Day 38 - The Royal Hotel

Boy does this house stuff sure get in the way of our regular Thursday night social life. It was pretty exciting to get the night off building and make it to the neighbourly catch up down at 'The Royal Hotel' this week. Maddie started off at the kids table, but she doesn't have the experience to be able to sit still and not want us, so I ended up confining her to a high chair so that I could eat my dinner and she didn't rum amok. The hotel is really nice inside, and the food was OK for a pub meal, it was nice to catch up with everyone, its amazing how despite living literally next to each other we can go months without seeing them.

Day 37 - Mystery Ladder

I am sure that when I went outside this morning to meet the assessor and walk him through the damage, that this ladder wasn't there, but when I walked outside later I discovered it sitting right there. Nathan never did tell me where it came from or how it got there, so it is still a mystery to me. One that creeps me out a little as I didn't hear the gate and the dog alarm didn't go off.

Day 36 - Trusses Up

The rest of the trusses were put up in close to their final positions tonight. It is pretty exciting to see so much going on. I really need to get cracking on the window quotes.

Day 35 - Clean up

A couple of hours of really hard work by a Gardener was all it took to clean up the chaotic mess from the Australia Day storm. The yard looks so much better and makes the whole ordeal seem a lot easier to deal with. The gardener took a whole trailer load of mess to the tip for us, and removed most of the red chip so that if we flood again the mess will hopefully be a little less.

Day 34 - More Progress

Mark and Nathan were busy beavers again this morning putting up the larger of the trusses with some help from Simon. - Thanks boys!

Maddie didn't sleep much last night so I cant imagine how tired Nathan is today after getting up at 6.30 and getting straight to work. He did get to have a little bit of a break before he jetted off to help put a new fence up at M&G. Isn't It awesome how much work occurred over the weekend, the extension just seems to have popped up all of a sudden.

Day 33 - BUSY

The worker slaves sure were busy today, with Mark arriving at 6.30 am and getting straight to work so by the time I got up at a little after 8 the first frame was secured in place. It seemed like such a huge exciting thing to me, but Nathan and Mark were so blazee about it. Nathan had to zip across the road and wake up Chris to get a third person to help lift the second frame to go in as the window ones weigh so much more than the others. Poor Chris, he seems almost as anti social in the morning as Maddie and I are.

Only and hour later I went back out to supervise and discovered that they had actually managed to put another two of the frames in place. I can not believe how fast this bit is happening, it is insane! I have to say going with pre-fabricated frames is definitely the way to go, it has saved us so much time. I am loving the little windows more than I expected, as so much heat comes in that end of the house hopefully they will help keep the house that bit cooler in the summer, and they are just a bit funky! I am starting to wonder how we will go getting the blinds that we have in mind for them though.

Once the door frames was in place and the back wall for the bedroom was on, I stopped freaking out that the small room we are putting in was going to be too small, its actually an OK size, so I'm glad we didn't cut into our room. With those walls up, the boys put all of the big frames into the structure as well as all of the trusses which has freed up our driveway and yard finally so that Maddie can play out there and the storm clean up can begin.

The final frame took quite a bit of work to get into place as it only just fit in the area, it took all three men holding and hammering to get it into place, and was very exciting to watch. Maddie loved being able to get up in the house and make sure that everyone had done their work properly. She spent ages hammering on as many pieces as she could reach and seemed to think the work was acceptable. 

 Maddie is definitely loving learning about building and being able to get out into part of the yard to play again. She now comments whenever she hears someone hammering or sawing and wants to get out and watch or help. It is such a funny experience for us watching her fascination grow with the extension.

I still can not believe how much happened today, while Nathan said it was the easiest part, it does seem to have happened super fast and seems like such a huge part of the construction. Thank you to Nathan (head slave) and Mark for spending the whole day out there working, and to Chris too for popping over whenever any heavy lifting was required, even when it meant almost walking back home just to turn one truss around!

 



Day 32 - Bye Bye

David from Stain busters came by this afternoon and took almost all of our carpet, the arm chairs, the linen, cushions, travel bags, baby gear and our cardboard pile. It was pretty hard sorting through everything and realising the full extent of the damage, it was really hard not getting emotional when we had to get rid of Maddie's play mats and bouncer. All done now, 3 giant fans in place to dry it out and just the couch and the bits that the assessor needs to deal with. Bring on next Wednesday and some answers as to whats happening with the rest of the contents.