THE BUILDING OF THE GARAGE 2022....

'm so behind with these posts, but this post is definitely one that I want for our future history.  To relocate to the coast, we needed to build a big garage.  We started this process in November, 2021 thinking that it would all be completed by at least the end of March 2022.  Well were we every wrong..

Initially Steve wanted to build a three bay garage but we would need too may relaxations from the council and our builder was convinced that it would never go ahead so back to the drawing board to bring it back to a two bay garage but to retain the height that we wanted which in itself was a relaxation.

We talked to at least four builders and finally settled on Steve who was one of the few builders that got back to us when he said he would..

Our plans finally went to council towards the end of Janauary but even then we were in for a big wait.

By this stage we were also keen to head overseas to see Pete and Maria and the boys but couldn't make any plans until we knew what was going to happen with our shed.  

Steve (our builder) told us that there would be a wait on materials and we were still waiting on approval from the council that in the end we booked flights to Denmark, and Steve assured us that he would have things ready to go by the time we got back in June.  

We finally got approval for our garage as we left Australia to fly to Denmark.  

Whilst we were away Steve (our builder) communicated with us and we picked the colours of our shed so that he could get the ordering started so the materials were ready for us when we got home....

What our house looked like when we first bought it...

By the time this photo was taken, we had put in a new front fence and an electric gate...  The picture even has Dad's car parked in the carpark...

 

We were home by mid June, but had quite a bit of work to do in locating all our plumbing, and electricals, and manholes and telstra lines which were buried underground in our front yard.  As we were going to be concreting over the whole of our front yard, we needed to make sure that these were all in good order before laying a slab on them.

Steve got a plumber in to locate all the pipes and then he slowly started digging to locate them all.  Most of the drainage pipes were a concentina sort of pipe that were all collapsing so we decided to replace them all. 

This drainage all needed to be replaced

These pipes were collapsing...

Water pipes located

 

New water pipes

It was a big job locating all the pipes and then to save a little on costs, Steve dug all the trenches.  Fortunately the ground here is sand so it was a lot easier to dig than had it been dirt..

Steve dug all the trenches

Whilst we were doing all this, we seemed to have constant rain.  Having had 37 inches of rain in February, the water table was still very high and when Steve would dig, often the holes would fill with water..

The holes would fill with water...

Once we knew where all the pipes were, then it was time to call in the plumber to lay new pipes...

New pipes were laid all over our front yard

We even put a little drain in above the concrete slab to help drain the water that accumulated in our front yard.

Once we had all the plumbing done, it was time to call the electrician in.  Once we put the new garage in, our power could no longer go above ground to the house.  We needed to put a power power in our front yard and then direct the power underground to the house.

This means the electrician needed to come in and lay all the electric wires underground also.  Such a process..

The wires all go underground before the concrete....

Once all this work was done, we could then go ahead with taking down the existing carport and then breaking up all the concrete and getting rid of it before the concreting could begin..

The carport is being dismantled...

Holes were drilled before the machinery arrived

The concrete is getting broken up..

Once the concrete was all broken up, it was then time to dig it all up and clear it from the front yard...

A pretty quick process with a machine like this one...

Very easy to dump into the big truck..

This time, they only took the concrete from our yard, our driveway on the footpath was being left until they were ready to do the concreting there.  This part of the job would not happen until after the garage was completed.  It was the last to be done..

We were surprised that the frame work all started to arrive next and it was just delivered to sit in the front yard.  We were a little concerned that it was just being left out in the open in the weather and I in particular was concerned that it would be damaged by the weather

Framework delivered to our front yard

The materials for the roof was delivered whilst we were away with Steve;s family fishing, so we were very shocked to arrive back at the coast and find they they had delivered the roof and completely blocked our driveway.  We had to unpack the car and the trailer from the street and try and get everything around the massive delivery sitting across the gateway...

Who does this.... completely blocked our driveway

Steve  rang our builder to let him know that we were unable to get into our yard and asked that he contact the company that delivered the roof and get them to come and shift it to the side of the yard up against the fence.

Apparently when they delivered it the previous day, they were unable to get close enough to the fence to deliver it where we wanted it delivered due to all the cars parked around and into our driveway.  Fortunately they came back the next day and removed it from the gateway for us, allowing us to finally get our car and trailer into our yard...

