Rockbeare

Posts about our house and renovations from our time living in Melbourne at Rockbeare Grove

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Windows go in

Not much to say, flooring continuing and sashless sliders now in. Also picked door handles. Looking good!

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Finally an update...

Apologies for the lateness, but with camping trips and being in Sydney, not a lot of time this week. It was a short week, only three days last week but a fair bit was achieved. The small deck to the shed has now been “refurbished” and the window frame are

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Painting and steps

Spent 1 and half days on the weekend just gone painting the ceiling in both the renovated and new part of the house. Corey and Bruce lent a hand on Saturday which was much appreciated. End result, a great looking ceiling, and two days on, a sore back! So far

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More progress outside

Now that the main deck is essentially complete, other progress has been made too. The cladding has continued around now to the laundry and also above the pergola. The laundry deck is now complete. Inside, the cornices went up and the delivery of the flooring happened. According to James the

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Deck is (almost) finished!

It’s all looking fantastic — next big job is to oil it all! Not a lot has changed inside at the moment, the progress is consistent, but nothing much in the way of great photo’s. The plastering is complete bar cornices which go up tomorrow, the deck is down,

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Week 12: Pergola and deck begin

Work moved outside in full swing today while the plasters continue inside (well, will when they rock up again — think they were sick today along with most of the rest of Melbourne). Pergola beams up now. The first 5 rows of decking are down — it’s fantastic to finally walk

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End of week 11

At the end of this week, we’ve found ourselves in two seperate parts of the house with the wall between the temporary kitchen and lounge room not only framed up, but plastered as well. This means we now have to got the “long way” around. It makes the house

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Jasper and his new room

No photos, but a funny story. Jasper is very proud that he is getting a “new” room. When Lilly came to visit today he dragged her to show her his “new bedroom”. She was quite confused as it is clearly a temporary kitchen and looked very bemused at him. This

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More progress shots

Some assorted progress shots New end room. Karina in our temporary kitchen The new bath The “Feature” niche — with bonus drill New skylight in the bathroom.

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Week 11: Plaster starts going up

Blogger is still causing me some problems with picture loading! Not sure what it different, but it’s a 50 / 50 excercise at the moment. Will see how we go this morning… and I finally figured it out. Had my directories confused and was trying to load original graphics at

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Picture time!

OK, created a test blog and pictures loaded up OK. So back here to try again! And… it’s working! Must have been a temporary glitch with blogger! Jason working hard taking the beam out above the kitchen. For those attempting documenting their own renovations — caution is encouraged when using

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Demolition and stump grubbing

There was a large amount of progress this week. One thing that’s really noticeable is how much room there is as old fittings get pulled out. A major piece of work was moving the beam in the kitchen up into the roof. Generally speaking it seems like (with the

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Week 9: Exciting times!

Highlight for me so far is taking two days off this week to build the garden beds under the deck and also to oil the cladding. After a few false starts, mis-measurements and general uncertainty, I was really pleased with where Dad and I ended up today. The first visibile

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Week 8 progress

There has been a lot of progress internally on the house last week, culminating with the elctricians completing the “rough-in” on Friday. The old bathroom has been completely gutted now, and the new frame put up inside. James has done a fair bit of work to straighten the exterior wall

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Week 8: Internal demolition *really* begins

The bathroom, pantry and laundry were fully gutted. We also had the skip arrive and the large pile of rubbish loaded up for removal. We’ve now pretty much moved fully into the front few rooms, only venturing into the back of the house to use the kitchen and the

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Cladding goes on the outside

Completed cladding on the SW face of the house. Ella’s 5th birthday today too! Jasper and Ella playing in the gradually-being-demolished laundry. Standing in the demolished wall between the pantry and the laundry.

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Week 6: Under the tiles

Monday was a big day with lots of visible progress inside the house where the tiles were ripped up, some cupboards removed and the architraves and doors removed from the pantry and laundry. Tuesday slowed a little, with no visible evidence of progress however the cladding and the decking was

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Panorama shot

Stitched another three photo’s from the camera together to give an updated view of the progress. Click here to see the full image The blue home wrap is hiding the new beam which has been inserted to bear the roof load. Architraves from door and windows now gone, all

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We have a roof!

Pictures speak louder than words today. After some terrible weather, we have a perfect day, just when the roof sheeting arrives. It’s really looking sensational. After travelling to canberra for the day I also managed to get home early enough to enjoy a beer with the boys just on

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Week 5: Tuesday, bad weather

Good progress was made yesterday with the outriggers, noggins and battens completed for the roof. James said there would be a small delay waiting for the roofing material (colourbond steel) to arrive. This has worked out well because the weather today was atrocious — I seriously doubt any progress could have

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End of week 4: Rafters appear

It’s been a busy couple of days with me getting home late and no work on Wednesday, so a bit late in the next few pictures. The major progress is that the rafters have now been fitted, gives a real sense of the building now and looks fantastic. Target

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Foil sarking goes on

Visually significant progress today with the foil sarking added to the walls. They look like walls now! The landing for the new laundry door has also commenced (you can’t see it, it’s the other side of the building) and the new extension roof has been joined now to

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Week 4: Frame, meet house!

Monday of week 4 and the frame is now in place around the perimeter of the base. All the huge gaps are where the windows will go. It’s going to take a couple of days before these are “filled in” as we are waiting on feature posts — reclaimed timber

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Floor goes in and frame begins

I’ve been away in Sydney for the last couple of days so had high hopes the floor would be down by time I got back. I was pleasantly surprised to see that not only was the floor down, but also the frame had started going up. Now that you

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Bearers and joists!

Wow, it feels like major progress today. You can really see the back of the house starting to take shape now. Ant caps on the posts (as promised in previous entry). Looking back at the house from the edge of the deck. It’s a little hard to make out