2 months and 8 days - Trusses and Ondoy

After 10 weeks and a super duper typhoon, we're still going strong in building the house. In fact, I heard that all the walls are now closed, and ready for electrical rough ins this week. We've been searching for an electrician, but it's just hard to find the 'skillful one'. Our regular electrician is now based in the middle east (what's new?) and we cannot find a candidate with equal skill and right attitude. I'm just so particular with these electrical stuffs because a lot of fire incidents are caused by poor wirings and other causes that has something to do with electrical. It's just scary. One of the girl that we used to play badminton with had fire in their house last year, and unfortunately, her kids got trapped and burned. It's just so tragic to hear these stories and I don't want to take the risk.

The trusses are also halfway. It's supposed to be finished this weekend, but super duper typhoon Ondoy (I hate Ondoy!) affected the work schedule. So, the timeline can be extended until the end of next week. I don't want to keep my hopes up too much because I heard that another monsoon will come this Thursday and Friday. It's already OctoBER! Give the Philippines a break, pretty please?

I've been also busy for the past month because mom and sister Karen came to visit as well as cousins, Achie Jac and Ahia Glenn. Never been around Australia that much until they came here, which is good because I appreciated this place more (at least I think). Now, I'm Sydney-overdosed, and I don't plan to go out even if there's an upcoming long weekend (Labor day! woohoo!). Hmmm, what will I do? zzzzzzzzzzz.....yey.

I feel that there are a lot of things to blog about and they're all stuck in my head. For one, there's Ondoy that struck Manila that killed a hundred people and still counting. I was online last Saturday because we came home early from our Blue Mountains tour. I overheard from Achie Jac that their kids were stranded in Market Market mall which is quite strange because that is a posh place and it's not supposed to flood. Anyway, I talked to mom when I got home and I thought that it's just a normal rain. We are very used to this kind of weather in the Philippines. I was online, checking out Facebook updates and got worried when Jun, my friend from Marikina created a shoutout asking for help. It's got to be serious, otherwise, he wouldn't be bothered to broadcast that he needs help. Until later that Saturday, I talked to mom again (thankfully, landlines didn't get cutoff) and she said that this is the first time she saw this level of flood working in our shop for 30 years. Whoa! I also talked to Jeff and he sounded very upset because his laptop and all of his hard drives are now being flooded as we spoke as well as the 2 Civics, and he cannot do anything but watch it soak in flood. I cannot believe this happened to Banawe, properties here are worth I don't know how much and all the commercial shops around and luxury cars and the famous restaurants - what happened to our street?? What happened is really sad. I just hope that our countrymen will be more prepared next time this happens.

Anyway, here are some photos of last week. The progress had slowed down because of the weather, hopefully it'll become better this week. We're still in the rough phase and funds are running out. *Panic mode*

High ceiling / stairs area on the left side

Bedroom 4 window

Master Bath window

Second Floor front view

2nd floor balcony front view

Ground Floor bath

Picture window high ceiling / living room area

Bedroom 1 ground floor

Bedroom 4 2nd floor

Masters bedroom door

Laundry room ground floor

Dining area 1st floor

High ceiling / stairs area

Perspective Rough

Week 7 – Slab,check! Now, the walls

Woohoo! The slab is now done. The good news is so far it’s still intact and standing. Up until last week, I still made some revisions with the floor plan. My mom and sister are in town for a visit and while we were discussing the house construction, my sister suggested that the office space in the 2nd floor is too big just to be used as an office space. My mom is the most workaholic in the family, and she will probably be the only one using that big space on an average of 3 hours per day. So, I thought it might not be worth to have a huge space that will only be used 30% of the time. So, Bedroom 3 and Home Office were swapped. I bet Bedroom 3 will be the best room because of the bay window. It will have the best view among all of the rooms and a balcony.

At this point, provision for electrical and plumbing are also done too. As you can see the orange PVCs in the photos.

Now, here are some photos of Week 7

Week 6 – Pouring of concrete slab

August 26 was the date that we set to pour the concrete slab, this makes up the concrete floor for the 2nd floor. For 2 weeks, the workers ‘stitched’ steels that will form the slab. They also used coco lumber to support the steel work and eventually the concrete slab.

We requested for several quotations from different ready mix concrete suppliers and ended up with Concrete Masters with a price of Php 3,370 per cubic. The cement has a specification of 3,000 psi and 14 days curing time. We also had to rent a Pumpcrete for Php 10,000, this equipment will pump the concrete all the way up to the 2nd floor. The whole pouring process took just an hour. I’m glad that we chose to do it this way rather than the manual way, because who knows how long that will take!

They say that this is one of the most critical parts of the job and I’m happy that it’s over. Here are some photos of the site