We've got walls!!

Every day the external walls are going up higher and higher and the studio is becoming a very real, very imposing reality. Today will be Day 10 of block-laying, and already the walls are far taller than I. Using dry-stack blocks is a very quick process indeed.

Yesterday we had our very own brand, spanking new scaffolding delivered - Adam and I put it together last night in the dark - and it is cool. It officially looks like a construction site out there now. I can't believe we own scaffolding! Not something I ever aspired to, but awesome all the same.

More deliveries this morning - this time, 10 more pallets of concrete blocks (that makes 20 pallets total so far). I will have to get the exact number of these blocks used overall to give a clearer picture of this stage of the project - I can say, with each one weighing somewhere in the region of 15kg... there's a few muscles bulging.

Here are some more photos, taken yesterday afternoon. Already this morning there has been much more progress made - I just can't keep up! :)

Reinforcement needs to be installed at metre intervals within the walls.

Taken from the current deck

Front yard

Looking SouthLooking North

Standing where the new deck will be - this gap will be large doors

Progress Photos...

It's Sunday morning, so the weekend warriors are on the move, laying blocks. The elusive camera has been located and I have uploaded some nice progress shots of the slab being poured and the beginning of the external walls. More photos to come.

Building up the levels with dirt.

Same angle with reo just before slab pour.

Morning of slab pour.

The big day arrives and the guys begin.

Water-curing the slab to prevent cracks.

Our beautiful crack-free slab. That's 2 of our 10 pallets of blocks being delivered.

Slab.

One of the blocks used for external walls. Called dry-stack blocks because, except for the very bottom row, no mortar is needed - you simply stack them on top of one another... Like giant Lego. At the end, concrete is poured down the centre and when it dries you have an extremely strong and solid cement wall.

The bottom row of blocks being laid. The orange stuff is the Kordon termite barrier.

Day 3 of block laying - once the bottom row is done, it's quite a quick process.

We're finally building UP!

I've been sick for the past week or so and haven't been doing much documenting of anything really... but am back on board now, and as the project is due to move full-steam ahead as of today, I'll be here dutifully recording every speed-bump along the way.

Last time I posted (a few weeks ago), we were having the slab poured. Well, it all went very well, and we now have a fabulous 130 sq. m. slab with no cracks! We water-cured the slab for 7 days - which meant having sprinklers going on the concrete non-stop for the whole week. My social conscience was in guilt overdrive, but luckily Mother Nature came to the rescue and provided us with a good solid week of persistent rain so we could turn the sprinklers off.

We've had 10 pallets of concrete blocks delivered in the last week. The external walls of the studio will be constructed from these blocks, which, once started, will be a fairly speedy job. We've also had a termite barrier installed to try and dissuade the little nasties from making a meal of our pride and joy.

Today, Adam and Max are on the job again... The first of the blocks are being laid! We've all been counting down until this moment because, as my post title explains - We're finally building UP! It's been a long time coming, and now that we're here, it feels fantastic! Except for the tiniest of incidences this morning where I went to wash some dishes only to find my dish washing detergent missing. Recalling a funny story that Adam told me in our early days together of how, when he was a kid, his Dad was always building something, and his Mum was always looking for her dish washing detergent only to find it outside being used in the mortar... I went a-looking. It didn't take long to spot my lovely lemon-fresh friend sitting in the middle of the slab, and it took even less time for Adam to understand the enormous knowing grin on my face. Seriously, never in the history of mankind has there been a truer testament to the saying "Like Father, Like Son" than my husband and his Dad.

Anyway, am currently searching for the camera so I can record this momentous "Laying of the first block"... I'm not having any luck though, so will post some pictures when I finally do.

I'm back... progress picking up!

We had Ben's 1st birthday party on the weekend (a fabulous day!), and I was asked several times about the blog... Yes, I'm still doing it.

I haven't posted in a while because there hasn't been a lot to post about. We've had weeks and weeks of persistent rain, and not just your average garden-nurturing showers - I'm talking sideways, drops-bigger-than-your-head, torrential downpours. Our yard has been flooded almost permanently for the past few weeks, and don't even get me started on the state of the lawn. This has meant that progress on the studio has been slow... we've had sand washed away and trenches flooded, and so most of the work has been trying to rectifying those issues... over, and over. And. Over.

