14/02/2005 - Wow!! - The walls went up today (and pretty quickly too!). Amanda dropped home after her exam out at the Uni this morning and rang to tell me that the laundry and kitchen walls were up, while she was organising me a bunch of auncillary tasks, the dining room wall went up too so, by the time I got home with the boys, those three walls were fixed in place, braced and the supporting beams were in. Brian was standing ontop of the dining room wall looking at the view when I got there and commented that since you can see so much from up there, we should build another story on top... hmm I need that Lotto win!
My only job prior to doing a valentines day BBQ was to rip out the guttering so the boys can take down enough roof to get the interior kitchen/dining room wall and the dining room/deck wall in for tomorrow. Unfortunatly the roofing guy can't make it to start until next monday, but the guys will be able to keep busy getting the other roof trusses and stuff inplace so it shouldn't hold things up at all.
Dean the Architect is booked in for a site visit tomorrow afternoon to discuss the steps from the back deck.

15/02/2005 - Well - all the exterior walls are up now, the interior walls are, for the most part going to be left until later - although, we do need them up for the kitchen measure, so they may just stay put for safetys sake so we don't end up getting a kitchen which is too big (or small) for the walls once they go in permanently (and get that fun, non-standard 13mm GIB on them, just to complicate the measuring process). The guys also cut and stood the posts for the roof beams over the deck.
Dean came around this evening and plans to have a few sketches for us by Friday for the steps off the porch. The deck railing is in place and Kali has already taken a liking to the view of the street she gets from there, Brian reckons it didn't take her very long at all to get up the confidence to venture out onto the cover sheets and take up station to supervise the guys and keep watch on the street.
A guy from the pre-nail place is coming around tomorrow to rectify a problem he caused by adding 90mm rather than subtracting it in his measurements on one wall, normally they pay the builder to make good on these things, but Brian is keen to keep the traction going on getting things ready for the roofing guys (who also called me today seeking a deposit and a definite answer on the guttering and spouting (we're going for the color steel to match the roof) anyway - I'll have to add them to my call list for tomorrow).
My job for the evening was to paint the porch (yeah - I know, I've been procrastinating on that one) I got most of the exposed bare wood done and just the cieling remains, but we're out of paint and the 'Wundacoat' we bought last week is not the same as the 'Wundaprime' which we've been using to-date, no matter what our friend at Mitre10 told us - I'll have to hunt down that reciept and go swap it for the good stuff tomorrow.
Placed a call in to Gerald to let him know the bathroom/toilet is ready for wiring but didn't get an answer so I've dropped him and email too - will try calling him tomorrow morning.

16/02/2005 - Wow (I know, it's been a week of wows) but seriously, the deck surrounds are up, the guy from Carters spent the day lowering his dining room wall which had ended up about 90mm too tall. While he was doing that, the guys were hard at it getting the beams and soffits on the road side of the deck up and, after a quick dash up to Mitre10 for a swap of the paint, I was able to get into the painting of the front porch, cook dinner, shower and pajama the boys, finish the porch, then move around the back to do the PLY on the soffits and paint up a couple of sheets of ply for the guys to use tomorrow (oh - I've taken to having a bottle of 'V' when I get home, which may explain this sudden productivity increase ;)
Brian also references rafters for lean to roof, perlins, scolding and bargeboard - but since I don't really know exactly what all that means but for the sake of completness, and to give the readers something to chuckle at me over, I've put the detail in.

17/02/2005 - Dean called today so I dropped over during lunch to pickup the sketches for the deck steps, they're almost what we were picturing, but still only save us 500mm of back lawn, but on the flipside, the flow may work better going alongside the house - we're going to step it out on the weekend to see what it'll look like.
I'd apologise for the image quality, but these were taken with my PDA camera so they're about what you'd expect, and at least you can see what I'm yapping about so - no whining eh?.
Anyway, I dropped in on the way back to work to see the roof soffits were up along the kitchen/dining room wall and the laundry/kitchen wall was going up today too as Johnathan was planning to come around tonight to do the site measure for the kitchen - all very exciting, except of course for the fact that he'd unfortunatly double-booked himself so we'll see him tomorrow afternoon while Gerald is here doing the bathroom wiring, or sometime over the weekend :)
Since the framing was a bit late last week, the guys have asked us to delay the weatherboards and windows/door deliveries until early next week, tomorrow they're aiming to get the roof framing up (well, the start of it) and we're expecting the roofing guys early next week too.
The guys spent the day re-plumbing the walls after the Carters guy had finished cutting down the top plates, they attached the rafters for the roof over the kitchen, did more scolding (does this mean Kali or Noa was misbehaving?), removed part of the existing roof and put up the nice big tarpaulin to cover the de-nuded roof. The interior kitchen walls also went in ready for Johnathan.

18/02/2005 - Argh! I woke up at 3am and bounced out of bed and down the hall ready to layeth the smackdown on whoever had busted in and was rustling around, of course - as the mists of slumber cleared, I figured that I was a damn idiot and had jumped out of bed because the tarp was flapping a bit. Kali appreciated that I was up of course, so she made me take her around the back for a comfort stop... Bugger.
Today (yes, during daylight hours) the guys finished up the double top plate on exterior walls and made a start on the trusses including lifting the main trusses onto the roof and setting up half of the roof area trusses. Unfortunatly there's a slight problem with the stuff that came from Carters manufacturing which is requiring Brian to spend a bit of time cutting things to fit when they should just work.

19/02/2005 - We're having a bit of a family weekend (well, we're trying) and so all that's happened renovation-wise for us today is, while Amanda took the boys to their first music class, I sat out in the sun priming all the ply-groove and made a start on the remnants of the ceder weatherboards. Only did one side of these things as we had to pack up early to get away to the Symphony under the stars in the Auckland domain.

20/02/2005 - Again, very little renovation progress, I did managed to get up on the top of the walls and paint the othersides of the plygroove which has been fixed to the soffits. Didn't get around to the other sides of the plygroove or weatherboards I'd started on yesterday, but did paint all (bar one short length which hid from me) of the remaining weatherboards. I'll be planning to rip into the other sides of this stuff in the coming week after work (and kids/dinner/showers/reading/music practise/bed) - we'll see huh?