We Have a Slab

After a few weeks of hard work filling concrete block cores we finally have a slab.  It took around 150 tons of fill once the foundation walls were core filled and today the weather held off enough for us to get the slab poured.  We had a few light showers but this didn't stop the slab being finished.

So now we have a few weeks waiting for the slab to cure in the Tassie winter before we can start getting the wall structures up and the roof on, which will lead to the all important straw filling and rendering. There's a lot more to do, but finally being out of the ground is a great start.

It's been a year already

Wednesday last week was our one year anniversary of moving to Tasmania. We can't believe that it's been that long, although in many ways it feels a lot longer.

So a status update is probably in order to celebrate...

Lily is going well, she is generally very well behaved except that she needs to bury any bones you give her. Not for a long time mind you, it just seems that they have to be covered in dirt. Usually this isn't a huge problem, but with all the rain in the last few days we haven't really been keeping an eye on things and when we went out tonight we realised she's dug up about 1/3 of the vegie patch. Anyway, we'll get over it I'm sure

Assuming that it ever stops raining, we should have a house slab laid next week. Derek has discovered the worst job in building cement block walls - core filling them with concrete. He's made over 7 tonnes of concrete so far, and he's only just started doing the garage walls. Needless to say that he's much more like a tradie at the moment than a computer nerd, no more soft office hands :-)

On my job front, I've neglected to mention that I never went back to Housing Tasmania. Merc offered me a position to stay working with her in Disability, Housing and Community Services - I am the Manager, Service Improvement and Design (we're not entirely sure what it means yet either).

We'll post some photos of the house when the slab goes down.

Our floorplan

We've been pretty slack about getting this up, so apologies for that. There have been some minor internal changes since this was drawn up, but they are only minor.

Some notes on the drawing:
- the thick external walls are the strawbales
- the corner window in the lounge is a window seat
- the stairs in the studio go to a mezzanine level (we're unsure about this at the moment)

The quality of the scan is quite low but it gives the general concept of the building. For those of you who don't know, the house has been designed by Nigel Jones, who does quite a lot of sustainable design and has done more than a few strawbale homes.

And a building update:

We have a garage slab and the footings for the main slab poured. The brickies have been hard at work the last couple of days, with Derek's able assistance, and we have almost all of the walls in the garage completed.

Hopefully the deluge that has been the last 24 hours has now stopped and they can get on with more tomorrow - there has been some localised flooding in Huonville tonight but it hasn't cut us off from the highway so it's not too bad.

Our New Addition

For those of you who don't know, one of the things we had planned to do when we moved down here was to get a dog. The plan was to rescue a pound puppy, and we've been keeping an eye on the RSPCA Adopt-a-pet and Hobart Dogs' Homes site since just after Christmas.

A couple of weeks ago we were heading up north for Agfest, yes it was as exciting as it sounds and I'm sure Derek will write all about it, we found a puppy we thought would be right in Devonport. So after an exciting morning of looking at heavy equipment, water tanks and bogans we headed up to the RSPCA.

Long story short, we decided that Lily would be the perfect addition to our family so we adopted her and picked her up last Saturday. She is a Springer Spaniel/Labrador cross and is very pretty. She is 8 months old and has obviously had a bit of training, although she forgets it when excited - which she is very often.

We had a very sleepless night on Saturday night, but we think we've resolved the problems and last night was much better.

Lily has been keeping Derek company in the ute and up on the land for the past couple of days. She will be spending a lot of time with Derek while he is building the house, and hopefully we socialise her with the german shepherd next door quite soon so he doesn't have to keep hiding her in the car.

Building Permit

We finally have jumped through all of the initial hoops and we now have a Building Permit!!!

This means that we can start the slab work next week, as planned, which is extremely exciting and a little bit daunting at the same time. So more to come shortly, on this and a few other things.

It's official - Derek is never allowed to pick another movie!

Supporting the Australian film industry be damned I say! In some sort of delusional mindset last night I let Derek choose a DVD, which we are currently watching. I should know better, after the debacle that was Drop Dead Sexy but I let him pick anyway.

So what is the movie you need to avoid at all cost to your sanity - Arctic Blast! It isn't even finished yet, but I really want the -80 degrees Fahrenheit fog to kill everyone in the movie, now so I don't have to tolerate any more sh!tty acting and moronic dialogue.

What's worse is that it is mainly set in Hobart, so that should make it a little more fun. Instead we notice all of the geographical and social anomalies - like the fact that it is a school day but Salamanca Markets are on!!!! I can't wait for the end, especially since it appears that we're all going to be saved by the AMERICAN in the movie! Right now I'm begging for a rift in the ozone layer - make it stop :-)

Where has the time gone?

No we haven't dropped off the face of the earth, it may just feel like it at times :-) It's been over three months since we posted so there is a bit to cover off.

Visitors
We've had a number of people come and visit, which has been fantastic. Recently that has included Derek's parents and then three days later my parents - which was probably too much of a good thing in such a short period, but nice nonetheless.

My Job
Things are going well in Housing Tasmania, I'm really enjoying my job - although I could spend a little less time with some of the National agencies. I've been asked to assist our new Executive Director (she was the Director of Housing) sorting out the structure and strategy for joining Housing with Disability and Community Services, which is an exciting opportunity for the next month or so.


The Current House
After waiting forever to try to get our roof replaced we've finally found someone else to do the job. The tin has been delivered and if the rain ever stops we'll have a new roof very soon. It's a good thing that it wasn't actually leaking! It's one of the things that we're slowly getting used to, we came here to have a more laid back lifestyle we just didn't realise how that would work with the tradies :-)


The New House
We've had some progress with the house. Early in the new year we did bulk excavation on the block, turning it from our lovely bush block to a moonscape.

 

We put 90 tonnes of gravel down for the driveway and future site of Derek's shed.

Fortunately our neighbour has an excavator, a really big one, so the whole process was made a little easier.

On the plus side it is a start to the whole process.

The plans have been signed off by the engineer and are now in with the Council. We should hear back next week on the approval for that, then we need to get the 'Special Plumbing Permit' approved the week after and we're ready to start on the slab.

And, probably the biggest progress to date, we now have a house number - 150.

So that gets us pretty much up to date I'd say. We'll try to be more regular with this in future - assuming I can ever get Derek to do a blog post :-)