However, today is a very exciting day! As I write, the slab is being poured... which obviously means some progress was made in the past few weeks - ie. filling, leveling, compacting, reinforcement, building approvals etc etc. I've decided to skim over that stuff though, because it's done and in the past. When the concrete pump started up this morning and that first glob of cement fell into the trench, the smile on Adam's face said it all. Up until this point it's been hard, dirty work but now that the slab is down, the real fun begins.

A couple of photos of Adam and Max laying the last of the reo on Sunday morning - Ben's birthday morning actually. They were so committed to getting this done that they were out in the heat doing this and missed out on a fantastic breakfast of chocolate pancakes with ice-cream, maple syrup and chocolate sauce. We weren't too concerned... more for us!

What time is it? It's Waffle time!

Last week, every morning at 6am, Max arrived at our place to attack the next phase of the project... Where we are dumping dirt and leveling out the area in preparation for the slab, we needed to dig some trenches that will eventually be filled with concrete to act as reinforcement. As Adam put it while explaining the process to me... Basically the slab will be like a really big waffle. Which is exciting. I love waffles.

The trenches obviously would not stay trenches without the use of some sort of retaining walls to keep the dirt out... so, this is what Max has been up to... a process that I'm fairly sure is called 'trench shoring'.

Basically, bits of timber had to be cut and used as retaining walls to ensure the trenches stayed trenches, and the dirt has been piled in the square areas between. When the slab is being poured, the timber will be removed and the concrete will fill the trenches to make the ridges of our big waffle.

This part is nearly done... the countdown to the slab pour is on!

Finally up to date... and then I got lazy!

Ok, so I caught up my blog to be in line with the guys on the weekend... and then, instead of doing what I had intended to do, which was document the building progress as it happened... I got lazy. Or maybe I got busy. I really don't know. It's all a bit of a blur in general. Life, that is.

Anyway, today is Sunday January 17th and it's late afternoon(ish)... last Sunday at about this time Adam and Max finally packed away the toy they'd been playing with for 48 hours... the Dingo! Or Kanga... Or some other native-Australian-animal-named (petrol powered) contraption that was essentially a 'digger', and so will henceforth be called the digger.

The digger arrived at our place on the back of a trailer mid-Friday afternoon. I watched with a bit of fear mixed with fully-fledged horror as Max unloaded this four wheeled death machine from said trailer OVER the top of the previously mentioned foundation blocks and into what I like to call the 'pit of vacuum-inducing despair ' (because it's so freakin' dusty in our house that I am always vacuuming). The digger (and Max) made it safely... eventually.

Basically, the entire weekend was spent using the digger to dig... and move dirt from one spot... to another. The end.

Well, not quite.

Friday night, Adam dug trenches for the conduit that will eventually run microphone cables under the slab. I think this is one of the really clever aspects of the studio design... Anyway, I actually got out and helped dig some trenches too, once Ben went to sleep. It was hard work... and a week later, I'm still nursing a sore wrist. Adam didn't stop digging until we had a torrential downpour at about 10:30pm that, once again, flooded our yard.

Roxy, our site manager, overseeing construction.

Saturday morning we had 2 truck loads of road base delivered. I think it came to something like 20sqm of dirt... which, when it was dumped out of the back of the truck in two massive piles next to one another, looked a lot like two enormous steely-grey boobs sticking up out of the ground! Both individually taller than Adam.



Anyway, the dirt had to be moved and leveled around the 'pit'. Adam and Max worked on this for several hours until around lunch time when Adam had to stop because he had succumbed to a bout of dehydration and heat stroke. Luckily, it got cooler again, and out they went for the evening to continue. Lucky me, I only see my husband on weekends when he's vomiting or dead. :-)

Same story on Sunday...


The digger came in handy for a few other bits and pieces as well... Adam has been wanting to dig out these crappy palm trees from the pool area because we're moving our pool filter to where they were. A while ago he spent a good few hours trying to dig these things out by hand, but got nowhere. The digger got them out in 20 minutes. Behold... 'stealth-digger'...


Here is a link to some video footage of Adam working really, really hard. He was quite sad to return the digger... I think he wants one for Christmas.

Laying the foundation blocks

After the footings were poured and dried, Adam and his Dad laid the blocks around the perimeter of what will be the slab - this took a couple of weeks in total as it fell over the Christmas/New Year period and we were all a bit busy having fun!

