greens…

This week is all about the upper flooring. It’s imperative that the wide yellow beams are exactly level – if not, as they build upwards, slight inaccuracies are amplified in the walls and roof.

In the photo above on the right is a steel beam awaiting placement on top of the insulation that you can see to its left. This will be tricky as it’s very heavy and there’s no crane. The insulation was laid by us several years ago and we’re a bit worried that it’s a bit foul from possum poops but we were assured that it was fine… Also in the photo above there are brown timber strips running from left to right. A bathroom will go here so the floor needs to be temporarily raised until the tiler finishes his work.

The photo above is at the front of the house where some of the roof structure (not the tiles) will remain. In the centre-back there is a gable (under cover) which will remain. The flooring that you can see is actually our existing attic floor upon which belongings were stored up to a few days ago. The upper floor is raised quite high above ceiling which is slightly unusual but required by the engineers to fit the steel beams.

Tomorrow the electrician and plumber should arrive to organise the flow of electrons and water to the upper floor.

The last couple of days saw some significant destruction. Yesterday we went out for half a day and when we returned we found 5 meters of roof had been removed together with a skylight. This meant that part of our ceiling was no longer supported so there appeared six columns in the middle of our living area.

Today they ripped off a bit more roof and we took delivery of our steel beams. These were delivered by a skillful crane operator avoiding trees, my prize roses (not really), our power cable and the the building. During the delivery, Rozita was told to stay out of the living area in case a steel beam fell through the ceiling…better to be safe.

At the end of each day the builders wrap the missing roof in tarpaulins and we hope for dry weather…

With some gentle nudging from Mark our builder, we finally signed the contract and paid the deposit.

We also received the final approval to proceed from the certifier and lodged with the council. In return the council demanded an array of payments:

A levy (0.35%) to contribute towards improving public amenities and services. Most of the legislation, is taken up with explaining how we will be relieved of our hard-earned dollars. There is however a small section that sets out how the levy will be directed to many of the suburbs around ours…but not ours.

A levy (1%) enabling long service payments to be made to building and construction workers. Because these guys are mainly contractors they are not entitled to long service rewards. I wish IT contractors were looked after so well…

A bond ($1000) and an inspection fee ($270) to ensure we don’t damage the verge/road outside our property. I’ve taken some photos as it was already in bad shape…

Anyway, Mark will be back on Monday and will start peeling off the roof.

After a remarkable amount of research, thought and discussion we have finally decided on and ordered our windows – 23 of them. Due to budget constraints and the need to avoid regular future maintenance we ordered white aluminium frames rather than timber. Hopefully they’ll look nice and work well. There are different grades: residential, semi-commercial and commercial, which look quite different – the commercial grade is more chunky. We’ve mainly gone for residential but ordered a semi-commercial stacker door for the rear deck. There are also different styles: casement, sliding, louvre and awning.

Other considerations that we had to take into account is that some windows have restricted opening (by law) so that children don’t fall out of them. This came about because a few parents placed bunk-beds next to fully old opening windows resulting in the inevitable. This has led to all new developments having bedroom windows with restrictive opening (irrespective of there being a alternative fire exit for example). Also first-floor exterior window cleaning is a consideration – some styles are easier than others.

Many years ago I built a system called BASIX for the NSW Department of Planning. This is now used for all substantial residential building projects to assess the environmental effect of the work (thermal considerations, energy usage and water usage). As a result of my good work, we’ve been required to apply UV filters and awnings to the north-facing windows.

We’re using BWG for the windows. They, like all the other providers have a huge backlog of orders (because everyone in Sydney is renovating thanks to the lowering interest rates and high house prices), so it’s going to take 8 weeks to fulfill the order. We’re hoping that this won’t delay the project…