Catching up! Front deck and second level flooring starts

Busy busy couple of week and consequently I'm a little behind in my posts.

I didn't visit every day, however at least every two days and we have achieved quite a bit in 2 weeks. Now to catch up! I have to check the photos to remember where we left off .....

We returned on the Friday after work to check out progress on the joists and the front verhandah. DH hadn't seen any of the progress this week, and so he was thrilled to see all of the progress. The front verandah is coming along quickly, and it's a bigger space than we had imagined. 

The joists really started to close the kitchen and living are in and make them feeling like rooms. Once the joists were down and before the carpenters could put the flooring down or work on the higher level, they needed to wait for the safety barrier to be put up around the two upper levels. Once this was up, progress zipped along again :)

So for a few piccies:

Love the posts! 

Framing added around the verhandah

Our frequent visitor, the Qld Bush Turkey

Starting to close in - looking into my laundry here! Steps will come down from the RHS into the living area

The western side - looking tall from ground level

Front porch close up!

Our garage is full of flooring and timber!! 

Early the next week, the yellow tongue floor boards were put down over the living area, for the second floor (or is it third floor?) bedrooms:

View from the bedrooms

Bathroom  

View down onto the lounge room

View down onto the deck 

View from the bedroom

Looking down onto the deck and to the retaining wall!

Next: garage framing, then upper floor joists, flooring and framing!!

Front Verandah starts & waiting for the second floor

I had a day off visiting the site yesterday, trying to tone down the OCD of site visits :)

You couldn't hold me back today! It really is like a disease, you just have to go over to see!

I went over after finishing work and the carpenters were busy on site. The second floor joists have been finished, and we are now waiting on the scaffolding / protection before the men can work any higher. Once that arrives (hopefully today), the men can put in two more load bearing beams between the joists and then nail on the yellow tongue flooring. Once those things happen it's second floor framing baby! Yeah!

Today they were working on the front and back decks - 2 of the front verandah posts were up (very heavy, but very pretty!!) and the carpenter was working on the others. The other men were erecting the back verandah posts, though I'm not sure how far away the balustrading is.

I had a quick walk through the lower floor and it's all feeling really good! I'm really starting to visualise the space.

Enough talking, the important part, the photos from today!:

Second Floor Joists and the Massive Garage Beam

More great progress today, I could get used to this :)

The second floor joists were started today, along with some exterior boards and last, but not least, the huge steel beam running across the centre of the garage. In the initial plans we had a steel pole supporting the garage beam (as the garage is wider than a normal two car garage), however our clever site foreman came up with a solution which meant that we could remove the post and consequently enjoy an unfettered space!

Some pictures from toady:

I wonder if we will see a second story this week? I have my fingers crossed :)