Work has stopped ... Indefinitely

Well there was a reason why we hadn't heard from SS for a while - he's left the company. We only discovered this when we called his phone only to have the construction manager answer. That interesting fact would have been news enough but there was more! The scaffolding is too close to the street powerlines so we need to apply to have the lines covered. How long does the application process take - "How long is a piece of string" was his reply. So there will be no work on site until this is sorted.

Scaffolding up but where is everyone?

Scaffolding looks great but we have no idea when we'll be seeing the roof tiles. In fact, we haven't heard from our SS for weeks. Is it normal not to get a weekly or fortnightly update or are we expected to do the chasing?

Frame - just made it.

Well, true to his word, SS managed to get the roof all on by today AND if that wasn't enough, there was some action from the brickies as well. Now that's just showing off.

Front brickwork started

The roof trusses were delivered on Wednesday. Given that Thursday was a public holiday, we were a bit surprised that there were no carpenters on site today to meet Comdain's prediction of having frame stage completed by "the end of the month". Suppose there's still 2 working days left in April.
The brickies have been hard at work laying the 50mm bricks. These are also Greythorn in colour and look great, but can you see at least one brick that is facing the wrong way? Hope it looks less obvious when the bricks get lighter. Speaking of which, we're really happy with the colour of the garage bricks now.

First floor frame all up.

Took 2 days to lift the first floor frame into place. Garage and alfresco walls are also complete. Just waiting for the roof now.

Beginnings of the first floor frame

Getting dark earlier these days so no photos tonight of the newly erected first floor walls. The plan is still to have frame stage completed by the end of the month. The more important deadline is to get to lock-up stage because, as Kevin McCloud would say "Winter is just around the corner..."

Garage design

More work on the garage and the first level floor today.
It's so exciting seeing the garage being built. In the design stage we had some very specific requests which Comdain were able to accommodate. We wanted the garage to be slightly wider than normal, some windows for natural light and a roller door at the rear. The latter was because we had decided not to have double front doors to the house (and had run into problems in a previous home when we tried to bring an oversized piece of furniture in). Prior to Comdain when we were negotiating with a large volume builder, even they were happy to try and accommodate these specific requests in their standard house design, so it's worth asking!