The infamous pole

So you may have heard about the infamous poles that will be holding up the living space. I am standing next to one of them, to give you an idea of how little they are. The other end of the carport is also held up by an identical pole. So the front of the house is held up on these. Regan has said that if I ever hit one (as if), I should just drive straight into town and not look back...

We had some high winds over the week-end and so were a bit concerned about the tray deck blowing off. But the builder says all is well.

A little bit of tray deck action

I promised you tray deck and steel action, and here it is! What you can see here all went up in a day.

You're looking from the edge of the car port back towards the entrance to the house and the garage (the first doorway you can see is the internal access to the garage).

The permanent bits of steel are the blue steel that you can see horizontally on the roof line, and the two black columns of steel that run down vertically. The rest is all scaffolding. Regan assures
me that the steel is "Ford Blue" and that it is a sign.



Some other "Blue Steel" seen recently:






And then, below this stunning shot, you can see the extent of the tray deck installation. The car port is done, the entrance hall/store room is half done and the garage is about 1/3 done. There is also that square at the back that has some of the steel stored on it - that is the third bedroom (mentioned in the last post). In the foreground, you can just see part of the masterbedroom, with some ditches dug for pipes for the en-suite.

Once the tray deck is all up, the electrician (the
"sparky" if you are a good kiwi) will have to come
in and lay some of the electrical cables. Ray and
Regan were out on site yesterday morning
discussing this. As we're having underfloor heating distributed through waterpipes (the boiler will go in in a few years, we're just putting the provision in), the pipes will have to go in at this stage too. And then the tray deck is covered in concrete and we will have part of the first floor.

The drought is almost over

Apologies, I lost heart during the long wait for the steel and the tray deck. The summary of the delay is heavy demand, some mis-timing and a bit of confusion at one of the manufacturers. Nevermind, it's all back on track now. It does mean that we're now probably looking at an August finish date now, but what the heck, I'm sure I can survive another winter in the barn...

About all that got accomplished during the wait period was putting in the blockwork for bedroom 3 - the one next to the patio at the back of the house and adjacent to the living area. So that's where I'm standing here. It feels pretty small! Oh, they also dug another trench and put in the foul sewer for the en-suite and did a bit more back-filling, but I think we've pretty much milked all the excitement that we can get out of holes in the ground, so I won't subject you to photos of that.

I now have heaps of photos of the next stage, so look forward to some more postings!