Roof Goes Up

The scaffolding went up yesterday and within a single morning Craig's team has installed all the Ritek roofing. Quick installation is one of the benefits.

Ritek is a composite material - 200mm of foam sandwiched between two corrugated metal sheets. The lower sheet becomes the ceiling and the eaves. The roof is self-supporting over lengthy spans. No roof cavity. No beams. No battens.

Upstairs looks great. This is a typically dense suburb but the neighbours nearly disappear behind the tree canopy. 

Putting the living spaces upstairs was a bold move. I think this works better than having bedrooms upstairs.

Second Floor Appears

The builder has made some great progress on the second floor framing and has already installed the majority of windows and doors.

These are the PFC beams for the front deck. The courtyard sits below the deck. The corner "floats" providing cover for the front door.

Here's another shot of the front deck, showing all the front-facing windows on the second floor.

The windows extend from floor to roof. There's no distinction between roof and ceiling with a Ritek roof. The attempted illusion is the roof floats on glass walls. Too early yet to know if it worked.

This photo shows the steel "outriggers" that will hold up the Ritek roof panels. This shot is behind the front pod of the house, looking up at the window above the kitchen sink.

The roof is running a bit behind schedule, but should be installed sometime this week or next.

Framing Begins

The builder took a deserved break for Christmas but he's back to work in early January. Within the first week the ground floor framing is almost complete. 

Here's a view from the study to the living room in the rear pavilion. In-between these two rooms is the main garden area. All rooms adjoining the garden have glass doors and windows.

This integration between rooms and gardens is one of the things that convinced me to start this rebuild rather than renovate the old house, so it's exciting to see it in person rather than just imagining it from a blueprint.

Here you can see the view from the front door. The large space in the middle of this picture is for the stairwell.

Here is a view from the rear bedroom. There's another garden area directly behind the two bedrooms, effectively a private garden, which connects to both bedrooms through floor-to-ceiling windows.

Here's a view of the house from the street.