Or actually just brace the walls. The first of the plywood bracing has been nailed up. It's super thin, but does the job of holding the framing square, just like the back board of an IKEA bookcase.
The deck structure has been built, resting on temporary supports. The steel posts will be attached to this timber frame, and then concreted into the footing holes once they are exactly the right height. Aaaaand, the ground floor wall framing has been finished!
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On the weekend I patrolled the site with my trusty measuring tape, checking that everything was properly aligned!
The framing timber (blue treated pine) was delivered bright and early Monday morning and the boys didn't waste time unwrapping it. The walls are framed the ol' fashioned way, assembled lying on the ground then lifted up, positioned and secured. Progress was slow but exciting this week. There weren't many guys on-site due to some milestone on another of our builders' projects, but as each room went up we walked around in it and pretended to live there to see how it felt. Having the framing up made the rooms seem tiny! I think they will get bigger once the wall sheeting goes on. At the end of the week the timber was delivered for the ground floor deck, so I guess that's coming next... The week started out with level soil within our retaining walls. The soil was then dug up, and plumbing run under the ground, and buried. The soil was flattened out again.
After that, shallow channels were dug in the slab in a regular grid - which will create a thicker section of concrete in that area, an in-ground beam. On Wednesday and Thursday the plastic moisture barrier and reinforcing went in, ready for the concrete to be poured. The concrete was poured on Friday, and we were walking around on Saturday. It seems much bigger now that the concrete is in, and the finished levels have emerged from the dirt. We are really excited, now that the ground work is nearly all done, we will get to see some walls soon. It's interesting living so close to the project - we see it every day, so the progress seems to be more gradual. I think if we only checked on it once a week, the progress would seem more rapid, because we'd be noticing a week's worth of changes all at once. This week features some action shots of me, looking at things. Enjoy! This week the builders built retaining walls on top of the footings poured last week. We can now see how the levels under the house will work.
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