47, Fire places.

With the ground floor external walls complete, the next item on my agenda is to brick up the back to back Lounge room fireplace and Kitchen stove recess. Ebay, once again has been very helpful, allowing me to purchase the bulk of the required bricks for good prices. I generally pick these up around Melbourne before work, (I work permanent late shifts). The downside of this being a number of heavily laden trips, with my van and a borrowed heavy duty trailer the 100+k's home in the wee hours of the morning.
I need to complete this structure to the first floor level to enable me to frame up the remaining ground floor internal walls.



The Lounge room fireplace with the arch completed. The top row of voussoirs are cut to angle inwards to correctly align with the throat. I am still on the lookout for firebricks at the right price with which to line and form the correct internal profiles up to the height of the smokeshelf, this will be installed later.

For the wider opening and narrower breast of the Kitchen stove recess I opted to install a lintel rather than an arch, shown above, freshly sawn from one of my rocks.

Lifting the lintel into position.

All done but it wasn't all smooth sailing, after moving the lintel into place I realised that when cutting it to suit the brick courses I hadn't allowed for the mortar joint. Rather than remove the block and lug the 200kg lump back to the saw, I opted to hand chisel out the beds and roll it 180 degrees. With this hiccup sorted it was now back to the bricks.

The structure is growing, the flue from the loungeroom fireplace, seen sloping to the left, needs to be offset to the side to allow it to pass up through the breast of the upstairs fireplace, while the kitchen flue on the right, is angled at 45degrees in plan, to allow it to pass through the opposite breast. The brickwork for the kitchen stove recess will terminate at the first floor.

46, More scaffold?

The new year has arrived and I have the scaffold ready for the next instalment. It took me close to two weeks to raise it the 1.5 metres needed and used nearly all of my remaining tubes. I am still looking out for more, if anybody is able to assist!
With the scaffold in place I was then able to place the reinforced concrete beam to tie together the completed ground floor walls, shown above, with the steel in place ready for pouring, and below, all done. Another hurdle cleared.

45, The bays, done at last!

Wednesday, the seventeenth of December, I'm happy, much of my cursing is now in the past. The final block is placed for the bay windows, they are complete and so is the ground floor stonework. Next on the agenda is the raising of the scaffolding to enable me to install the string course and pour a reinforced concrete beam behind it to hold the house together.

44, Yet more distractions.

That time of year had come around again, the grass had started it's annual migration towards the sun. With this part of the country suffering from a prolonged drought, water has been in short supply. With reticulated water not being available to us, we rely on tank water collected from our roof areas for domestic use. To help supplement this we had begun to pump water from our main dam for use in the toilet and for other external use. For this purpose I had laid out extension leads and a 1 inch poly pipe across the ground the 80 or so metres to the pump.
With there being no relief in sight from the drought, it was becoming apparent that this setup was going to have to be made permanent. Mowing the block with this stuff in the way was a pain in the proverbial and as for thepower leads lying in the grass, not a good idea.

In late October the digging started, I began with a trench from the house to the shed, in which to lay some poly, for dam water to be piped for use on the saw, enabling me to remove two lengths of garden hose from the grass. At the start of November I began the 600mm deep trench to the dam, in which to bury the conduit and pipe. The first 40 metres proved very easy work by hand, traversing the damp ground below our septic system. To make full use of this trench, I enlarged and deepened it near the house to pass below the footings to install some needed drainage pipes to connect to the cellar.
The progress came to a halt shortly past the mid point, nearing the eucalypt trees in the vicinity of the dam. The ground here, being so dry and full of roots, proved for it to be next to impossible for the pick and shovel to penetrate. I had no choice but to contract the services of a friend, armed with an excavator, to complete the digging.

Concurrently with this project, our attention was also preoccupied with the searching for a more reliable mower, our old MTD ride on, purchased new about 10 years ago was costing me far to much time in repairs and maintenance to make it worthwhile. We needed one that could take a bit of punishment. Happening across an hour old ad via the trading post online had me making a $50 direct deposit to secure a little? Kubota G5200, a sturdy ride on with a 3 cylinder diesel and a 44 inch cutting deck. This led me to my next problem, how to get it? it was located near Hobart, Tasmania.


Quotations from shipping companies varied upwards from about $300.00 with no insurance, so for a little extra I decided to pick it up myself. This entailed a 100km drive to the ferry terminal, a 450km overnight trip for my van and I aboard the "Spirit of Tasmania" and a further drive of about 270km to Acton Park, near Hobart airport. Impressed with the machine, I paid the balance of $2050.00, loaded up and began the trip home. On the return journey I stopped off at Hobart and posed the van at the "Queens Domain" for the above picture with the Tasman bridge in the background. I also took the opportunity to scout Hobart's streets and other various locations on the way to expand my photographic record of much of the beautiful Colonial and Victorian architecture this state has to offer. Another overnight trip saw me returning home the following morning, about 41 hours after leaving.


After a week or two's work on my return the mower was ready to roll and I was more than impressed, it runs well and cuts beautifully. The machine was in excellent condition for it's age but the deck was a bit sorry. I re-plated the entire front section with 3mm steel, turned 4 new "anti scalp" rollers and fitted them with new axles, fabricated new belt covers, installed new pins, clips and bolts, adjusted the angle of the tension pulley and cleaned and repainted the whole assembly.

