Second Wall Frame

     The second wall frame has been partially constructed, this is a big one as it covers the entire 6 metres from one side of the house to the other, at the bedroom end.

     There are no windows in this wall so it is relatively simple, and the windows for the bedrooms are on the other walls. This works out better as the view through the end wall would just be looking at the water tank anyway.

First wall frame

     Once again I returned home to discover that magical building work had been done.

 

     The first wall frame was completely assembled in one day by Josh on his own, all very smoothly until the top plate refused to fit onto the other pieces. The next frame will be assembled with a slightly different method, to try and reduce the problems with the metal warping out of a straight line. Also the purchase of a rubber mallet will help make the pieces behave themselves. If in doubt, bang it out!

Floor screws finished

     Today the yellow-tongue flooring had all of its screws and joins finished. I have been lucky enough to be getting home from work to find the work magically completed :)

     It has taken a few days of hard to work to finally get all of the screws in place, with some delays and frustrations due to problems with tools not working properly. You would think with 3 drills we could get one of them to work! At least 5 days have been spent down there drilling all the screws in, as each full size sheet of yellow-tongue needs 36 screws (4 across each joist and spanning 9 joists), and extra screws needed when joining shorter sections, so the whole floor needed about 600 screws altogether. The lengths of dark wood planks seen in the above photo is the merbau decking waiting for the verandah floor to be constructed, and are being stored on the house floor at the moment to clear up some room in the shed.

     The joins between the sheets of yellowtongue were also sealed with construction adhesive, and then the joins were taped over with insulation tape.

     We have also received the plans for constructing the wall frames, so we can finally get onto that step. Weather permitting, of course!

Yellowtongue Floor

     Josh has now finished attaching the yellowtongue floor to the floor frame.

     In this picture you can see the box of screws, tube of glue/sealant, and the drill, along with the yellowtongue sheets partially finished. It took 2 days of Josh working on his own to put all the yellowtongue down. They now just require a little more glueing and screwing, and then the next stage is wall frames. First we need to wait for the kit home company to send us the missing plans, it's been several days and still waiting for a reply...

Yellowtongue

     Over the weekend we had some friends visiting, and took the opportunity to move the yellowtongue out of the storage shed down to the house site. Laying the sheets on the joists, we covered them up with tarps for a bit of weather protection as rain was predicted. Yellowtongue is a type of particleboard flooring made from "precision milled wood flakes and bonded with moisture resistant synthetic resin". This was provided with the kit home when it was delivered. Each sheet is 3.6 metres long by 90 cm wide and weighs 30kg, which Josh says is not that heavy and he is able to carry it on his own. It may not sound like a lot of weight, but imagine lifting a 30kg backpack or box - that's pretty heavy. When he and I were carrying them together I found it to be an almost unbearable weight, as for me around 15kg is just getting beyond what the limit of what I can carry. Whilst I CAN carry 15kg, I know that I am pushing my body to its limit, and doing so will definitely lead to long term damage (and pain!). So I had to tell him that I could not help carry the boards as they were too heavy for me.

      On the Friday before everyone arrived Josh carried 7 of the sheets down to the house site on his own, which is around 100 metres down a hill on rocky and uneven ground. He said that the weight of it was not so much the problem, as was the length and width of the sheets, making them very unwieldy. So he created a tool made of a camping shovel, with the head folded to a 90 degree right angle, and 2 G-clamps. This allowed him to carry the sheets underneath his arm like a really large surfboard. His body was very sore the next day after carrying all those sheets at an awkward angle, combined with the constant tromping back up the hill to get the next sheet. The boys helped carry the rest of the boards with two people on each board, and it was lovely to see all the work get done so quickly and easily (of course it was easy for me - I was just watching!). THANK YOU GUYS!!! All done in a couple of hours, after waiting for two months trying to figure out how to get this done.

      The next step is to cut half of the boards to the right size, and the other half will stay full length. I figure the easiest way to do that is to make a temporary floor on the joists out of the yellowtongue, and then lay them over the sawhorses in order to cut them with the orbital saw which has been purchased for this express purpose. We will have to remember to measure twice and cut once, as we do not have any yellowtongue to spare - and getting more on site would be both difficult, and expensive. We have 20 sheets, which is JUST enough, but could really do with one more anyway. Once they have been cut, they need to be placed in exactly the right spot and screwed to the metal joists. Hopefully this will be a trick that we figure out BEFORE we do it the wrong way!

Screwed Top Hats

     This arvo Josh spent a couple of hours screwing the top hats down.

     He has now started talking about cutting the yellow-tongue particle board flooring into the right lengths. First we need to re-arrange the storage shed, as the yellow-tongue was piled up in there BEFORE we brought up all of our belongings out of storage. Also I think we need a strong assistant to lift those floor boards, as they are HEAVY! Too heavy for just me and Josh, as I discovered when we moved them the 30 metres from where the truck dropped them off into the shed. Ouch!

More Raking

      The other half of the joists have now been screwed to the brackets, a relatively quick and easy job.

 
         After 2 more days of raking I still haven't finished clearing the house site, but I am nearly there!

     As you can imagine, a bucket of rocks is quite heavy and I have gotten quite tired of carrying them over to the driveway, but at least the driveway is looking better every day.
     While I was sitting there quietly sorting my rocks, a pair of yellow-tailed black cockatoos flew low overhead and landed in the nearby banksia tree.

     It has been a delight to watch the wildlife enjoying the new plant growth down in the clearing, with the tiny finches and wrens sharing bushes, and the cute little quails pushing their way through the grass. Quite a change to the birds which hang around in the trees around the caravan and the shed.
     Meanwhile Josh found the brackets which need screwing on next, appropriately called 'top hats'. He spent the afternoon bending them into shape so now they are ready to screw the joists to the bearers.