The Gruen Eco Design blog about how to convert your dream of an energy efficient home into a reality.
Hallelujah. What a journey it has been.
Early October we received all the final paperwork for finance. Which we signed and dropped off at the branch on the same day, so as not to risk any further delay with the postage. And then it took about another week to get it all finalised. We have now sent the builders invoices to the bank. The ones we had already paid over the last few months. For which we will receive a reimbursement. And also the latest invoice. Which will get paid straight to the builder. A total of 4 invoices at once. If all goes well, we should receive the payment in the next few days.
Insert happy dance here ?
This means we can go ahead and order and pay some of the things that will be required soon. For instance:
- remainder of the windows payment
- entry door
- external shading for upstairs windows
- timber flooring
- bathroom fixtures and fittings
Very exciting. Even more exciting: the ground floor SIP’s walls have been installed. It is starting to look like a house.
So, what is happening next?
Over the next couple of weeks, the internal stud walls will be installed, together with the timber flooring for the first floor. We will also install the block work on the boundary for the study. After that the first floor SIPs wall and the SIPs roof will go on. This will only take a few days.
Building a single storey sips house is super fast. The entire structure can go up within a few days. However, when going for a double storey, like in our instance, the construction gets slowed down again. Unless you chose a prefabricated floor structure. Something like a CLT flooring. However, this solution cost more. So we had opted for the more traditional construction approach. Nonetheless, all the walls and the roof should be up end of October, early November the latest.
We still have to decide on the final details for our HRV. And where we will hide all the ducts. This can be a bit challenging when you have raked ceilings throughout…
We are also in the process of doing some tiny internal changes, around our built-in robes. You might remember that we are going to use ikea robes for the bedrooms and in the upstairs hallway. So, we now have to actually plan and detail them. And then potentially adjust some plasterboard walls around them. So that they look like built-in robes.
I am still planning to write a post about our finance journey. And why it was harder to get our payment schedule through. I will try to write a separate post about that shortly.
Stay tuned!