If you'll recall a few posts back, I mentioned that it rained quite heavily a LOT over Christmas time, which also slowed progress, and made for some pretty muddy footprints through my house. There were also quite a few 5am starts during this stage in an attempt to knock over a few hours of work before the heat kicked in... so again, I missed most of it.

I got Adam to email me the info about what materials were used and what they actually did. I thought he explained it so well that I'd go right ahead and just copy and paste it in here and leave it alone. So, here you go...

Adam:
The foundation blocks are standard 390mm x 190mm x 190mm concrete blocks. When you add 10mm of mortar it makes them 400mm units. Which is why the dimensions of the studio and locations of doors & windows are divisible by 0.4m. There were about 320 of them. We laid them the standard way with a mortar mix of 1:4 cement:sand. The ones on the top row are called "cleanout blocks". They're the form work for the slab - concrete for the slab will pour into them and lock it all together.

Me again! I have attached some photos of the blocks being laid at various points in time - not super interesting to look at, but exciting for us because finally we're building upward!

And this last one, for good measure. This is Adam working in a torrential downpour. You can't tell by this photo, but it was pi*%ing down! No rest for the wicked (or clinically insane!)

Are we building here, or making a cake?

Thanks to everyone who has been reading so far... and a special thanks to those of you who so thoughtfully pointed out that I had erroneously been writing the measurements for this building as 'ml' rather than 'mm'.

No, we aren't measuring out our construction in milliliters, and no, this is not actually going to be a gingerbread studio. Although I'm not sure Adam wouldn't secretly prefer that.

I've gone back and fixed those typos, and will hopefully remember not to do it again!

Pouring the footings - a 10 man job!

Saturday November 21st: 0630 hours.

We were so excited about this next step - we were finally going to bring this project up to ground level! I was still in my nightie, and not at all prepared for the scene that confronted me when I stumbled out to the lounge room. 8 blokes standing right outside (the glass doors with no blinds) all ready to hook in to the next phase of our little project - the foundation pour.

Ok, so I was a little prepared. I mean, I knew it was happening... and, in fact, the day before I had gone to Gold Coast Hire and picked up the cement vibrator (yes, that is what it's called. Why? Because it vibrates and you use it to prevent air bubbles when pouring cement! Obvious, really). What I didn't realise was how many guys were gunna show up to help! It was awesome.

The guys from Adam's band were there, plus a few other guys that Adam regularly does PA work for. Plus Adam and his Dad, of course. Add to the mix the 2 guys that showed up with the cement pump and that made a total of 10 pairs of hands to make light work of another very important step in the process.

Again, I asked Adam for some details... He couldn't tell me exactly from memory, but about 18 cubic metres of cement was needed. That was 3 cement trucks worth. I love cement trucks! I can just watch them turning and turning and turning for ages. It's hypnotising. Reminds me of cake.

Starter bars were placed at metre intervals around all sides - these will help with the beginning of the walls eventually (although, for now, they're just large, scary steel bars sticking straight up out of the ground threatening a certain impaling. I'm keeping a safe distance). Also, tie bars (that will tie into the slab) were placed at intervals of 800mm.

And, the most important event of the day by far, was my contribution... The McDonalds breakfast run! Oh, how I love being useful!

Big thanks to: Sol, Joe, Brian, Dale, Mike, Adam II, Max, and the concrete pump dudes whose names were not recorded because they were actually being paid.

Pics of the day:

When my baby smiles at me, I go to Reo...

The foundations of this gargantuan building require reinforcement. And, because, unlike the previous owners of this place, we understand the importance of reinforcement... this was a job that was very carefully considered, and undertaken with much precision.

I asked Adam to give me the specs of the reinforcement... and this is what he told me:

They used 50 metres of trench or cage mesh to complete the job. If you've ever wondered what 50m of trench mesh looks like... well, this is not a very good photo! But a photo nonetheless...

The trenches were 600mm deep. The mesh was installed in 6 metre sections, and needed to overlap by 0.5m.

I asked, "How did they stay where you put them?" (honestly, I said that... like, as if they would get up and run away if not restrained)...
Adam said,"We tied them together".
"With what??"
"Ties"
"Made of what??"
"Wire"....

So, apparently, they used tie-wire to tie each section together, to avoid a mass reo break for freedom.

