Maybe I am getting old and bitter (my wife would probably agree there), but I have just stopped even responding to those messages. It was getting rather old and time consuming to respond to each e-mail, especially since most of them were probably bots. I reckon that anyone who reads this blog can probably figure out that I really don’t know much about either air conditioners or tiles.

So if you want to buy some tiles or fix your air conditioner then check out our list of contractors (there is a link to a referral site at the bottom to find Australian Contactors).

If you want to laugh at some of the experiences someone else has had with their air conditioners and tiles, the keep reading this blog …

• Regional Queensland
• Brisbane
• Adelaide
• Perth

On my previous article Renovate in Townsville Townsville in 2008 I had written on how hard it will probably be to find skilled trades for renovation work. According to the article the Housing Industry Association of Australia found that all 13 residential construction trades are in short supply, with all of the skilled trades indexes currently in the negative.

Lynette from The Road to Amherst blog is looking at needed some skilled trades in regional Victoria. I don’t know specifically how the trades shortage stack up there, but she reckons, as a lot of other people probably do, that DIY and Owner Builder may be the only way to get things done in the current building climate in Australia.

Technorati Tags: Australia trades shortage, trade skills shortage

I’ve also added some more details about the company who did our House Lifting and Restumping – Northern House Raising.

We took our time in naming who our Townsville Builder was because we had such bad experiences with our previous two builders.

We have heard from other contractors here in Townsville that our first builder might be going to jail for fraud and our second builder might be getting sued for dodgy and shonky work. Our success with our newest builder has been an entirely different and a very positive experience.

Technorati Tags: Townsville Builder, Townsville

Mybelle Homes has been shut down last week by the Queensland Building Services Authority (BSA) because of concerns about financial and other harm coming to their customers, employees, subcontractors and suppliers.

This week the Queensland BSA went further and has banned the directors of Mybelle Homes from building homes in Queensland for the next five years. Because of the way builders licenses work in Australia they will probably not be able to get licences in any other Australian state during that time as well.

There were reported delays of up to a year with some of the building work begun by Mybelle Homes. They had building projects in Greenview Estate, Crestbrook, Bushland Beach and Kalynda Chase here in Townsville. Many of these projects are not left half completed, or not yet started. The half completed or not yet started homes should be covered under BSA insurance, but the unfortunate home builders / owners will now be stuck with even more delays in waiting for their houses to be built.

Sources:

• Townsville Bulletin: Sattered Dreams
• Townsville Belletin: Mybelle Directors Banned

Technorati Tags: Mybelle Homes, Townsville Builder

Townsville is currently going through a huge economic boom, and it’s really affecting the building sector as well. Last year there were about 500 fewer homes built than were needed in the Townsville / Thuringowa area.

For the last few decades there has been a huge push for people to go to on to post secondary education, especially university. That is one of the reasons why there are not nearly enough trades people in Australia as a whole. That is starting to change, with big pushes happening from government and from industry to get people involved with the trades. On our current job our builder has a 15-year old apprentice who works with him part time and goes to the local tech college part time.

Another challenge that we have up here is that we are a long way from the capital cities. It’s hard to attract people to the regional areas, despite the fact that the quality of living and the cost of living is excellent compared to most capital cities.

Another way that the government is combating the skills shortage is through immigration. Many of the trades are now listed as skills that are in need within Australia, so the applicants are able to receive additional favour in applying for a visa if they have these skills. On the Australian “working holiday visa” people can also now work for six consecutive months, an increase from the 3-months of consecutive work previously allowed. This should also help a bit in attracting people over here from overseas, whether it is for a short-term or long-term period.

Tags: contractors, Australia, Townsville, tradesmen, immigration, working holiday

As a home renovator not having a contract with with a fixed price and fixed time frame is a serious worry. As I have discovered in the past it is vital for my own protection to get everything written down, including a fixed price and fixed dates.

With the building contract that we had signed with the contractor who did our front stairs, and who was supposed to do all the carpentry work for under the house, we had written down “ASAP” for the start date. For the construction time frame we had written down 90-days, which seems to be the standard time frame for this sort of work.

We had a verbal agreement that the construction under the house would be complete by Christmas last year (2006), but he hadn’t even started anything other than the front stairs by then. Technically he would have been in breach of his contract, as it had been well over 90-days from when he started the stairs, but because a good portion of our communication had been verbal it turned into our word against his. Terminating our contract with him became quite a messy and costly experience.

