'You're in an out of bounds area, laddie!'

Yesterday morning I walked down the side of our house towards where my car was parked under the house. This is what I saw...

That's my geranium plant so that equipment is on my side of the fence! (mind you some of our property is still inside the temporary fencing too!)
There was a young man who was still in my yard and dropping more equipment ...
" I don't remember giving you permission to come on to my property, let alone dumping equipment in my yard'...was my tart comment to said young man.
I loaded up my car for the Zillmere Knit and Natter, while still speaking my mind...words to the effect that I expected all the equipment to be removed as soon as possible...and 'Where's Brad'??? (the building site manager) Young man didn't know where Brad was apparently, and fled back to his vehicle parked at the kerb. Before he fled he said, 'Sorry Miss'!!
Ha ha! In my mind, I was back doing Playground Duty...once a teacher, always a teacher, lol!
I went back to the car and got out my camera and in a very deliberate manner took the set of photos used in this post.

 I even took a photo of the sprawl over the footpath.

I then got in my car, backed it out, drove around the corner into the back street and found a park. Then walked in our back gate and went inside to get Brad's business card. I rang his mobile but got messagebank; so I left a message detailing what had happened. Then I went off to knitting.

By the time I arrived home, Brad had left a message stating that none of the workers on the site had any need/reason to go on to our property. So I rang him back and we talked it through. He was going to ring the scaffolding company to put in a complaint. But the story doesn't end there...

This morning while I was watering the veggie patch at the back, I heard someone calling out. Thought it was someone in my neighbour Tom's place but soon realised it was someone in my front yard. I walked around and it was 'that young man'! he asked if he could come onto my property to pass up the scaffolding needed today, as it was easier to do it from the side...hello????
I simply repeated what Brad had said to me yesterday...'No worker needs to access my property'...and I added, 'that's what the boss of the site says so let's just do what he says'...said young man visibly 'deflated'...he knew he was beaten as he slunk off to do the job 'the hard way'! Oh, and in true teacher fashion I said, 'Thank you. I appreciate your coming in to ask if you could have access on my land'!  I was a well trained teacher too!!! :-)  (I bet he went and said to his workmates, 'there's an old witch living next door', though. lol

More work next door...

There have been lots of tradies on the building site in the last few weeks and quite a bit of progress has been made...
The floor joists are in place for the second level of the houses...

 A closer look...

Now this tradie (photo below) was going into each house and nailing pieces of timber near the top of the wall...you can see this on the wall above his ladder in the next photo... when I took this photo he was lining up, following directions from Brad (the builder).

In the next photo you can see Brad with the gadget that comes out very now and then during this build...I guess the digital screen gives him lots of information about distances and angles and levels etc...

The mobile crane driver is standing ready for his task...

 Here's a closeup of Brad...(sorry Karen, just a head and shoulders lol!)

The tradie placing all those short pieces of timber is adjusting the one on the other side ...

Now it's the turn of the crane operator...that's a steel beam there, lying on top of the timber...

Getting ready to hoist the beam into place...

the beam is starting its journey now...

 It's up!

In the next photo, Brad, the crane operator  and the tradie are maneuvering the beam into place...

So after many hours of work, the steel beams were put into place on all 7 houses...

Next day the builders come in again to lay sheets of flooring....

Then next morning, the scaffolders arrived. And what a noisy operation that was!! Before I went to Sisters of Stitch, I took a photo from our front veranda...

Because the scaffolding is outside the building area of each house, it makes the scaffolding appear very close to us!!

When I came home from SoS, I took these photos from the street...

As the next photo shows, the scaffolding is not as close to our house as it seemed in the photo taken from our veranda.

 And lastly a photo looking through the garage area of house #3

In the next 'installment', I'll show photos of the bricklayers who are now back again to build the next level/s.  

How's the building work going?...

Thank you for all the lovely comments on my last building progress update, when the garage wall of #1 townhouse was completed, thus giving me a new 'vista' from my kitchen window. 

The wall is growing...

 Within the hour, it is completed...

Eventually there will be a wooden fence built so I won't see so much of that dreadful grey brick...and I have plans. Because of the buildings next door, I don't think we will get so much direct sunlight each afternoon when the project next door is completed. So I think that I will be able to have pots and hanging baskets with some lovely colourful tropical plants from now on...before, it got too hot for them down that side of the house. I also plan to grow some vines on the nice new fence...the old fence had been damaged by termites and old age so I couldn't grow anything like vines on it, even though I did have some lattice against the old fence in the front garden. 

So now a bit of a progress update...

Monday morning and this truck pulled up...

DH was heading off to golf early that day...

 Mmmm...bit squeezy here...

 Driveway successfully navigated...

Lots of timber was then unloaded...

Brad and a couple of young men, then worked throughout the morning, moving the 'bundles' of timber around the site.

Then all was ready for the next lot of tradies to come in...

So with saws whirring/screeching and  nail guns popping we started to see these frames...

And then these were attached to the walls of the lower levels of the houses...

And this is how it looked from the street...

Gradually throughout the week these builders worked their way around all 7 houses...they are quite small as you can see.

Some more progress on the building site next door...

Well the bricklayers were busy the week before last and last week they had a break...

This is the wall 20cm from our fence line that Brad had told DH and I about when the work first began...

On Tuesday of last week, Brad worked there on his own in the morning...

Late morning a truck arrived and parked in the back street...

What a truck it was!

I think that the driver/operator of the truck was just checking whether the equipment would go right to the front of the property... but where was the readi-mix concrete going to come from??

I had started off by taking photos from our back yard but moved to our front veranda...

The truck driver opened a compartment at the back of his truck and went around spraying the inside of the compartment with a spray 'bottle'.

Ah! This is where the cement is coming from...here's a cement truck which backed up to the back of the truck...using the zoom, you can see that compartment that I mentioned...

Now you can see that the black piping has been connected to the side of that compartment...

The driver operates the equipment from the control pad which is attached to a belt around his waist...

I was taking the photos from a distance but pretty soon I would get a ringside view :-)

The blocks are being filled with concrete via the pipe via the compartment in the back of the truck from the readymix truck. The man on the end of the wall is Robin, who is the managing director of the building firm whose project this is. He has spent a fair bit of time on the site doing 'quality control' and carrying lots of bricks!

Gradually the men worked their way to the back of the property...

Then for a few days, the site was empty while the cement dried I guess...

A view over the building site from near our back door...

Hello! It looks like the builders are graffiti artists too! lol

Arrows and Ws...

Lots of bricks stacked up at the back fence...

More Ws near our side boundary...

This week we have had a different group of 'tradies' working on the site...but that's for another post.