The back door, ceilings and internal frames

So now all we need is to install a back door and and the project will have reached the milestone of lock up. Yee Ha!
Bunnings could almost have been described as our 3rd home during the 10 months of building as we were there so often. On one of the occasions we were there, we had discovered a great external door with 4 square panels of frosted glass arranged vertically. When you live with an artist, you just know that there is no way the door is just going to go straight up. Michelle had immediately seen the potential for a great illusory effect and so there was a little preparatory work to be done before the door actually went in.
The challenge for me was installing a Gainsborough external lock set something like the one below. This was quite complicated, and for all my efforts not to do so, ended up a little skewiff but hey it is still doing the job, not that we are using the back door much as we are still to install some back entrance stairs. One day!



So all is looking pretty damn fine from the outside now so finally we are working inside which is a relief as winter is now upon us and finally our floor is protected from the elements.



We have decided to use the Surfmist colorbond for the ceilings too, as this will relieve us of the onerous task of lifting and fixing large, all too pliable, plasterboard sheets knowing we then still have to join and finish them.
The colorbond can just go straight up with no further work required, further enhancing the industrial look, which we like, and also adds to the structural integrity of the building.
Although the ceilings are well over 3 metres at the highest point, getting the sheets up and fixing them is not too bad, once we have a organised system. They look fantastic reflecting heaps of light around the spaces and this is good news as we were thinking the house was going to be very dark.

The middle section is the trickiest, due to that stylish angle which you might remember caused the roofing issues. But Michelle, a whizz with the $12 angle grinder that has already accomplished so much, was up to the task and the sheets went up well leaving a most acceptable gap from the walls.

So now the ceilings are up we can get started on the internal frames finalising exactly how the house will look internally.
Michelles main concern is obtaining as much space in her studio as possible because she is currently creating paintings 2.4 metres square for her doctoral thesis in Visual Arts. She also needs some office space and somewhere to sleep, further complicated by the fact she also has the kitchen pantry intruding into her bedroom space. The upside of this is that it also creates an alcove in which to store her clothing etc.
She ends up with a little less than a quarter of the space as her bedroom with a single internal cavity slider leading out to the office space rather than a double into the main studio to preserve as much wall space as possible.




As I do not need quite as much space as Michelle, my area is split in half with one side containing my bedroom and the bathroom and the other side my studio/livingroom. We used a double internal cavity slider from my bedroom to the studio and single internal cavity sliders for the bathroom and toilet doors.

We decide to build the frames all the way up to the colorbond ceilings we had just installed to enhance the feeling of space in each area rather than creating additional ceilings at 2400.
This made the job a little more complicated and I did end up with a little more space between the top frame and ceiling than I was intending.

So now we have a much better idea of how our new home will be like.