One other thing Adam told me was that the mesh sits on "chairs" placed every 2 metres to keep it off the ground. Well, at least, if nothing else, the reo is comfy.

Here are some pictures of the final product (I should have rotated them, but couldn't be bothered working it out once uploaded here). The building inspector approved their work early on a Friday morning... which was very convenient as the concrete pour was already booked in for the following day.

It's Excavation Day!!!

I was entrusted with the very important and honourable job of organising an excavator to come and do the earth moving in preparation for our slab. This will be one of the very few steps of this project that will involve an 'outsider', and therefore, very important to get the right guy!

So, armed with the specs of the job, I turned to yellow pages online.

Let's just say, Global Financial Crisis and soaring unemployment my (not-so) perky backside! Tradey after tradey after tradey turned me away, with varying levels of rudeness (laughing and hanging up being toward the ruder end of the scale), but with one general theme - I'm far too busy and important for you and your little domestic job. Grrrr.....

Interestingly, I got the same attitude trying to get someone to repair our fridge, change my car battery, and fix our pool filter... Seriously! What's with that shite? This is why Adam insists on DIY I s'pose. He ended up doing them all anyway...

Anyway, several dozens of phone calls later, I decided to fall back on the old faithful... calling in a favour. It really is true that it's all about who you know. I dropped a name and a reccommendation and BAM! Whadda ya know, we got a guy to come and have a look... the very next day... on his day off.

We're putting down a 130sqm slab for this bad boy, and basically, the job involved the following...

Levelling the area, a 600 x 350mm trench dug around the perimeter for footings and 18 pier holes dug down to 900mm. Plus a few trees knocked over and dug out and a small trench dug for the new pool filter pipes.

Friday, 13th November: Excavation Day is here!

Luckily, we're not a superstitious bunch, because already there were dire predictions of what could go wrong when a job as vital as this one was bestowed upon a stranger... and it's black Friday. However, all went smoothly (for the most part - only minor stress level increases). Adam was bummed out because he had to work, but the rest of us gathered indoors to bear witness to the awesomeness that is earth moving. I don't know if you've ever sat and watched the diggers do their thang... but, it was mesmerising - even on a small scale. Such strong, clunky machines capable of such gentle manipulation. I loved it! I shoulda been a Bobcat operator... except that involves heavy machinery...

When Adam got home, the job was mostly done, and it being TGIF... It was G&T's all round to celebrate the breaking of ground.
Or, something...

Here are some pics...

Looking at the site from the current deck...

You can see the beginnings of a trench attempted by hand... not gonna happen!

The pool isn't always this low/green...

The front - all marked out by moonlight the night before.

Game on!
That stump is from the largest palm tree on our block. Took this guy hours to dig out and ended up standing almost 2 metres high on it's side once removed... Must get a photo of it!

Ben overseeing proceedings.

Removing palm tree stumps... delicate operation so close to the pool edge.


Just a sample of the end result. You can see the stumps are gone. Basically, the rest of the trenches looked a lot like this.

Removing the car port... Lucky it didn't fall down!

Alrighty... still back-tracking here, trying to get through this as every day I spend covering old ground, new ground is hurtling forward faster than a runaway train.

Sunday, November 1st: Car port coming down

We've still got half the slab to be removed, but friend and drummer from Adam's band, Adam - yes, there are 2 Adams - has come over to help dismantle the car port so he can use some of the materials. See, we're green.


So glad we got rid of that before it fell! DODGY!!

Saturday, November 7th: Attacking the last of the slab...

Jack hammer has made it's appearance again. Adam spent most of this weekend just carving it up as the plan is for FIL Max to come over during the week and take the bits of concrete away.

Sunday, November 8th: Timmmmmmmmbbbbbbbeeeerrrrrrrr!!

And down comes the largest palm tree on our block. It was in the way!

9th/10th/11th November:

Max removed the last of the concrete from the slab and also begins on removing the pavers that were directly behind it (between the old car port and the pool). I even got out and helped! For about half an hour... then the job was done. Must have been my input that made all the difference... yeah, thats it.

Somewhere in here, the pool filter had to be moved, along with the pool fence. It's all a big jumble of events because there were many a 5am start that, frankly, I slept through.

But, to make it straightforward, here are some photos of the area, ready for excavation!

That's Roxy in the foreground.