Upstairs Walls

With the upstairs walls going in the house was starting to take shape, and the kids got to take their first look at the new space. There would however be no getting them to stay still long enough for a photo as excitement had clearly taken over.

View from Upstairs

This will be the view from the new upstairs living room towards the playing fields across the road.

Start the Render

According to my friends at Wikipedia:

"the cement rendering of brick, concrete and mud houses has been used for centuries to improve the appearance (and sometimes weather resistance) of exterior walls. It can be seen in different forms all over southern Europe. Different countries have their own style and traditional colours."

So if that's the case who are we to buck tradition. Sorry to say, but yes, the little redbrick won't be red for much longer.

The first part of the house to be touched by the renderers trowel was the area that will be underneath the back deck.

Preparing the roof for the floor

With the back of the house moving along nicely the builders turned their attention to the new second story. Once the roof was gone the floor joists were the first to be installed.


The old roof frames in the foreground are now just firewood as the second story addition gets underway.

While I was Sleeping

I worked night shift on Friday night and thought that as the builders said, 'see you next week' when they left I would be able to sleep on Saturday. Wrong! The builders didn't work, but the brick layers did.

Trimming the Trees!

Having just gone through the process of obtaining approval to trim the trees out the front of our house I am convinced our little redbrick sits within the most anal retentive local government area in Sydney. Yes frame that comment as you won't hear me bagging out 'God's Country' very often.




As you can see in the title photograph we have two very large gum trees growing in our front yard. Both of these overhang the house, but the one closest (on the left in the photo) particularly so. Despite the fact that a very large proportion of this tree overhangs the house my tree hugging Council won't give us permission to remove it. Instead, after weeks of telephone battles and applications consented only to 'selective' pruning. Well I just took them at their word and selected a lot!


Okay, so we didn't really chop as much out of them as I would have liked. Here's the how they look now, nice and neat but no longer over the house.

Room with a View

In addition to starting with the brickwork the rear glass doors and some of the windows were installed in the back room yesterday.

No, not the white window, the black one below. The white window is going, as is that whole wall. What is currently the third bedroom will become part of the new back room.

You might notice that we have not gone with the typical aluminium sliders, but rather a more updated version of the traditional double-hung window.

Adding More Redbricks

Although the top floor will be lined with Blue-Board, then the whole house rendered, we decided that the new back room should be brick. Of course, as you would expect, they day the brick layer arrived the rain returned.

Even so they still got a fair bit done...

Removing the Asbestos

According to the NSW Government pamphlet Fibro & Asbestos - A Renovator & Home Owners Guide the use of asbestos was not discontinued in fibro sheets until about 1982. So given that our little redbrick was constructed some time during the early 60's, it stands to reason that the fibro in the eaves contains some of this nasty stuff. It's for good reason then the builders suited up to get rid of it.


Even so, I think they may have been having a little too much fun playing dress-ups. Or maybe it was just a response to seeing the camera.

Farewell to the Roof

In addition to installing the rear wall frames, yesterday the builders also got rid of most of the roof. All that was left in place when I went out and had a look this morning was the old framework; and that won't last for long.

Rear Walls Installed

With the installation of the wall frames the back room is starting to take shape.

Off with the tiles!

The builders arrived bright and early this morning (well, they do that every morning really), and got stuck straight into removing the roof tiles and constructing the wall frames for the back room. There is definitely no turning back now!

New Back Floor

I arrived home yesterday after a hard day at work to find that the floor for the new back room has been built. What a great surprise....


....particularly so given that it's only being held up by a couple of bits of timber. You may notice from the photos that the brick foundations haven't been laid yet.

I hope these builders know what they're doing.

Install the Scaffold

A sure sign that we are moving ever closer to the roof coming off. Now just some trees to be trimmed....but more about that battle later!

Building Supply Yard

As the work continues our once lovely rear lawn has been converted into something that resembles the building supply yard at Bunnings:

"On the left we have the lumber, bricks are in isle three, and glass windows and doors can be found at the back of the store."