Who says time is linear anyway? And cladding.

Hands up who thought this build would never get finished?
I’m sure that in one of the many multiverses out there, it is finished. If we ignore linear time and just go with the accepted theory of the existence of spacetime for now, that whole question of when this project will be done starts to matter a lot less, so I’m going with that as it gets me off the hook.

There has been a black hole of time between my blog posts, but during that time a lot of smaller stuff has been happening. Life also got in the way of the build for a while – I had a few set backs like breaking my back, long story there but I’m fine now. Not during the build, I did it saving my dog. There was nothing spectacular involved, just an awkward and hard impact fall. I don’t lift very heavy weights anymore, and am careful lifting while bending, but otherwise am functional.

On the build front, I think given the bushfires and COVID-19 I should get three years credit on my non-linear timeline. There was a mad shortage of trades up here for what seemed like forever. I was making regular inquiries and people were booked up for 6 to 12 months with big jobs and not interested in mine so I got on with other things, like work.

The next step that I’ve been chasing up is the external cladding. I finally got the motivation to get moving on that again because the tradies started answering the phone again and sounding interested. The cladding has been going on since November, yeehah! The inside has changed a lot and is down to skirting boards, trim and some remaining little paint jobs and I think I’ll keep that part for a big reveal, it’s looking great.

The first layer of the outside cladding job has involved adding horizontal timber battens. The subfloor is being enclosed so that is being framed out as well.

Timber battens going onto the container walls as Step 1 of the BAL FZ wall covering. There is already some old firefly blanket peeking out that runs under the deck upstairs.

Then the timber framing is filled with rockwool insulation batts. I always knew I would have to clad the containers so I kept my insulation on the inside to a thin layer of spray foam to keep the walls thin and save some internal space. The house was already cosy with that wall insulation plus the ceiling and roof insulation; I have stuffed insulation into all the different layers because, why not, it’s a relatively low-cost material and makes the house more thermally efficient. So, there is insulation in the ceilings below the container steel, then more above the container steel in the roof cavity and under the upstairs deck.

Suddenly there is more wall insulation on the outside now and wowsers, it has made a difference already. I was thinking of getting reverse cycle aircon but will probably wait one more summer and winter to see if I need it. Once the required metal shutters are on all the windows and glass doors, for BAL FZ compliance, I can regulate how the sun comes in over summer, or not. There is plenty of light coming into the house so closing up one wall at time, or even just the biggest glazing areas, won’t create too much of a dark cave vibe.

Rockwool insulation batts fill the gaps in the timber frame, to make the house super cozy.

For winter warmth, after busting my back the lugging of firewood to heat the house is something I had to consider more carefully. Necessity is the mother of invention and immediately after the injury I worked out a way to sit in front of the fire on a low stool and put my elbows on my knees as a support to kind of leaver the wood into the fireplace using mostly my forearms. It is amazing how much you use your back for almost everything.

For a fly on the wall (no more huntsmen spiders lately), it would have been amusing to watch me moving the around the house trying to avoid using or bending my back. A bipedal vertebrate with a malfunctioning vertebrae is not the most elegant creature, not that elegance has ever been my thing. Add in all the house building jobs and you’ve got some potential slapstick comedy happening on a daily basis. Picture someone balancing a book on their head at all times and you get the idea, except when it’s an upper lumbar problem some other muscles get weird and so imagine a 100 yr old whose hip and knee joints don’t work properly either and whose butt sticks out when they bend. That’s one of the reasons that things involving bending down to floor level have waited until last, like skirting boards and cleaning out under the house.

I tried to use AI to generate an image but this older lady, and the ones in all the other illustration options, all bend down far more gracefully and with more flexibility than I could! Even when I asked for “awkwardly bending”. Serves me right for being ageist. The AI also missed the fly on the wall that I requested. Otherwise it’s a nice picture.

A big shout out to all my friends who stopped by and helped, like loading the wood inside by the fireplace for me, and coming up to help cut and paint skirting boards to get me motivated again.

I am ok shifting firewood again now, but in case I’m ever feeling under the weather then having a back-up source of heat that involves just pushing a button has become very attractive. I already have a small and efficient electric wall heater (a fancy eco oil heater) in the dining space, which I have tested out and it kept the house at a nice temperature during some milder spring and autumn days even before the wall insulation went in. I will see how the next winter goes now that the house is snugly wrapped in another rockwool blanket.

Back to the cladding, and over the timber and rockwool goes a layer of TBA Firefly blanket, my chosen BAL FZ wall system, then sarking and a layer of non-combustible material, in this case Colorbond sheeting. I originally looked at MgO board but it has to be painted or rendered and then maintained which would be pricey given my 7m high external walls. There were also a few horror stories about some products delaminating, and overall a fair bit of advice about the fact it’s better as an underlying material, not as a final finish.

The TBA Firefly blanket then goes over the top, followed by a layer of sarking. I’m not going to show the blue breathable sarking as it’s all branded and turns the house into a big add for a hardware store.

The Colorbond sheeting is all on, and the flashing is currently going onto the doors and windows. For external colours, every shade of grey is still in vogue and Colorbond has a distinct shortage of warm sandstone colours, which is what I wanted to use given all the sandstone cliff lines up here. They stopped producing a colour called Terrain which I wanted to use because it looked a bit like the ironstone layers in the local rock pagodas, and with that colour unavailable I didn’t like the other reds they have. So, although the house colour schedule is roughly the same, without the red-brown included I have ended up going a bit more neutral and probably classier than I had originally intended.

A sneak peek of a finished wall, being all shy and hiding behind the scaffold. Fair enough, when you see this wall fully exposed you’ll probably either love it or hate it. These are my two main colours, paperbark and gully.

Yes the window flashing is on the outside, there is a clever little gutter hidden at the top of it and the guys that did it had a great eye for detail, including hand cutting it to fit the corrugations, which is apparently called “scribe finishing the Z channels”

Given there is no concrete slab in this build the approved finish at the bottom of the subfloor, where the walls meet the ground, was to run the sheets into gravel so that bit is still to be done.

The house is looking much more like a house, or a mini-monolith as I call it. The outside is starting to look more like my plans and drawings and it is making me happy seeing that come together, it’s very satisfying to see a drawing come to life.

I am building this place mortgage free, and so delays have not been all bad and have meant I had more time to save up. That might be required again before the window shutters go on, but over the next months I’m doing a blitz on the cladding, water tanks and balustrades so the shutters should be the final job.

A few people seem stressed about how long this build has taken, expect for other owner builders who often make me feel better by telling me how long it took them to finish their houses. While it was initially frustrating, I gave up on the stress a few years back since there was no point to it, so it hasn’t fussed me too much. Depending on which school of physics you favour, there is no such thing as the past or the future anyway. The upside of the long timeframe is that it has allowed me some more time for thought (beyond contemplating spacetime) about the build to improve the design of a few things. Alongside a lot of smaller internal stuff, the position and size of water tanks was one of those things (council approved of course), which will be in a following blog. So, unless life throws me another curve ball there will be more blogs soon.