Up Top

Over the weekend I managed to get up onto the top floor and have a look.  The walls are poured with only the gable-ends left to build up to their peaks... so still a lot of the defining shape of the house is left. Still, getting up there and looking around I could start to pace out where our bedrooms are, the en-suites etc, and check out the views we'll get from these rooms.  Again the windows should be long, close to the floor at the bottom and heading up to a regular height, here in this end is our bedroom and en-suite and somewhere as well is the walk-in-wardrobe that was the principle design effort in terms of sizing! All I know is i'll probably get a drawer or two if I'm lucky.

Also you can stand where the balcony over the living room is and look down into that area.  As the height at that point is significant it seems like a long way down and I'm not worried that the landing area there will be part of the sitting room. its the guts of 3.5 meters here.  The right edge will have a wall running along its length partitioning the stairwell from this room completely.

Once the gables are up we can then start fitting cills and measuring windows as all the openings will be cut.  All going well we can start all that process next week.  Then the stairs needs to be specified and poured - we'll be able to access all levels easily, and the roofer starts.  Then I'll feel like we have some real momentum again.

Almost there

With the height extensions on our ground floor, we've come up against the fact that the house is taller than had been anticipated.  With the ICF walls in bright white, this means we have a very stark impact on the countryside - I can see the house as I drive down from 25 kms away if truth be told.  However, when the roof is sitting on top, we've stone on a large % of the front and a muted render (I guess my dreamed of cerise pink is a no no) then it'll fade back a bit into the environment.  A few pieces of strategically placed vegetation and the fig-leaf covering will be in place.

Right now though its imposing - standing at the front door I look up over 8m to the roof plate which is almost complete.  The roof will drag the effect of this down ideally.  So - Roof plate finally is in sight with the projected pour of these walls tomorrow.  Then the roofer can get busy, we can start casting the stairs and screeding the exposed areas of the hollow-core to stop water pouring in. That'll be a major milestone, enable us to unlock more of our mortgage and start locking in the next parts of the build.  Its been tough to write about this for the last couple of weeks as I'm feel I'm repeating myself at the moment, it's been a week away for the last month and its frustrating.  However the pendulum will swing and soon I'll be giving out about the amount of time it's taking up!  Never happy me.

This was a couple of days ago as the top floor is being constructed.  Without a stairs there is no way for me to get up onto that floor either - so I've no idea what its like up there, but our architect was very happy with the views from that floor where our family bedrooms will all be.  With the heights all finalised, our room ceilings are even higher than we'd originally hoped - with the bulk of the ground floor at 3.3m from finished floor to ceiling.  Plenty of cat swinging room in that.