The next job was to get the bobcat in and level our front yard ready to concrete.  This was going to get done in two parts, first the concrete slab for the garage and then after a week or so they would come back and concrete the rest of the yard...

No more front yard... just a big dirt pit....

They managed to save our couch for us...

 

 Steve and the concreter discussing where the concrete needed to go and how we wanted it to connect the house to the garage... 

 

 

 

These piles of dirt were being kept as they would need to build up the yard on the driveway side of the garage.  In fact in the end, we needed more soil and had to order a truck load of it to make sure they drainage was right..  

 

 

It is going to be very interesting getting into the house for the next few weeks...

 At the same time all this was happening, Steve (yes another Steve), our electrician arrived with a pole to be inserted into the front corner or our yard ready to be hooked up by Ergon when they were able to do so...

Our power pole for the front yard has arrived..

And in it goes...

The little bobcat made mince meat of the front yard and before we knew it, the yard was levelled and the area for the slab was built up ready for the boys to come back later in the day to box it all up for an early pour of cement in the morning...

It was after 8pm when they arrived to box up for the concrete pour the following morning...

The boys told us that they would be back later in the afternoon to box up ready for the concrete pour in the morning at 5.30am.  We waited and waited for them to come back.  In fact we pretty much had given up home of a pour happening in the morning when by dusk they still had not arrived.

 

We had friends for dinner that night and around 8pm they turned up to do the boxing.  Apparently, they had a shocking day with issues with a job they were working on that afternoon.  As the pour was already booked for the morning it meant they had a pretty long day as the boxing at our place had to be done before they went home.  I had cooked a roast dinner for our guests and since we had quite a bit left over we offered to feed them as it was so late.  They jumped at the chance and enjoyed a late dinner with us as well...

 

At 5.30am the following morning we heard the cement truck arrive and the boys were all out there working hard at it.  They must have been pretty tired as it was at least 10pm by the time they left our place so they wouldn't have got much sleep..x

Pouring the concrete for the garage slab

Slab all poured and being smoothed out..

They were gone by mid morning and off to another job...  They did return a little later in the afternoon to check it all out...

 

This slab needed to cure for a week before they would come back to concrete the rest of the yard.. So for a week we had to deal with the dirt which seemed to find it's way inside.  We were vacuuming twice a day to keep the house clean and tidy..

The following week, they had to cancel as we they day they had booked us in was a wet day with quite a bit of rain.  This meant that we had to wait another week, as they already had jobs booked in for the rest of that week..

Finally they were back and it was time to box up the rest of the yard for the really big concrete pour.  They also realized that we would need more concrete than was first thought and Steve realized this when the plans went to the council.  He spoke to the builder about it and he said that he would take care of it.  In the end, we went halves with him for the extra concrete we needed to order.  All in all though, we still had got a good deal and the price was still heaps better than some of the other quotes we had got...

A very large pour of concrete here

The rio steel goes down...

And once again we had a very early concrete pour with the concrete truck arriving around 5.30am in the morning.  We actually needed two truck loads of cement for this pour..

The boys had to work pretty hard to get this massive amount of concrete screeded..

Because of the side of the giant slabs of cement, the boys needed to come back the following morning to put cuts into it to stop or at least slow down any cracking in the concrete.

By the time the concrete was ready to have the frame go up, we were due to go on 10 days holiday at Agnes Waters.  This process so far had taken almost two months.   Whilst we were away, they started putting up the frame but came across a hitch, and couldn't complete the frame work as they power was still connected to the house and part of the frame butted up to the house where they power was still coming in, so once again we were at a stand still now until Ergon was able to come out and redirect our power..

The frame started to go up...

Dave and Tina came for a visit to check it out whilst we were off holidaying at Agnes..

At the same time, we were getting the rest of the yard concreted, our electrician Steve was around, getting the pole in our front yard ready for Ergon, and also setting up the electrical meter box on the front of the garage ready to have power reconnected to our house....

Steve (our electrician) working on the pole in our front yard..

We've had a change from the side of the back of the garage to the side of the garage...

Building the garage was a slow progression as we could not continue the build until Ergon came and disconnected power from the house and connected it to our pole.  This process took over 8 weeks as we had to wait for a traffic control crew to come and monitor  the footpath traffic off the motorway.  All very frustrating as we wanted to get back to Rocky and work on the house up there.   

