Category: Uncategorized

Moved my stack of random-length LVLs down to the slab and arranged them kinda in the right spots. Promptly discovered a few that were the wrong length, because “Measure Once Cut Twice” is totally a thing. Managed to rectify it all, with a generous application of maths and coffee, so it’s all good. Put up the beams on the south side because, again, they’re level and I know how high they should be. Put together the main gable beam, ready to be lifted tomorrow when…Continue Reading “Prepping for lifting day” →

Sorted through my big stack of LVLs, and made them into a weirdly-shaped stack of LVLs. Go me. It was ridiculously hot again today, but tolerable under the carport roof.

Put together the north wall of the study/second bedroom, because I had all the bits I needed and it’s a nice level wall (which is unusual on the house). Cut a couple of beams, which slotted nicely into place, and added a small angled one because it meant I could cross-brace the frame. The little piece up the far end isn’t a beam – it’s just a piece of wood to rest the actual beam to its left on, while I lifted the other end…Continue Reading “More posts and a couple of beams” →

My standard response to “what would you like for Christmas?” has been “a house” (in the hope that someone would magically build mine while I wasn’t looking? 🙂 ) So my sister got hold of our lego collection from when we were young, and did just that:

Another early start to beat the ludicrous heat – hopefully the neighbours were already awake at 7am. 🙂 Around the slab putting the posts I’d prepped yesterday in place, and bolting them in. This should give me a bit of a base for installing the rest of them, and the beams at the same time, without anything flapping around loose. Lots more column prep to do, including the much more tedious slots for the blade supports. It’s interesting to see the roof line take shape,…Continue Reading “Posts, but upright” →

Another brutally hot day (forecast to be 41°C in the hills), so I got an early start and got to work cutting posts. Set myself up in the cover of the carport to avoid the worst of it – the ceiling is really good, stopping all the radiant heat, so I only had to deal with the ambient temperature except for briefly scooting out to put a post on the slab. Got all the posts cut for the big base brackets, so I can stand…Continue Reading “Posts, part 1” →

Screwed the rest of the post supports in before it got too warm this morning: then we ran around with the laser and measured the actual height of the surface the post rests on for each of them. I can then feed those measurements back into the theoretical post lengths from my model and adjust for the variation – the slab isn’t perfectly flat, and the upstand decidedly less so, so there’s a bit of adjustment to do for each post. This seemed to work…Continue Reading “Post supports finished!” →

Screwed down all the supports we’d put together on Saturday, then it got too hot to move again so I retreated to the lovely cool carport to set up the rest of the supports. Hopefully make an earlier start tomorrow, get all of those screwed down and measure their levels so I can start cutting posts. I had an epiphany the other day, which I’m hoping will make putting together the house frame a lot easier. All of this roof I’ve coloured orange: is in…Continue Reading “More post supports” →

….a pun I promise I’ll only make once. I’ve got two weeks off over Christmas, so my goal is to get as much of the house frame as possible up. First step: post supports. Dug out the heavy hammer drill again, which last saw action fixing the bottom ladder to the shed slab….wow, that was only 10 weeks ago? Lots of string-lines, measuring tapes and random marks on the concrete resolved into a bunch of outlines and hole marks for the post supports, and got…Continue Reading “Housework” →

The last couple of days I’ve done half-days of rendering – 3-4 mixer loads – rather than trying to do the entire day, where I might get 10 loads done and be absolutely shattered. Four loads is pretty easy to get through, gets….probably 12-15sqm?…done, but doesn’t leave me exhausted and I can do other stuff in the afternoon when it’s warmer. So the first coat on the outside of the shed is basically complete, after today’s short effort. After that we had another crack at…Continue Reading “(A little) more rendering” →