Finding time….

to update the blog is just not happening right now.  Work is great, but finding the time for all my normal activities plus 4 hours  of work and an hour of travel each day is taking its toll.

So here are some pics of what the house was like while still up on jacks.

The kitchen. Still like this after being down on the new piles.

The hallway (it’s like this in every corner of the hallway). No improvement after being on piles.

The gap in the roof of our room. This is slighty smaller than when it was on jacks, and have been repaired (sort of) from the outside, so it appears so far to be weatherproof.

Our window, which got even worse after a 2nd big crack appeared after strapping the room back on.  Still, this window is going to be completely replaced with a set of french doors sometime soonish.

The side of the house that appeared NOT to be attached to the floor.  It took Grays an extra day or two to fix this.

This crack in the gib of Lilly’s room didn’t seem too bad, but after the wall and floor were fixed (as in the pic above) the wall was now shorter and the gib has a huge bow in it, now sticking out a good 3 to 4 inches in the middle.  It will never fit again. 

So I’m sure you can see why we will be re-lining all the walls of the house.

I have to say for a while there I was quite despondent about it, but I’m over that now.  The new deck is 95% done, the rest will get done in due course, probably over the next couple of years.

Now I get to worry about childcare for the school holidays, OH JOY.  And no, the teens are not responsible enough to look after the small boy for full days, several weeks at a time.

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Dear readers, friends and family…

Sorry the blog has been vacant for the past few weeks.  November has sucked!  We are finally back in our house after 3 weeks (instead of the expected 1 week).  

We are totally indebted to our awesome friends Julie and Dave who generously not only let us house while they we away, but due to the delays also shared the house with the 5 of us once they were back for another week and a half.  Without that help we would have been up shit creek.  So thanks heaps, the kids are still missing your lovely house, sky TV and your great company (as are Ian and I).   Thanks also to all our friends, colleagues and family who have supported us in our times of despair.

Instead of the house being better once it was down on piles, it was worse in some respects.  The floor is much more level, and thanks to the hard work from our moving company (Gray Bothers) the structure is now very sound, with all bearers replaced and approx 80% of the joists.  The inside of the house is another story all together. Due to the walls and floors not being joined we will be replacing ALL the walls.  Our bedroom on the end did not want to stay attached and there is a fair amount of fixing up in that room.  Not the movers fault, but the fault of the builders who constructed the add-on without proper studs to nail into.  The window in our room needs total replacement (glass and frame) so we have made weathertight running repairs with a  plan to make permanent repairs once all major costs have come in.

We had to add two sets of steps up to the house, due to the council requirements that the house be a minimum of 600mm high, is some places it’s well over a metre high where the land slopes away.  The steps added in another $2k in costs.  Essential though I have to say.  The framing is up for the big deck, timber to complete the deck expected to be delivered tomorrow.  I expect Ian will dive into that job asap.  It will be lovely to sit on the deck in the afternoon and evening sun and I can ignore the fact the rest of the house needs fixing.

So are we better off?  Yes and No.  The new house position is GREAT, but we have a LOT of work to do to even bring the house back up to the standard it was before moving it.  Would I do it again?  No comment.  Ask me again in a year.

I’ll load up some pics tomorrow if I get a chance.  We are just trying to settle back into normal routine, along with lots of end of year school events.  I haven’t touched my sewing machine for almost a month, except to hem up my work pants. Maybe I’ll do some sewing soon, time permitting.  The garden and lawns need a lot of work so they may just take precedence.

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Moved!

So they moved the house on Friday  It was good to watch but every creak and crack freaked us out a bit!  The house was left on the truck over the weekend, as well as jacks (due to the high winds).

The outside is not looking too bad, just 2 broken windows.  The inside is another story.  I took a couple of pics on Friday while it was up on the truck.

Almost every corner of the house looks like this…

And most of the walls like this…

Some places look even worse, but that may settle down once the house is on its piles.

Here’s where our bedroom tried to separate from the rest of the house…

The floor in the boy’s room…

There is wood like this all over the house, it holds the floor onto the walls!!!!

The toilet broke

Another hole in the floor! This is the inspection hole.  I’m not sure why they needed this as the hole for the fireplace is only about a metre from this one.

The empty site.

So, I stopped in this morning, okayed final position.  They will be putting in pile holes today and the building inspector will come.  Tomorrow will be adding in more joists and bearers, Wednesday will be underfloor insulation and tying down onto the piles.  THEN we can get the electrician and plumber in.

I was hoping we would be back in the house by the weekend, but maybe not?  Needless to say we are all getting a bit grouchy now.  It’s hard having to carry on your day-to-day life without all our own stuff.  I am missing my sewing stuff!!

 

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On the truck

Ready for moving in the morning.

After yesterday’s freak out, I’m excited that the house will actually be moved tomorrow.  Of course that’s helped by the fact that I can’t see he mess of the inside at the moment   Anyway, you have to laugh, or you will cry.

Back tomorrow, hopefully with video of the move.

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Progress….of sorts

The house has been lifted from its existing piles.  Not yet moved into the new position, so we are approx 3 days behind where we thought we’d be.  Looks like I will have to find a new plumber as the one we had lined up to do the job goes away on holiday next week.

The lifting has not been a simple job.  The floor is not attached in several places, so when the outer of the house was lifted (just a tiny bit) lots of the interior walls and floors did not lift.  That’s a pain, because instead of a “bit” of wracking (which is warping of the wall linings etc), we are getting a LOT.  Looks like we will be replacing most of the GIB wall linings is most of the rooms. The movers have had to add in a lot of wood to brace walls, so there are going to be holes from nails everywhere and probably some extra holes cut in the floor too from where they need to add in extra jacks.

Our bedroom on the end (which is an extension) did not want to lift either so they have had to add wood to the outside to strap it on for now.

So, if you ask me, it’s a lot more traumatic than I thought it would be, and is going to be way more expensive too.  But we will just have to tackle one room at a time and hope that at least when its done it will kind of be in one piece, roof intact, electricity on and working plumbing.  Fingers crossed eh?

Our room…

All jacked up an nowhere to go….

The fireplace has been removed, as you would expect

I guess there is not much point in worrying, we can’t change anything, we just have to wait and see how the rest of the job goes.

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Arse!!!

The house has not been moved yet.  The movers have not even started yet!!  The only work that has been done is the electricity has been disconnected.  Looks like nothing will happen till tomorrow.  Bugger, bugger, bugger.

While I’m totally grateful that we have such a lovely place to stay, I am on tenterhooks in case the kids break something.  Hard to relax.

No uniform for work yet either, that will be a week or two away and I won’t get my first pay for another 2 weeks.  Sucky!

The only upside of the day – a letter from the college inviting us to Senior prizegiving to see Nathan get an award next week.  I don’t know what for, it’s a surprise!  Nice one

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