Crazy week part 2

Tuesday, 19 April 2022

Tuesday

After finishing work later on Monday, Jon and I both worked longish days on Tuesday, followed by a zoom call with the bank, followed by driving to up to St Helens in the dark, arriving after 10. Luckily we had some accommodation organised in our friend's holiday house, so we had a good night's sleep.

Wednesday

But there was to be no sleep-in. We were up at 6 so we could go to the site before everything started happening. It was pretty exciting to see a huge crane towering over the street - according to its minders it had arrived and been set up the night before after doing a job in Bicheno.

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We had time for a quick walk around the site before the first truck rolled around the corner.

The truck later drivers told us they left Westbury at 3am that morning so it had only taken 3 hours to get to St Helens (via the Lake Leake road as the alternatives had too many tight corners). They also told us they had a delivery to Port Huon the previous week which had them doing a 7 hour drive from midnight. Our blocks were far from the widest structures they'd delivered.   

When the first truck arrived there were a few discussions but generally the whole process was performed pretty calmly by the large crew as I guess they've done it heaps of times before. 

Discussions over it was action stations as the crane was manoeuvred around, the temporary roof over the bottom section was removed, two large slings were attached and eventually 1/4 of our holiday house was lifted up and onto the block.

While the first bit was secured to the footings with by the on-site welding crew (of 1), the next truck was driven into position.

This part had to be lifted from the top rather than with slings, as the floor structure wasn't as rigid since it was the upper story. The lower part had steel girders underneath it. 

It looked to be a lot harder and slower to lock the top story in place so Jon and I took the opportunity to go and get hot drinks and choose the carpet from the local flooring shop:

Once back on site we could see everything was secured and the welder was busy attaching tall poles to the other half of the site to hold up the other half of the top floor (the bottom right hand side will be the front door and enclosed garage which needs to be built on-site onto the concrete slab).

We had to leave at this point, but before we did, Jon talked the site manager into letting us go up a ladder to take a look at the view from the upper story. Yay - we could see the water!

We are next to an even taller & wider house which is still being built, which blocks out the neighbours behind even more than we do:

As our house is fairly narrow, our behind-neighbours (tenants) can still see out their left and right end main windows. Although I wouldn't be surprised if that place is demolished and something even taller is built behind us - they are currently very basic little units. The owner bought them after all our planning had been started - so they knew what was coming in front of them.

Anyway - at this stage we had to say goodbye and zoom back to Hobart for us both to catch up on our work, and pack for Queensland. It was great to see the photos of the house when they were sent through at the end of the day. It's no architectural marvel but I think it looks great.  The bottom rhs will be enclosed.

Now there is a few more months of waiting while the garage/front door area is completed, the stairs are installed, the deck is tiled and the deck railings attached. The kitchen benches and tiling needs to be finished too, and lots more things that we probably aren't even aware of. 

Thursday

After the big day, Thursday was also pretty huge with a hectic last day of work, last minute packing and then cleaning for the house sitters, followed by a late evening flight to Queensland. Amazingly we arrived on time at 11pm, but we had to endure a few hours of stuffing around picking up the hire car which was off site and involved a shuttle bus which couldn't fit us all in at once.  It was amazing to finally get to bed at 1am.