Anyone Heard from Q

Has to get the windows in before I get there in a few weeks time, or else :love:. Has been all a bit too much for him, things just piling up one upon the other and it gets hard to see that light at the end of the tunnel, but it is starting to get there. All he really wants to do is get that special SF finished and out on the road, ride his bicycle, and enjoy life. Bloody building projects are famous stress bombs.
 
I tend to take on too many building jobs for family and friends, so I end up ignoring my own home maintenance. With my own house I seem to adopt the attitude that I know it needs doing and will get to it one day, but not today because I have other shit to do.

Like today, I promised to go and clean the roof gutters on my sister's house. She's over 80, a pensioner and lives alone. I know she can't really afford pay someone to do it, and I don't want her getting up a ladder at her age, so lucky me gets to do it.

I'll send Q an email to let him know he's missed. Although I'm sure his brother (Tippie) is keeping him in the loop.
 
My house has been on the go since 2014. For the first 5 years it consumed my life. Years before actually starting to build I spent most of my time milling timber for the build and clearing an acre of big trees and bush. Took about 18 months just to burn the pile that I didn't salvage.
Did everything myself only paying a contractor to plumb the gas and machine time for the site works. Massive undertaking.
Vince, you'd be hard pressed to find a tradie that could build my house with the precision and details that have gone into it.
I sit around at night sometimes just looking at the details and woodwork and amaze myself that I got this far.
Built like a piece of hi end furniture. Very satisfying. Now I've got to start the 7m extension on the end of the house that'll be the
bike parking/workshop/drinking and general hanging out area. Keeping it simple building it out of steel then finishing it with timber details.
Need to start milliing timber again so as to hide the steel. This house will keep me busy for years to come finishing it off. By then I'll probably move to Thailand and start building a house on some land I have up there. But this time I'll be project managing while watching the plebs do all the work.
 
Blimey Rob, you must enjoy building stuff. So do I, but only up to a point. I've renovated a few houses, built a bunch of sheds, but have never started from scratch with an empty block of land and done it all myself like you have. But if I had done so, I'm sure I wouldn't want to start all over again somewhere else.

I know what you mean about getting tradesmen to do things, and it ending up not being done to the standard you expect.

Two examples:

When I built my shed I got a builder to do the ground works, perimeter foundation wall and floor slab. It's on a sloping block so needed a foundation wall that went from nothing at one end to about 1200 high at the other. I decided to get a builder to do it mainly because I was working full-time myself and didn't have all the gear needed to do a concrete slab. During the perimeter wall stage, I'd come home after work and inspect what they'd done during the day. I'd measure it up and find that it was wrong. Not just a little bit, but a lot wrong. Enough for the steel shed not to fit on it. I had to get them to tear it down twice and start again. Their first attempt was 100mm out of square. Second attempt had 80 mm difference in level in the 9m from one end to the other. Third attempt was still 20mm out of square and one wall had a slight bend in it, but I figured I could live with that. It's only a tin shed after all, and I could massage it to fit. But I could have done it better myself.

I gutted and re-built my kitchen. Moved walls, doors, etc. I had all the cupboards and bench top made by a kitchen fit-out supplier but did everything on site myself. Fitted the window, doors, architraves, did brickwork, plastering, painting, installed all the cupboards, did all the plumbing and wiring, etc. The only job in the entire project I got someone else to do was to lay the floor vinyl because I didn't feel confident that I could make a good enough job of it myself. Guess what the only thing in the kitchen is that I'm not happy with. Yep, the fucking floor vinyl. The bloke managed to misalign the square (fake tile) pattern in the floor vinyl with the rest of the room. It's only off by about 2° but enough to see. I doubt anyone else notices it because nobody looks at the floor, but I see it every day because I know it's there.
 