43, The bays progress.

To ensure a neat finish for the lining and mouldings to be fitted to the sloped underside of the first floor balcony, I dressed a raked margin on the top of the face of the uppermost blocks. Having this done, I can now get on with it and work on finishing the ground floor stonework.
With these blocks ready to to be installed my next problem needed to be resolved, how could I lift them into position?. The heaviest of these was in excess of 100kg, they needed to be lifted about 1600 to 1700mm above the scaffolding and there was insufficient headroom to mount a winch.


The solution came in the form of a heavily modified trolley. A pair of vertically lifting forks slide on a frame fashioned from 25mm square tube welded to the trolley uprights, this is lifted by a cable slung over a pulley and winched onto a boat winch (eBay again, $15!), secured on the back. A day and a half well spent (I think anyway!) and it works great.
The blocks are wheeled into position and raised to the required height, I then insert steel tubing through the forks and extending across the wall, along these the blocks can be slid. These tubes have lugs welded on the trolley end to prevent them pulling through. For added safety I also tie the top of the trolley back to the scaffolding. Once on the wall the blocks can be manoeuvred into position using short lengths of pipe.

42, Another Distraction.

Just what I needed while I am trying to build a house!. My wife woke me early on the first day of October to tell me that water was seeping up from under the drive, Great!. Another three days wasted digging up and replacing the poly pipes. It was found that the roots from the "Sydney blue" gum tree, closest to the trench had crushed the low pressure B grade pipe I had used. Hopefully, replacing these with A grade "blue stripe" pipes should alleviate the problem. I had laid the two pipes, one for tank water and the other for dam water about a meter deep in a trench dug for power cables leading to an outlet in the front yard.
Also seen in the picture is our growing stack of welsh roofing slate, to the left beyond the shed, and some other procured slate pieces for fire place hearths (on the left of the shed) and coping's (on the right).

41, My inspiration.

Having had a great love of architecture and history from an early age I was always captivated by the older buildings dotted around our region, generally constructed from the mid to late nineteenth century, the era of major settlement into rural Victoria. I was mostly fascinated by the asymmetrical constructions more Gothic in style, with the plethora of geometric shapes and all the nooks and cranny's, but when it came to the design of my own house I opted for the more formal and proportioned look with Italianate features.
I am amassing a large number of photographs of buildings that I personally find architecturally significant. From this I have selected a small number shown here that are relevant to my own house.

Ingleby Homestead, between Winchelsea and Birregurra is very typical of the mid Victorian style homesteads found scattered throughout western Victoria, double piled, three bays wide and very symmetrical in appearance.
It was the stately formality of this style of house that was my main motivation when designing my own home.

For the type of quoining I selected, one of my main influences was "Point Wilson homestead", located on Port Phillip bay, south of Laverton. A pale green sandstone, from a source that I have yet been unable to identify, was used very attractively to contrast with the bluestone used on this house.


Another early influence was at "Wiridgil", a rambling bluestone house near Camperdown, where the quoining was rendered over the stonework.



"Narrapumelap" another bluestone house near Wickliffe in Western Victoria, was also very interesting, with what appeared to be limestone, used for the quoining and carved into very decorative arches.



St Georges Presbyterian manse in Geelong, Built of local "fine" bluestone and Barrabool sandstone dressings in about 1865. This is my favourite building in the local region and includes many interesting details, it was the main inspiration for the coursing and details on my own house. The random stonework includes many courses of multiple blocks of matching heights giving a more formal look with elongated horizontal joints, the style which I selected. Another feature that I adopted was the relieving segmental and horizontal arches above the window lintels.
Unfortunately, for many buildings in the Geelong area, the passage of time has proved the poor durability of much of the quarried Barrabool sandstone. On exposure to the elements it tends to de-laminate and erode, as can be seen, particularly in the plinth and string courses. Having this hindsight I was able to avoid its use, opting for the readily available Mt. Gambier Limestone. This is a stone that is almost identical to one previously extracted from the nearby Moorabool river valley, which was mainly quarried for the production of portand cement and was only available for building in very limited quantities.


The Uniting church, South Geelong, built from local bluestone and the aforementioned Limestone.

Another church in Western Victoria, using a different limestone for the quoining. The exact location of this I am currently unable to identify with the picture taken on a family trip to South Australia.


A very inspiring house on Victoria Parade, Melbourne. I plan to construct the verandah on my own house to a similar design, with the gabled centre section protruding forward of the main structure.


Another grand house, Monivae, on the Port Fairy Rd. Hamilton. It features a similar style of verandah and has some impressive features, such as the intricate post plinths, but lacks a lot the finer, more delicate detailing.


The Gatehouse for "Werribee Park". With its neat stonework it is much more appealing to me than the mansion itself.


An interesting old church hall at Beeac, now a private residence. It is down the road from and using the same stone as the demolished church, from which I procured the bluestone.


A lovely double piled house on Kilgour St, Geelong. The Barrabool sandstone appearing to be well preserved, protected under the verandah.

And finally, the beautiful "Albert Hall", on the beachfront at Glenlelg, Adelaide, South Australia. It captivated my imagination with its exquisite detailing and form.