Waterproofing the blocks

The fab builders have now waterproofed the block work ready for the inspection on monday. Then the backfilling of the retaining walls can start... the house lifters are scheduled to return on Wednesday to lower the house back to where it is going to remain.

The blocks have been done

The blocklayers were awesome and came in over Easter to do the block work. Its looking great.

Footings and Doors

We are making lots of progress on our house (thanks to our super builders!)

These pics are a few days old though.

The footings have been boxed out in this pic...

Since these photos were taken the footings have been fully boxed up, the plumber has been and put the pipes for our toilets, showers, hotwater cylinder etc..

The steel has been layed, an inspection by the council has occurred and today the concrete is being poured!

Over the weekend the block layers will be doing the retaining walls - what awesome guys for working over Easter!

This past weekend Paul and I were busy making a start on our internal doors we got off trademe. They need to be stripped of the varnish and stain. We didnt have the other tools that we needed to get into the corners and other fiddly bits handy though so we couldnt completely finish them. We have five of these in total.

Getting there.. they are going to look so nice once they are finished and coated with a wood moisturiser.

Brick update

I keep meaning to give an update on the brick situation....

You will have seen that they are no longer there, well we sold the bricks that had been taken down on trade me for $100.00 - which was awesome in itself as I only listed them for a two day auction at $1 reserve.

The lovely couple who won the auction clicked on my buy now price then worked all weekend carting them away AND breaking apart and taking away the rest of the bricks under the house (that we had said they could have for no extra cost). We were thrilled as it saved us not only time but money as well because we didn't have the cost of having them carted away.

Trademe is wonderful when it comes to rennovating we've discovered!

And the digging continues

Day three...

More dirt was taken from our property yesterday, I did asked Dad tounge in cheek, that since we have taken away most of the 'land' on our property would our land value drop - thus reducing the money collected by the tax man hahahahaha

One brave man! You would not get me walking over this tiny plank above that HUGE hole in a million years! *shudder*

The littlest boss giving his approval

As you can see the house lifting guys were back again to move the supports away from the left side of the house, this is so the retaining wall guy has plenty of access to build them.


We are getting there! The digging is probably finish by now, I got told yesterday that they anticipated they had 1/2 a day left. It was scheduled to be a 2 day job but the amount of

cr%p they found in the dirt was amazing... huge boulders of concrete and layer upon layer of glass panes... not to mention the ground was rock hard making their job more difficult.

More digging

The digging continued yesterday... and boy did they dig!!!

This was our front door... um dont think we'll be going in that anytime soon!

This big gaping hole is where our stairs are going to be.

A lot of the dirt to the left of this picture also needs to go.. this is being done today.
The house is sitting pretty high now.


They got a good system going so that minimal damage is done to our driveway. The little digger would dig out the dirt, the bobcat would scoop it up, take it to the top of the driveway where the big digger would scoop it up and transfer to the truck to be taken away.

The 'boss' taking a well earnt break...
The house lifting guys hard at work securing the house in a different place so the digger can dig out the dirt where the stairs and block retaining wall are going.
These guys are great at teamwork.. everyone just seemed to know what they were doing - I guess when you've been doing it as long as them then you know your job.

A window to go in our house

We picked up this window from trademe for our entrance way. I thought it was quite funky and goes with our couch/lounge colour scheme.

Digging has begun

Yesterday the digging underneath the house started.

A fair amount was done. Today the house lifters came back to work with the digger driver in finishing the job. As the dirt is taken away the houselifters will move the supports into the middle so Bill our digger dude can get in and dig where they are at the moment.

Apparently, after talking to the house lifter this morning there will be a bunch of supports in the middle of the house with extra supports beyond the house and big steal beams stretching out to meet them.

I dare say we will visit tonight to see the end result and take some more pictures.

Next steps:

• Its all marked out, the block layers do the retaining walls.
• Dad organises the concrete floor to be poured.
• The framing is done
• The house is lowered into place

Lift Off...

We have lift off!

On Friday the house lifting company came in and lifted our house about 700mm up from where it was sitting.

This will be dropped back to approx 450mm above where it was - a council requirement to the tune of approx $8k extra.

Looking down the driveway

Before the big clean up in preperation for the digger arriving today. Big thanks to Mum and Dad for their sweat and more sweat.. :)

The front door is a little difficult to get to now.. should deter those hawkers eh?

Our new front door! What a bargin we got. A NZ Kauri door off trademe for $190. It is about 10 years old but has never been installed into a house and is in lovely condition. A savings of $400 from our budget.

The littlest helper.. although he did spend a consderable amount of time eating the chocolate biscuits bought for Granddad. Check out his blog for some further pictures.

After the big clean up except the pile of rubble to the left, that has been there for the past 5 years so we didnt feel we really wanted to disturb it with our hands... best left for the digger.

Our new bathroom stuff got delivered on Friday (and saturday because their truck wasnt big enough)

these are our new vanity cupboards. The two you can see are the double ones. One going into our bathroom so Paul and I dont have to fight over the tap in the mornings when brushing our teeth. The other in the main bathroom.

The smaller one to go into Logans bathroom.

The double top is similar to this but it has two sinks and it is simlar to a wave in the middle.