My comment wasn't directed at you pernickety bunch, but at those who have never touched a tool, watch a TV home reno show and go full tilt. They are about and there are a lot of them.
 
motoddrob said:
My house has been on the go since 2014. For the first 5 years it consumed my life. Years before actually starting to build I spent most of my time milling timber for the build and clearing an acre of big trees and bush.
Click to expand...
Rob's house build is old-world craftsmanship reflected in the details of his woodworking joinery skills, using really beautiful native timbers finished to perfection. If he ever makes it back to California I have a kitchen that needs his skills, the man is an artist.
 
But how many houses get built using a Demel, sorry Rob I couldn't resist. I well remember THAT rack on the Motod, typical work of art from you. Do you have a pic of THAT RACK? I once visited a mates relos place built on a Potato Farm at Roberson in NSW, he had used solid undressed bush wood, I couldn't call it timber as it was tree limbs, for all the handrails and door handles on his house. Some people as just so talented. My only claim to fame in this was using shiplap cedar to line the skillion ceiling out the back of my place including lining the boards up as they crossed the big beam holding it all up, well it impressed me at the time.
 
Seems to have spent my life making shit. The housed is by far the biggest project I've undertaken. If I had known then what I know now I would've just built another shed fitted out for living.
The diagonal measures from corner to corner is within 5 mm so my house is square. When setting the levels for the bearers using a water lever my misses coined the phrase fucken half mill.
Before the house it was the Motodd.
Beats watching brain dead TV
 
Hi you bunch of mongrels. I really appreciate the concern expressed by you.

Yeah, i've been out in the wilderness metaphorically speaking. I'm only the owner-builder and trust me, I am getting professionals to do the work - but I am definitely in the project manager's chair. Prob has been just how long it's taking and the stress of having a seeming wall (in my head) of endless tasks and problems has really taken a toll on me. I could write 10 pages on how and why I find myself in in my current mental state. Even the plumbing and stormwater isn't simple (ask Hooksey :eek: ).

But the project progresses. My main drama lately is that I have a $20k blackbutt floor already down and no fukken windows and doors - that to me is arse about, but let's not go there. I found a joint that can source the IGUs from an external supplier and have them here in 3 weeks (compared with another quote that was 2 1/2 times higher and 8 weeks after payment). I've paid in full - now waiting and hoping. Trying to keep the place dry in the wettest La Nina-est seasons we've had in decades, all held out by flimsy bloody tarps. Delays of 4-6 weeks sourcing special timber (that should be unobtanium in this current building environment) hasn't helped. Oh yeah, a hernia, covid, a delay in the hernia op booked for May as a result, a horrendous flu, the op - finally in August, the recovery (6 weeks NO lifting anything heavier than 5kg!), a mother in law who suddenly suffered kidney failure and is now on full dialysis. Just a few things to make life a little easier for me :ROFLMAO:

If you really want an indication of where my head is - my SFQ is literally 99% complete but I can't drag myself mentally away from this build and the anxiety it has caused me to actually go out into my little workshop and finish it. I'm talking: fit the primary drive, ignition, starter and alternator, the pistons, barrels and head, put the motor, exhaust and carbs on and set up the Ignitech. In my normal life that's a day's work. I will get there and there is light at the end of this dark tunnel I find myself in.

Thanks bigly to Cam for getting in touch to check in on me. And Tippie and I talk regularly. I've got a Cowboys and Indians tent set up in the backyard (ie the swamp) for his creature comforts upon arrival from Norway in a few weeks time.

Cheers all,
q
 
motoddrob said:
Seems to have spent my life making shit. The housed is by far the biggest project I've undertaken. If I had known then what I know now I would've just built another shed fitted out for living.
The diagonal measures from corner to corner is within 5 mm so my house is square. When setting the levels for the bearers using a water lever my misses coined the phrase fucken half mill.
Before the house it was the Motodd.
Beats watching brain dead TV
Click to expand...

Would love to see your house Rob, hopefully one day I'll get over there.
Just gotta get there before you head back
to Thailand.
Can just see you lounging around a Traditional Thai house a la Jim Thompson's place :cool::cool:
 
Q you think that's dumb, I worked for an insane Architect who insisted we start gyprocking before the roof was finished to keep to his bloody stupid schedule. I am so happy to be not involved in that crap anymore.
 
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