Finally they arrived, an 8 week wait for a job that took less than two hours and only two people walking past on the footpath.  And that traffic control cost us $1500.  Crazy stuff...

Our traffic controllers

Connecting power to our pole...

Yes it is finally done, we now have underground power to the house...

Now the powerbox is being checked out...

Once this was done, the builders moved in.  They were super quick.  They said all along that it would only take a week or so to erect the shed, and as most of the frame work was already done, it did go up pretty quickly.  They were able to put in the final panel along the wall of the house and then it was time to put on the roof.

It was interesting to watch them put the roof on.  They came in long panels that slotted in together and they ran them across the frame of the garage on blankets...

The roof is almost on...

Only a couple of panels to go

Roof is on....

Working on enclosing the sides attached to the house...

Bolts about to go in...

Door getting installed

We now have a lovely glass door into our garage from our patio..

After the door was fitted, the windows went in next.  Super happy with how it is all coming together.  We even have fly screens with the windows...

Windows being installed..

Cladding goes on next...

It was pretty exciting to see the cladding go on the walls.   It's almost finished.  Just waiting now for the panel lift doors to arrive...

Once the actual garage was finished, Steve our electrician arrived back on the scene to connect power to the garage.  We are putting extra power into the garage, along with a 15amp plug for our caravan.  We also putting in four large fluro lights and he has to have ceiling power for the panel lift door...

Metres and metres of cable going into the garage

We couldn't recommend this electrician more highly.  He has done a brilliant job and was at our beck and call for months whilst the build was happening.  He was extremely reasonably priced as well.   In fact we will get getting him back when we need to put more power into our back shed, and I will be looking for some more power in the house as well.

 

The last part of the garage to be finished was the installation of our massive panel lift door.  This had to be done over a couple of stages, as initially they didn't bring rails long enough for the door to slide up onto. 

Connecting the panels all together...

Slowing getting put together piece by piece...

In the process of doing this door, the guys were also going to put the old electric motor from our old roller door on one of the roller doors on the shed at the back.  Little did we know that the doors down the back were on their last legs and by trying to connect a motor to them, the rust presented itself to us in such a way that we ended up having to order two new roller doors for the back shed as well.

Almost there...

Almost there from the outside...

Switches for the panel lift door...

Wahoo.... it's all done.  The garage is finally totally lockable...

One happy chappy...

Looks pretty impressive outside as well...

Only one more concreting job to do, and the whole build will be finished.  Meanwhile, we decided to plant one of the new gardens up as we wanted it to be a little bit established before we left to head back to Rocky.  We figured we would need a month or so of watering daily to get it established.  

 

We headed off to a couple of nurseries to check out some plants and bought a couple and then we headed to Bunnings to pick out some flowering plants.  I picked these to make a colourful border around the garden edge..

These plants formed my colourful border...

Steve planting our new plants...

Planted some lavendar to help with the insects

Our garden is finished

The last to be done was our driveway out to the road.  We were ripping up the old driveway and widening the new one so that it was the same width as our electric gate.  This would also help up navigate the traffice on the highway that runs past our house and give us a little more space to get out as cars cannot park in your drive way... 

Old driveway being ripped up...

A little concrete added to the front of our shed - easier access for vehicles into the shed..

We needed a little concreting done between patio and the new garage...

Had to close off the footpath for 24 hours until the concrete set..

Last of the concrete gets poured

Work being carried out under the watchful eye of Steve...

Can't believe that it is finally all done...

 

Our wonderful concreter.  He and his mate did a great job...

Just a couple of small jobs and we now have more concrete than lawn.  At least as we get old, we won't have as much to mow... Ha Ha Ha....

All completed.

Now that the concreting and shed are finished, there was really only one more job that Steve had to do and that was to reconnect our electric gate and lay the tracking for the gate once again..

Drilling into the new concrete to lay the tracks for our electric gate...

Trying to get the tracks to line up...

And finally our project is all completed.  It literally has taken 12 months from the time we first approached builders until it is complete and ready to hand over to us....  But it was so worth it.  To say we are truly happy with it would be an understatement.  We love the renovations and they have certainly made life here a lot easier for us and given us lots of extra room...

Next big event here now is to host Willow's 10th Birthday party in a couple of weeks time...