Pool acid washed, hand polished and filled.

The acid wash guy is supposed to come the day after the lining goes in. He did not come in had some family issue, so the pool sat for two days. Everything I had heard to this point is that the longer it is left the harder it is to get a good finish as the concrete gets harder.
Anyway two days later instead of one acid wash worker there was 9 workers. It ended up being entirely hand polished. The result was a near glass feel to the surface.
Pic below is after the hand polish is complete and the tap is on and filling.

Close up of Aqua neon blue glass pebblecrete. I don’t actually think there is any pebble at all, just white sand white cement and blue and clear glass?.

Filled and 24hours of the pump running with clarifier and chlorine added. No salt goes in for 28 days and the chlorination stays off

View out through the floor level window into the pool

Pool tiled and pebbled

Before is start the story on the Pool, everything you see on this page was done by myself and my wife. I have paid for no-one but the Pebblecretors,  So if the job looks inferior to that of a professional its probably because it is. Though I had plenty of advice from my friends who all build pools for a living and we are certainly happy with the result. I have seen quite a few pools built by professionals that I think aren’t as good.

Sorry about the photos in a non chronological order..

Feature wall core filled, feature tiled and rendered

We installed 32mm travertine tiles thanks to my good friend Chris at www.artisanstone.com.au who shipped them to QLD from Canberra cheaper than the suppliers here.

Sheer Descent Waterfalls installed in to feature wall

Feature wall was blocked with Series 200 Boral H Blocks. 12mm Reinforcing bar at 400mm centres. Horizontal steel every second course and then core filled by hand

Pool Coping bed up and drying. Water-leveled boards installed around the sides as a guide

After long weeks of work on the weekend the tiling is all complete

Glass Lining nearly done. Acid wash tomorrow and suctions, outlets and lights installed

PebblePro installing Aqua Neon Pool lining. White cement and Blue Glass.

we poured a 1200 foot and blocked and core filled a retaining wall against the river on our boundary. Will be levelled up with the pool and Synthetic grass installed

Swimming pool and frameless glass fencing underway

Lucky 5 of my friends are all in the pool business.
Many favours and working on the last few weekends has the hole dug, steel fixing and boxing completed and then sprayed and cut within 4 hours.

The pool size consists of an 11m x 4.9m with double sized copings. Double steel and half a dozen peirs. The house already was built with deep piers and a swimming pool in mind.

The feature wall, tiling, coping stone, plumbing I will do myself. Pebble Crete and fencing will go in last.
I already installed glass fencing that I picked up from http://www.fdfencing.com.au quite cheap at $950 for 5m of glass with stainless 316 spigots and gate.
I paid $200 to have 6 x 75mm core holes drilled and the I braced and grouted it in the next day

Bamboo flooring on soffits

Been a while but start of the holidays I have torn a calf muscle so have been out of action for a bit.

The wife cam up with a good idea recently. As we have raised ceilings we have externally ugly fibro lined soffit. As you can see in the first picture below.

We had seen cedar clad roofs in the display homes which look great but posed problems like Cost and how to fix to a steel ceiling. So we back burned that idea.

Then looking at the floating floors around and seeing it used on “the Block” we decided to use floating floor on the soffits. The plaster ceiling is fine and seemed a waste to cover it up.

At $96 for bamboo 10mm flooring, plus liquid nails, pine trims and feats and Watson stain and varnish it has really come up a treat.
All the eaves structure is timber so secret nailing through the tongue and liquid nails to each board worked well.
3 coats of the feats and Watson varnish and a similar colour match was achieved. Mitre 10 made it real easy to match the stain with dozens of pine samples stained in the paint section for reference.

Will do out the back next week when I get some more money. Running low and don’t want to dip in to the swimming pool funds.

Before picture of ugly fibro clad soffits

finished product with stained /varnished trims and moulds

varnishing and staining the pine trims on the kitchen bench
<br />flooring nailed and liquid nailed/glued in position with no trims or moulds up yet

Wintergreen couch turf lawn out front

Leveled out the front a couple of weeks ago and on thursday had some organic under turf soil delivered. I ordered 3 cubic metres and then ran short and so needed another 2 cubic metres.