With our current builder, who should be done the bathroom renovation and the lock-up stage of construction by the end of this week, we have a written contract for the lock-up, but verbal for the bathroom. I was a bit worried about the idea of having a verbal agreement on the bathroom, but because the entire project was an unknown we didn’t really have any other choice.

So far things have been going really well with this builder. I have even had feedback from one of his other customers on this web-site about how good his work is.

Tags: australia, Building, townsville, tradesmen

On Tuesday July the 17th we received the “Compliance Inspection Report” from the Townsville City Council building certifier. The report indicated that “The building work complies with the Development Permit”.

So after only a week and day on the job the framing has already been completed and certified. They have already begun putting the sisalation on the outside of the frame, putting the insulation in the frame cavities that will be sealed up, adding the flashing and waterproofing the front verandah. We are getting ready for the plumber and electrician to come in on the end of this week / beginning of next week.

The only thing that looks like it might hold us up a bit is waiting for the windows to come in. Other than that things are running almost right on schedule.

Really makes me wish I had found this guy 18-months ago. We would probably be living down there already.

There were a few very minor changes that I talked to him about, moving some side windows 15cm over, air conditioner installation, door types and hallway width, but it has already begun well.

The builders crew has started to really fly through the external framing. They have already completed eight of the panels needed for the front, back and left side (because of the steel posts the walls are built in panels, and then inserted between the steel posts).

The builder has told us that he should only take two and a half weeks to do the entire thing to lockup. The only think that might delay that time frame is if the windows come in late.

You can see how the external timber framing needs to fit between the steel stumps pretty well in the photo below. The panel on the right is already up, and the other two are sitting on the ground waiting to go up tomorrow.

I’ve also set myself up with a Flickr account tonight, so I will start to load my photos on there for this blog. We will see how that goes…

Technorati Tags: framing, frames, flickr, building

There is a house behind my work that has been lifted and is the process of being built in under, like what we want to do with our place. At the same time a friend from work, who is also my boss, is having a house built next to that house. My friend started talking with the builder about all the trouble that we have been having and arranged for me to have a chat with the builder about our house.

Well, to cut a long story short, he is going to start enclosing our house on Monday next week! It’s amazing!

Because of the delays caused by our previous builder (almost a year to finally complete the front set of stairs) based on our initial budget we can no longer enclose under the house and fully complete it. The building market in Townsville is booming and costs have increased about 30% in the 15 months since we first tendered bids on our construction.

We will be getting under the house completed to lockup stage, so it will have the windows, doors, security screens, roller door and external walls finished. The internal framing will also be complete, but none of the internal sheeting will be done, most of the plumbing won’t be done, the electrical will not be complete and there will be no flooring or internal staircase. We will need to do the rest of the building room by room when the time and finances permit.

The whole thing is not exactly what we had planned (it was supposed to be completed by Christmas last year!), but we finally feel like we are making headway.

An advantage with the builder doing work on the house behind ours is that we have been able to watch him work. He seems to do a great job, and the owner of the house is very happy, even wants him to do more work for him in the future! That is always the sign of a good builder.

The construction should only take about three weeks, which will be amazing, and I will be taking photos along the way for posting.

We are excited about this and we feel a far way from how we were feeling in December when our son declared “The house is killing us“.

Tags: Building, Construction, Contractors, Renovate

The day finally came this week when the stairs were complete. In our original discussions with the contractor this was meant to be done back in July of last year, when we were down in Adelaide visiting Tamara’s Pop when he had a stroke.

We are glad they are finally done, but they are interesting in how they have been completed so that the second set of stairs complies with council regulations. Check them out…

This is the first flight of stairs, with the original normal treads.

This is a closeup of the tread from the first flight of stairs.

Here is the second flight of stairs, with extra reinforcement added to the treads to make them extra thick at the front. Also notice the radically different colour of the strair treads. They are the same kind of timber tread, but some have been weathered a lot more.

Here is a closeup of the tread on that second flight of stairs. Notice that it has the extra attachment added to the front of the tread. I think that might be because the tread was plained down too much and made too thin, but that is only speculation.

So they are finally done, and should pass council inspection, but they aren’t real pretty. The third flight of stairs is similar to the first flight, so the second flight is the odd one out.

Tags: Stairs, Contractors