Brickwork modification - Part 4

This issue we had with the brickwork at the back of the house, has now been resolved. They have re-laid the bricks in soldier course above the left hand side stacker doors. We are a lot happier with this, now that the house looks symmetrical.



Hopefully the morter will dry the same colour as the rest of the brickwork. It should be OK once it is jet washed again.

Brickwork modification - Part 3

We hadn't heard what was going to be done about the brickwork at the back of the house since we first emailed Allcastle. Yesterday we received the invoice for the next payment for completion of the roof and brickwork. We found this very annoying, as to us the brickwork is not finished. We spoke to Allcastle expressing our disappointment that nobody had contacted us about how our issue with the brickwork was going to be resolved and yet they had sent the invoice requesting payment. We sent an email stating we would defer payment until the issue had been resolved.

The next day (today) we received an email stating that the brickwork would pulled down from above the LHS doors and the steel lintel raised to the same height as the Steel beam above the RHS doors. The brickwork would then be re-laid the same as above the RHS doors in soldier course.

We are now pleased that the matter will be resolved and the brickwork at the back of the house will look even.

Brickwork modification - Part 2

We decided to seek other opinions about our concerns regarding the difference in brickwork at the back of the house. We posted a question on the Homeone forum asking what the minimum height should be between the brickwork and the stacker door frame.
http://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?t=9886
We also posted pictures showing the difference between the two doors. We received quick responses to our question. They agreed with us that a mistake had been made with the height of the Structural steel beem.



We sent an email to Allcastle stating we were not happy about the Brickwork at the back of the house and asked why it had been done like this. We said that there is a large gap over the larger stacker doors of about 35mm and this is not the same on the smaller doors. We also said that these should be the same as they will not look symmetrical at the back of the house. We stated that we expected the brickwork to be changed above the smaller doors so that they will look the same. We received a reply stating that it was being looked into by the area manager.

Brickwork modification

Once we finished the roof vents we went and stood in the back garden to see how they looked. The roof vents looked OK but we had a bit of shock when we noticed that some of the brickwork above the RHS sliding doors had been re-done.

Until then we hadn’t noticed the difference in height between the beam above the LHS door and the beam above the RHS door. Now that the brickwork was being changed so that the bricks were laid vertically, it has made it stand out more. It looks like the beam above the RHS door has been put in half a brick too high and there is quite a large gap between the beam and the door frame.

We are not happy about the difference between the two doors as they look very uneven. We spoke to the Site supervisor to see what was going on with the brickwork at the back of the house. He said that the Brick inspector told the bricklayers to re-lay the brickwork above the RHS door because of the amount of mortar between the beam and the bricks. We pointed out that the beam on the RHS looks half a brick higher than the one on the LHS. He told us that the engineer states the gap required between the doorframe and the beam. The gap will be covered over with a piece of trim. We asked if the LHS would be changed as well to make it the same and he said yes. We are not totally convinced this will happen though as it seems like it will be a lot of work to change the LHS brickwork. We will probably have to seek a second opinion as to whether this is acceptable or not. To us it just doesn’t look right.

Balcony frame completed

The frame for the Balcony has been installed.





Also all the windows are in now.



We are pleased with the colour match mortar, not a bad match.

Brickwork started

Drove past the house today and could see that the brickwork had started.



Really pleased to see they have done so much on the ground level. Hopefully the scaffolding will arrive soon so they can continue with the up stairs level.



We decided to go with a colour match mortar. It looks a little darker at the moment but should dry closer to the brick colour....we hope!

Bricks delivered

Our bricks were delivered today. We were relieved to see they were the right ones. We've heard in the past, people building with other builders have had the wrong bricks delivered and it had caused big delays.

The weather is looking good for this week so hopefully the bricklayers will crack on with it.




The bricks we have chosen are from PGH. They are the Mild Steel colour from the Matte textures range.