We shopped around on turf. My parents have sir walter and although it looks nice it grows so quick and requires lots of lawn mower catcher dumps.
It cant be sprayed with broad leaf weed killer so we went with couch.

Albert valley turf came up at $3.95 per square metre. Which was the cheapest premuim grade. He had cheaper though it had a few weeds in it.
Bunnings was that much per peice which measures at 1200x600mm.
He delivered on saturday (today) and down it went. We had at least 80mm under turf coverage.
But ran short on turf. Have till wait till monday for more.
I made sure before the turf went down that we installed pop up sprinklers on an electronic timer. Checked the spread and coverage was right before digging them in. (Prior to turfing)
A few pics from today.

Plantation shutters

We are still planning on 4m of plantation shutters custom made for the dining room. Though thought i might share this.
A lot of display homes had plantation shutters in the master ensuite, between the mirrors. They look so good but are yet so pricey. Our ensuite window is 1m x 33cm. Quite small yet still a $280 shutter after pricing around.
Been hunting for a used one to cut down on ebay. Finally found a lady with cedar shutters and she has dozens of them. Picked it up for $25.
Obviously way to big measuring 2m x 90cm.
Measured up the space, pried the shutter apart and cut the frame and blades to size. Replaced the dowels and glued. All blade pivot hardware can be re-used. Fitted it and it looks great. Took me about 2 and a half Hours to modify it but great for $25. Can recommend giving it a go. Cedar is very easy to work with. I used some wood putty to touch up a few scuff marks after i gave it a sand back. Came back the next day to samd it and the putty is still wet???? Read the container and it says to wait two weeks to dry. So it is up unpainted for two more weeks.

Intergrain ultradeck and vision wallpaper

Finally have two coats of intergrain ultradeck decking oil. Chose the natural finish. We helped the leeching along prior to oiling by multiple wash downs with a scrubbing brush. Used the intergrain pre oil wash, which really took a lot of tannins out and brought out the natural beauty of the timber.
Arghhhh damn leeching on my new colored concrete. Hopefully bleach will remove the staining.
A pic below of the finished oiled deck.

We also put up our entry way feature wall paper. It really looks good doesn’t do it justice in the photos. Picked it up from resene at southport QLD. Near harbourtown. 10 lineal metres which does 4x drops comes in at $130 per roll plus glue. I needed 2x rolls to finish the entry. It was from the NZ made vision wildlife range. Resene had hundreds of styles to choose from.
We also fitted blue LED feature lights above the wall. Sets off a great atmosphere in the house at night. Few pics attached. Been a bit slack on the reporting front. Settling in takes up all your spare time

Merbau front deck entry

Started and finished construction on the front deck. After seeing the display homes and really liking how they looked, we decided on Merbau.
Shopped around and prices ranged from $4.60 per metre to $6.30.
Surprisingly Masters being the dearest.
Stratco and the oregan place the cheapest. But my father inlaw has an account at mitre 10 which got me it for $4.95 per metre(90×19)

I chose to install 140mm treated pine bearers. Had to use twice as much timber to accommodate the picture frame or border frame around the deck.
Went with a 3mm gap between the boards.
I left a 20mm visual or gap between the deck and all bricks for termite compliance, seeing as I built it to slab level, above the weep holes.
Used 60mm stainless screws. 500 of the, to be exact.
A few photos below. Still waiting for it to weather and bleed, before oiling.

The whole deck cost me $1000 there abouts. A far sight cheaper than the $6000 quote I received.

2 weeks in to settlement

Sorry i have been really slack on the update progress. Just been so busy that it has slipped my mind.
I will get some internal photos up soon but thought i would show the updates to the washing line screen in merbau and the 20m long driveway. We poured the driveway today in hymix grey base cement with one bag of SIKA rawhide added to the agi per cubic metre.

Pre settlement photos.

Not much to report with the last few days before handover.
A couple of paint touch ups, door adjustments, fit the oven and microwave and gas certificate to go.
Thought I would put a few more current photos up. The house comes with a brand new technika stainless steel dishwasher. We already have a new Bosch dishwasher so if anyone wants the technika I will take $200. Message me on the blog if your keen. South east qld region. It will be new unopened in the box.