My Long Job

For the last year or so we have been working at a house on Bloomsbury street in Hyde Park. The work there started as a small job of clearing the block and a small extension but now after 12 months we have finally finished. We started by clearing the whole block. There was endless over grown trees and bushes and in the end we took four truck loads of vegetation, fences and even a pond away. We put in a new sewage drain to incorporate the new bathrooms and a new kitchen and took it out to the street. We then poured a slab for a bathroom extension which is the part of the building that sticks out in the sixth photo. I then put up the colourbond fence which runs the whole length on the block on one side, photo 1, and poured the slab that the front door and entrance way sit on, photo 6. We then poured the slab under the verandah for the stone tiles to be laid on, photo 6,and knocked out two walls and cut in a few doorways inside.

We then moved on to site works and dug out tonnes of bricks and rubbish that was buried in the ground outside and brought back truck loads of rubble and fill to bring the levels back up to what they were.

We were then back into concreting and put up a retaining wall for the brush fence along the other side of the block, photo 8, and a concrete plinth for the rendered wall at the back to sit on, photo 3. Our concreting did not end there though. We dug the footings for the car port pillars to sit on and a pad for the electrical box to sit on, photos 7 and 8 and then I poured another plinth for the front brush fence and repaired the curb outside.

With the concreting down we re-ran all of the storm water from the whole house into a huge soakage pit in the front lawn area. The pit was 5 meters deep by 5 meters long by 1.5 meters wide and had a holding capacity of about 20000 liters plus its soakage, so it would easily take all of the roof water.

We then started on the paving. There was 280 square meters of paving which is a lot. It took us a while because of the heat we have been getting but we got it done and it looks great.

Once all the paving was down, grouted and edged we dug out all of the gardens 500mm below the paving level and put 25 tonne of loam in for the gardens and lawn to be planted in.

It was a long, strung out sort of job but it was good because it didn't get tedious because it was so varied. I am definitely thankful it is finished though.

I guess its off to the next job for me now. I hope I don't drive there in the morning out of habit, lol.