Painting and lockup.

Another milestone - both 25 and 27 Chapman Place are now at lockup stage. All external doors and windows are in, and much of the external painting is complete. The individual characters of each house are becoming a bit more defined.

Number 25 has eaves with the exposed black-painted rafters, and therefore we've gone with black framing on all the doors and louvres in this house. The plain zinc roof, visible from beneath the eaves, is echoed with the use of the same zinc to partially clad the house. The remainder of the external cladding is fibrous sheeting, painted a neutral (but slightly warm) grey.

We have chosen to use Wattyl Solagard external paint, as it is a very good Australian made and developed product, well up to the task of coping with many years of baking Queensland sun.

For Number 27, we have used doors and louvres with white framing.

The eaves of this house are lined with natural cypress timber, so we chose a complementary warm buff brown colour (called 'Koala') to paint the fibro cladding. We like the contrast between the areas of white Colorbond cladding and the painted fibro, which both look good against the timber-lined eaves.

Now, I'm working on doing the finishing work to the exterior - installing the remaining timber cover-strips to the fibro cladding, and the timber in-fills between each exposed rafter on Number 25. Then it'll be time for a final coat of paint... before getting on with the interiors.

Leaves... blessing or worst enemy?

One of the great things about the skillion roof on both of the houses I'm working on is that it allows for a very simple guttering system. One gutter, on the lowest edge. There's the carports too, which also only need the one piece of guttering. This makes protecting them against leaf debris a very straightforward procedure. I choose to use a system by Blue Mountain Mesh -  here it is installed on Number 27:

 

Unlike some other mesh gutter protection systems, this mesh covers the edge of the roof sheeting completely, and is attached using a fitting contoured to the corrugations in the iron. No leaves can get into the gutter at all. The very small particles that do go through (say, for example, when the gums are in blossom and those tiny flower particles rain down when the lorikeets have been feasting) don't accumulate, because the next time it rains they get washed into the downpipe. Those few leaves and sticks that you can see resting at the top of the mesh? They'll get blown or washed off in the next storm. It's an excellent low-maintenance system that has already worked very effectively for us on our home at Number 29. It is also very good at keeping vermin out of your roof.

I find it a real shame that as the remaining blocks of land in this development get built on, the mature gums that had been left on the blocks (the ones that made the development look so attractive at first) have all been cut down. In most cases they had been left in locations where the sympathetic buyer could have retained them. I guess people just don't like leaves in their gutters. (Get Blue Mountain Mesh!) Us? We like trees, and when we were planning our house at Number 29 we sited it specifically so we could retain the two big gums on the block. We've found that the heavy shade from the ironbark in the front garden really helps keep our place cool on summer mornings, and the spotted gum at the side does the same in the afternoons. It can get bakingly hot in this area (temperature-wise, we're similar to Ipswich in the forecasts) so having the house shaded for much of the day is a real benefit for us. We also love the visiting bird life, which has included lorikeets, rosellas, galahs, cockatoos and currawongs, as well as the resident crows, maggies and mickies. We've got a spotlight pointing up the trunk of each tree, which at night makes the trees quite an incredible feature.

Number 25 Chapman Place has a number of lovely mature gums that have been retained. There is one large spotted gum at the front of the house, tucked into the front corner close to the boundary with Number 27.

This is the big spotted gum in the front of Number 25. At the far left you can also see the ironbark I was talking about - the one in the front garden that shades our place so well in summer.

The Queensland Silver Wattle that we planted in the front of Number 25 (before we even started building at Number 29) is now about three years old, and flowering profusely. The mickies have built a nest among the flowers right at the top.

The tree you can see behind the trunk of the spotted gum is an Eprapah Wattle planted in the front of Number 27. It's covered in masses of buds, so should be fully in bloom in a couple of weeks.

You can just see a tail poking out of the nest... and a bit of unravelled twine they've scavenged as a building material.

Towards the rear of the the back yard of Number 25 there's two mature spotted gums and a number of smaller eucalypts, plus a few black wattles. The largest spotted gum has the most wonderful textured trunk.

Number 27 doesn't have any mature trees, but there is a very large gum and a number of smaller trees just over the back fence. Leaves can travel a very long way in a storm!

It's our hope that whoever buys Number 25 will not see the mature trees in a negative way. The current outlook from the back deck of this house is pleasantly leafy, and the trees hide the undeniably ugly power pylons that would otherwise be visible, not only from this block but also from the surrounding properties. The installation of an effective gutter leaf protection system like the Blue Mountain Mesh I have used should prevent any problems in that regard.

Cladding 27 Chapman Place

A cladding update for Number 27 Chapman Place. Here's me and Mark installing the white Colorbond sheeting on the north (street-facing) facade. On the right you can see the two sets of louvred windows that have been set into that wall - one is in the main bedroom, the other in the ensuite bathroom.

You might remember from the plans that this facade has angled edges. Below you can see how that works from the back, before the cladding has gone on.

Here I'm attaching the last of the green thermal wrapping to the frame, before the fibro sheeting is installed over the top. Thermal wrap reduces radiant heat transfer and controls moisture and condensation with-in the cavity space, it helps the make the house more energy efficient. I use CSR Bradford wall wraps. The full explanation of the benefits can be found here.

This bump-out section below, part of one of the bedrooms, has two sets of louvred windows and is also clad in the white Colorbond iron. We made a decision early on to clad the bump-outs (anywhere that the rooms are cantilevered out beyond the basic rectangular shape of the house) in iron corresponding to the roof colour.

For a cladding update for Number 25, please see this post, which contains further information about the fibro cladding technique which also applies to Number 27.

Cladding 25 Chapman Place

Here's an exterior cladding update for Number 25 Chapman Place. As you can see, the fibro and zinc sheeting has all been installed - here's the view from the driveway.

We've taken care to pre-paint all the joins in the fibro before the timber cover-strips have been attached. This seals the fibre cement sheeting from moisture and rain. If the fibre cement sheeting were to become wet it would take a long time to dry out and as a result the paint may peel. Not many people take the time to do this. Additionally, there is a protective poly-flashing strip located behind every join in the fibro sheeting. As a third measure, behind the cover strip a continuous bead of Sika flex sealant is used. This seals the joint and glues the cover strip to the sheeting. It is very flexible to allow for expansion and contraction with changes in temperature throughout the day and night. I am not aware of any better sealant than Sika products.

Out on the back deck, I've finished lining the roof with zinc, and am really pleased with the result. It's a nice contrast to the exposed black-painted rafters, and will be very low-maintenance.

For a cladding update for Number 27, please see this post. It contains information about the green thermal wrap (as seen in the photos above) that may interest you, which applies to this property also.