From shed to house in 11 weeks?

12 January 2017: After a long and drawn-out process to get to this point, we now had a finished shed frame and a tight deadline to turn it into a house. 11 weeks in fact (our rental lease was due to run out on 30 March).

We had two lists: the work we would outsource to others, and the work we would do ourselves.

1. The outsource list: this included everything that requires a licensed trades-person, and anything else that we were confident we would stuff up if we tried to do it ourselves:

Power and electrical
Plumbing and gas-fitting
On-site septic system installation (there is no town sewage treatment here)
Water tank installation (there is no town water here)
Earthworks (cutting out and levelling sites) for septic and water tanks
Waterproofing and tiling (bathroom and kitchen splash-back)

2. Despite all those major items being taken care of by others, our starting list was still a bit daunting:

Erect timber framing on all the internal walls (to attach the gyprock to) and build dividing walls (for bedrooms and bathroom)
Insulation for ceiling and walls (Gold batts)
Gyprock – set and finish all walls and bedroom ceilings
Line the remaining ceiling (we used zincalume sheets)
Install internal doors
Install mezzanine floor
Install bedroom ceilings (underneath mezzanine floor)
Skirting boards, architraves, cornices, etc.
Gap-fill all the dodgy skirting boards, architraves, cornices, etc.
Install entire IKEA kitchen
Install wardrobes, linen cupboards, etc. (12 IKEA units in total!)
Paint throughout
Establish septic outflow/irrigation area (which involved planting 140 suitable plants and covering a 325sqm area with 200mm of mulch)
Arrange shower screen installation, carpet, slow combustion fire installation, council inspections, compliance paperwork for pretty much everything, invoice payments, etc.
Install clothes line (a BASIX requirement)
And lots of other ‘little’ things that seemed to take up a lot of time! Like installing an attic ladder – MUCH trickier than we expected!

We soon realised we had bitten off way more than we could chew, given our tight deadline. We also realised that we should have added gyprocking to the first list (as something we were nuts to think we could do without stuffing it up!) and once again one of our wonderful network of tradies and professionals rescued us: our sparky, Paul, was also a plasterer, AND as a bonus he had personal experience of building a shed house. Talk about an angel in disguise! He and my hubby, Matt, did the timber framing work together, and then Paul did all of the gyprocking and completed it WEEKS faster than we could have. And, it goes without saying, to a much higher standard!

So on that note, here’s another piece of unsolicited advice: outsourcing can save you HEAPS of time, and time was money for us – in Matt taking time off between work contracts, and me knocking back work (I’m self-employed), and rent. Although you will pay for the labour, when you consider the costs in buying all the special tools required, and over-buying materials or needing more materials if you use them inefficiently or mess something up, the cost of outsourcing may be lower than first thought. For example, Paul’s experience with gyprock meant that he was able to calculate and order the precise number of small sheets and large sheets required to minimise wastage, saving us hundreds of dollars. So take some time to crunch the hidden numbers before you decide you can’t afford to outsource anything.

So we now had a mostly lined and locked up house… minus things like architraves and any other fittings or fixtures. For a brief and beautiful moment, I had the feeling that we were almost there. If I squeezed my eyes together so they were almost shut, it looked kind of finished!

And then the ‘finishing off’ work began. I’m not even sure how to describe that period without scaring people off, and I don’t want to do that! I should clarify that the thing that transformed it from exciting and enjoyable to overwhelming and stressful was that Matt, who was in between work contracts at that point, was offered an irresistible six-month contract…… in Sydney.

In that moment I truly believed I had everything under control despite Matt’s absence from Monday to Friday. Painting’s easy and I’d done it before, I told myself. I now knew all sorts of things about power tools and drop saws that I never thought I’d know, and how hard could it be to put up architraves and cornices? You just need to cut nice 45 degree angles and voila! The house is only 100 square meters! Tiny compared to most! And Matt would be home on weekends of course.

I had absolutely no idea what I was in for. For context, I had less than three days a week to work on the house, as I was driving the girls to and from school/kindy in Canberra each day (40 minutes each way) and our three-year-old was home with me two days a week.

I thought the painting would take about a week or two – it took me the better part of four (all that gyprock!! and why on earth did we decide to put ceilings in the bedrooms and bathrooms?!). The architraves were a ~~nightmare~~ ahem.. challenge, because the shed itself wasn’t perfectly square, which meant the walls weren’t either (see my post called ‘Using a shed frame to build a ‘proper’ house’ for a bit more on that!). On weekends, Matt worked on the house 10-12 hours a day, while I looked after the girls and tried to do a few small jobs, then he got back in the car on Sunday night and drove back to Sydney.

But my aim is not to regale you with a sob story, because in the end, we did it all by the skin of our teeth – with a few small jobs left undone… and a two-week extension on our rental lease. If not for Matt’s awesome but poorly timed Sydney contract though, 11 weeks would have been ample time to line a 100m² shed to a very good standard.

In our case, we got there in 13 weeks with amazing help and support from family and friends; most notably, my parents, who came and lived on our block in their caravan for over a month to help look after the girls so I could work on the house; my father-in-law, who came to help with the painting; and our brother-in-law (whose nickname is McGyver), along with some of Matt’s mates from Sydney and some of our local friends, who risked life and limb on rickety scaffolding to help us line our 5.5m high raked ceilings with razor-edged metal sheets.

So what I’m trying but failing to impart here in a non-scary way is, the ‘finishing off’ jobs took much longer than we expected! Granted, we did install the entire kitchen ourselves, and put together and installed all the wardrobes and linen cupboards (several on the night before moving day! Nothing like going right down to the wire). There were also lots of unplanned but necessary trips to the hardware store 30 minutes away, and of course, other ‘life’ stuff like family birthdays and sick children that reduced how much time we had to spend on site.

(Speaking of the hardware store, this end-stage is where all the many little unforeseeable things we didn’t think of or budget for suddenly appeared. But that’s all in my next post – Costs and Budget – the fun stuff!).

And so, on April 14th 2017, in a state of overwhelming relief and exhaustion, we moved in to our small but perfectly formed house. It was an amazing moment which made every single challenge and set-back and sleepless night worthwhile.

Just don’t look too closely at the architraves.