Hi ,

We’re officially into Week 3 of The Farmhouse and after spending most of Week 2 watching rain fall from every possible angle, construction has finally started moving again.

My site has dried out, the machinery is back in action and progress is happening at a much more exciting pace than watching mud puddles form.

Every fortnight we’re releasing a video update so you can follow the project in real time as the build progresses. Episode 2 is now live! Just click on the image below to view this mini episode.

DIGGING DEEP

With the rain finally behind us, the excavator rolled back onto site and got straight to work on the piers and footings. And when I say piers, I mean serious piers. Some of those holes are five metres deep to reach solid shale. Every time I looked into one, I half expected to see a lost civilisation sitting at the very bottom.

Whilst my dad did some of the general land excavation, I had to bring another excavator in to do the piers and footings which requires a different type of machine and equipment. A shame really because Dad’s rates are much friendlier (free 🤣) and usually include unsolicited life advice that sometimes I actually enjoy.

With almost 120 piers and footings to dig out, the process of piering has been surprisingly slow. The piers get inspected. Then the footings get inspected. Then the slab gets inspected. At this point, I’m expecting someone to inspect the inspectors.

If all goes to plan, we’ll have the slabs poured within the next 2 weeks. In reality, its taken almost a month to complete Phase 1 – demolition and Phase 2 – Concrete Slabs, provided the rain doesn’t come back again this week. Ah, the joys of renovating at the start of winter!

Piers starting to be dug at one end of the main house.

THE GUEST HOUSE

While the main house is getting its foundations sorted, the guest house has been sitting in a holding pattern, waiting for the structural engineer to return back to site.

Some of you may recall from my last blog that when we stripped the guest house walls and ceilings out, we discovered a structural post hidden inside a wall. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, except this particular post was sitting smack bang in the middle of my proposed kitchen.

After discussing several options with my engineer, I’ve decided to remove the roof completely so we can install a new beam and eliminate the post altogether. It sounds drastic but it was something we thought we may have to do anyway in the DA process.

Unfortunately, the previous owner built the guest house without DA approval and more importantly, without any BAL-29 bushfire-rated materials required for the property. I’ve now got the guest house formally DA approved but one of the conditions is that it be stripped right back and upgraded to meet current bushfire standards.

Whilst all that was happening, we also dug the footings for the new guest house deck. My 6 x 8 metre deck requires 24 footings which seemed a little excessive to me so I took the opportunity to query it with my structural engineer, whilst he was on site. Turns out there was a perfectly valid structural reason for it.

The lesson here is simple: don’t be afraid to ask questions. Just because someone is the expert doesn’t mean you shouldn’t understand why decisions are being made. Just ask nicely. 😅

Footings for the new guest house deck.

ANNOYING LITTLE ISSUES

This week we finally cleaned up the last of the demolition waste.

Part of the old concrete slab had to be cut out to make way for a new slab but getting rid of concrete isn’t as simple as tossing it into your skip bin. Concrete is charged by weight and if you fill a skip with it, you can kiss many thousands of dollars goodbye in tipping fees.

Being the budget conscious renovator that I am, I started ringing around concrete recyclers to see if they’d come and collect it. Nope. Turns out, they’ll happily take your concrete off you but you have to get it to them first, which can be real difficult if you don’t own your own excavator and truck!

By this stage Dad had already headed back home to regional NSW so I hired another excavator with a bigger bucket to load the concrete onto his truck and cart it to the recyclers. They charged me $14 per tonne to accept it and even with the excavator and truck hire, it still worked out cheaper than filling multiple skip bins.

Let’s also not forget the old insulation from the original house. Although it’s highly unlikely to contain asbestos, it had to be treated as though it did. That meant wrapping it up in builders’ plastic, taping it all up and taking it to a licensed waste facility for disposal. Another $1,000 gone.

It’s amazing how renovating can make a person spend thousands of dollars simply getting rid of things they don’t want. 🤣

The old concrete slab was cut up & carted off to a concrete recycling facility.

MY ROBOT STARTS WORK ON SITE

The biggest news from last week? My robot “Tinnie” has officially started work on site. 🤖

For those new to the project, Tinnie is our programmable humanoid robot from Unitree Robotics and the first robot of his kind to be used on a residential renovation project, anywhere in the world.

Naturally, the tradies immediately wanted to know if he was there to replace them, to which I gave a very firm no. A robot can’t do what tradies do. Not now, not for a very long time.

In reality, Tinnie is more like a super-smart assistant. He can conduct site inductions, answer construction questions, recite building codes, look up installation instructions, provide product information and access enormous amounts of information in seconds, not hours. The more information we feed him, the smarter and more useful he becomes.

The reaction online to my robot has been mixed. Some people are genuinely excited to see what he can do, while others are convinced robots are about to take everyone’s jobs… or worse still, kill us! I’ve even lost some social media followers because of it.

My view is simple. This isn’t just a renovation project, it’s also a social experiment. Can robots help make our renovations smarter, safer and more efficient? I honestly don’t know yet but I’m happy to be the first in the world to find out.

By the end of the project, I may conclude that Tinnie is more trouble than he’s worth or I may be convinced this technology is a real part of our future. Either way, that’s exactly why we’re doing the experiment.

What’s surprised me the most is the reaction from the tradies themselves. Rather than feeling threatened, they’re curious. They’ve embraced Tinnie, enjoy interacting with him and are just as interested as I am to see what he learns and ultimately becomes capable of doing.
So far, he’s fitting into the team surprisingly well.❤️

COUNCIL DRAMAS

And finally, last week’s biggest surprise…

I got a formal warning from my local Council ….. for mowing my lawn. Not cutting down protected trees. Not bulldozing endangered habitat. Not building an illegal second house. For mowing my grass.

Now to be clear, this property is in an environmental management zone with a protected ecological area in the back corner of the property which is fenced off and everyone on my site knows not to touch or go near.

My DA conditions said “No native vegetation to be slashed, removed or damaged”. I interpreted that to not cut down any trees or foliage that I shouldn’t be removing.

The area that I mowed was the grass around my property that has historically mowed for the last fourty years. So as you can imagine, when I got an email from council last week, I was totally shocked & angered, to say the least.

From my view, I mowed the lawn that has always been mowed to keep the grass down, snakes away, bushfire risk minimised and a safe site for everyone working on it.

The grass which has been historically mowed for decades can no longer be mowed.

Subsequently, I spoke to Council about it, then followed up with a formal email asking them to amend this ridiculous condition. They’re not.

I’ve been advised that if I want to have the right to mow my property, I need to go through the process of a DA modification application which means more paperwork, more consultants and more money.

It’s so ridiculous and I’m saddened to see this is what Australia is becoming. Nevertheless, I will push on in that direction and will let you know the outcome but don’t expect it to be anytime soon.

See you next week!
Cherie (CB x)