Action packed week at the block. The roof went on and alfresco area was framed to complete one of the most transformational weeks of the build.
Sunday’s at the block has become a ritual for us. The day coincides with our device free day and is spent tidying, exercising, and relaxing. We are very lucky to have another address to spend time at during Covid, and the project has been a great distraction. I have even brought some tools and are embarking on small building projects of my own in the shed – who would have thought?
On Monday the Alfresco deck stumps were concreted in, but most of the action started on Tuesday. Matt Wilkinson plumbing were onsite and started the roof. First, they put the gutters on and then laid most of the garage roof sheets, which is a lower flat roof concealed behind a parapet. They found some damaged sheets so could not finish this but were able to start the main roof and got a few sheets on before knock off. I was happy with the gutters I had selected – flat back “half round” ones rather than the standard quad guttering.
My input on Tuesday was to nominate exact downpipe locations and make a call on the alfresco deck height. We are recessing the sliding door tracks and I had specified the deck level to be the same as the main floor. As is happens the door tracks are slightly lower on the outside, so we decided to lower it to match this.
Matt also wanted to discuss the end they will start laying the sheets from and pointed out that it will look slightly different depending on the way they lay them and the angle you view the roof. It was recommended to start from the east to ensure that no prevailing weather that generally comes from the west can get under the sheets. Learn something every day.
Wednesday was the big day and Matt was onsite at the break of dawn. Matt is a great plumber but is not so good at opening combination locks, as I found him fumbling around with it at 6:30am when I walked past on my walk. I was able to open the lock and saved it from a date with an angle grinder.
Wednesday was full of anticipation and I snuck a look at lunch time before having a proper look after work. They put in a huge day and had all the main roof sheeted. They still had to do the flashings, cappings and down pipes, but were waiting on materials for this, so this has been scheduled for next week.
The alfresco deck bearers and west wall was also framed on Wednesday so there was lot to take in. I arranged to meet Jess there for a drink to celebrate the roof, however I soon grew concerned when I noticed that you could see the end of the roof sheets above the gutter.
Turns out I had outsmarted myself by specifying a different gutter as this combined with the flat roof pitch and insulation blanket meant that the roofing was sitting too high above the gutter. (Blanket by the way is additional insulation that is installed between the roof battens and roof sheets to improve energy efficiency.)
I met with Kristian early Thursday morning and discussed ways to overcome the problem. It could potentially be fixed by tightening the brackets to lift the front, however we decided to replace the gutters with quad guttering that has a higher front after Kristian discussed with Matt.
Lucky Matt is a good sport as he is going to replace a roof sheet over the portico as we could also see the end of the sheet here. My bad, as it was a design error and should have been picked up when reviewing the 3D model. All is well that ends well so I felt much better after we sorted these issues out.
Thursday and Friday the builders almost finished framing the alfresco area. This really changed the back of the house and we are stoked with how this is looking. Wrapt that we shifted it across and now we get a great feel for how this area will be.
We also met with Matty Coates from Laser Electrical on Friday morning and walked through each room discussing power and lighting. Mat had some valuable insight and we will now finalise an electrical plan and start to select our lighting.
Now that the roof is on the electricians and plumbers will do their rough in. The builders will wrap and batten the walls ready for the cladding, however they have some other jobs to attend to after working on our project solidly for several weeks.
That is all for now, I hope you still find all this interesting. Have a great day!
