I Vlogged My Entire House Build Start to Finish

Watch Me take on the challenge of building my family home on a steep sloping section. This is a long one, from prepping the site all the way to landscaping. If you like this kind of content please consider subscribing for more.

Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:50 The Section Nobody Wanted
02:01 Design
02:57 First Day On Site
04:20 Building Consent
05:21 Site Prep
06:19 Set Out
07:11 Earthworks
08:18 Foundations
08:43 Worst Day On Site
10:00 Garage Slab
12:17 Factory Tour
13:19 First Floor Framing
13:49 Steel beam install
15:36 Subfloor
16:07 Framing
16:41 Roof Framing
18:19 Roofing
19:22 Rigid Air Barrier
20:03 Moving Sliding Door
20:49 Window Install
21:27 Lockdown
22:50 Cladding
25:02 Kitchen Planning
25:32 Pre-Wire/Pipe
26:02 Stairs Install
26:32 Insulation
27:26 Plasterboard
29:24 Paint
30:12 Drop Scaffold/ Electrical
30:56 Flooring
33:23 Kitchen Install
34:07 Driveway
35:24 Finishing Interiors
37:30 Fireplace
40:35 Study Nook
42:26 Decks
47:09 Landscaping
52:10 Skate Ramp
53:00 Finish Build

I took this section on 4 years ago and it’s been a massive undertaking this is the one video start to finish that captures the whole Journey so day one every plan is seems to be two steps forward and one step back one of the worst days I have ever had on a building site the prime minister of New Zealand announced a 4 we Nationwide shutdown I don’t want to be one of those builders

That moves in to a place and still has a thousand jobs that I just procrastinate Forever everyone has come to look at this every Builder every man and his dog and been scared off for one reason or another just standing on the section we locked in unconditional 1600 M and a nice suburb and upper Hut but it’s a tough site so

Real early on WE coined the saying the section nobody wanted there was a number of issues with the site that I could see had put a lot of people off in the past it was on a slope it was access from a rideway and there was a very tight dog

Le at the start that RightWay was also shared with two other houses behind the site there was a number of drainage easements running through the middle of the site which restricted your building platform even more there was a set of power lines feeding the neighbor’s house running across the site that needed to

Be dropped and laid in the ground and there was a protected torture tree right at the top of the section where we would ideally have put our Gage so downstairs we’re going to build a basement garage which makes the most of the natural flow of the land and next to that we’re going to build a studio and then we’re going to have the main house upstairs all one level upstairs will be a pretty normal three-bedroom two living

House we really wanted to make the most of the orientation of the section and capturing that North facing Sun we’ve got two large outdoor spaces both North facing both will get that midday sun right through to early evening so yeah that’s what we’re planning to build and that is a result

Of the initial concept phase with prime designs we were also well and truly through the working drawings for building and SC we’ve been making decisions around the best way to put those drawings together to to really make the build as smooth as possible morning just to the section with the

Boys my very first job Joy to the World I get to mow the Lawns there’s quite a few of them it’s quite long it’s going to take a while Hang Stephanie can you out broken bone under an open wound and you always have to be a bit careful with that so I’ve asked the orthopedic regge to come and look at it so he’ll look at it uh had to have surgery they were literally picking out shoe and grass out

Of the knuckle in my toe got stitched up and then had to spend 4 weeks in a moon boot off my Feet you know even though I’ve been through this quite a few times now I still found myself surprised at how long things take and how many things you have to line up and also how many decisions you need to make so early on before you can even see or touch anything on site

You’re deciding down to some pretty fine details about products you’re going to use how it’s going to look and you have to get that all on the plans we forgot about like lead times with people like engineers and pren nailers and how you know a couple of days delay here just

Has a flow on effect the pl are ready to go in look at this stack of paper that um for every single consent that you submit you have to include probably about six trees lovely do you so you probably don’t need anything else is all there no

Just all that and I’ll get there through to the T cool thank You the Dig is Here what have been sitting up here is called A Story Rod when you’re working with slopes and wide sights it’s good to set up a board and Mark your Heights and obviously double triple check it there’s a laser over there and and now I can go around and shoot some

Heights I started seting the house out this week and man it is the hardest sit out I have Done there is not a single straight boundary to work off the uh profile over in this corner is 3.3 M out of the ground and there’s way too many corners on the House uh every 12200 M or 4 ft I am marking one of these and that’s where I’ve got to dig a hole for the retaining [Applause] Post 57 holes 57 holes I’ve had to drill on the site check out this this bar is 4 M long the Earthworks are officially finished and now we can start uh the preparations for the foundation I am absolutely shattered man it’s been a couple of long days and my body is not

Used to it another week on site a successful week I’ve passed two inspections I’ve passed my um sighting inspections and I have passed my first Engineers inspection so he was happy with the depth of the holes that we’ve drilled and we are good to start our foundation Works Here we are getting piles ready these PES and I’m sitting on a stack of Timber first Delivery uh it’s a wet Monday morning here on site I absolutely hated working in the rain when I was an apprentice and now I’m out here slaving away it was wet it was pouring down but we had these 50 holes and they were drilled and I had to make a call on

Whether to pour them or not it’s crazy when you’re an apprentice and you’re like oh the rain you can’t be bothered and then when it’s your own site and you’re like involved you somehow you just get out here and do it the rain just makes things so hard it

Just makes like a normal job literally three times harder even at the end of the day had to like empty my toolbox empty my tools dry them all out um that wasn’t fun either it’s just kind of like it’s not over when you get Home every plan it seems to be two steps forward and one step back and I haven’t encountered that for a long time but then I’ve got to remind myself that this is not just your like typical flat subdivision just bang it up it is a complicated site it’s a complicated

Design and is going to take a bit of thinking so we boxing up the garage slab that means that we create a hard surface for the concrete to finish to so we’re down over here down in there Yesterday was just one of those insane days where everything right from the start went wrong a hide compactor and then went to pull it to start and the starter cord was broken so that was an hour of wasted time going going getting new one then um I was backing the

Trailer um at the house where I’m staying and clip the neighbor’s letter box uh so spent another hour fixing that and then um we went to start the steel last night and realized that they had seen all the wrong Steel this 66 s m slab passed two inspections yesterday and we are now good to pour concrete so all things considered the fact that we uh only got our consent two weeks ago and we’re about to pour concrete is a massive achievement and a big milestone for the

Site it means that we’re going to have a hard finished surface to work off and uh the build will start to get out of the ground and that’s where you start to get out of the unknown territory and into the know One of the unexpected joys of vlogging my build was the factory tours that popped up along the way one of the ones I remember the most is the prail visit so we made the trip out to the e Coast to see how they were fabricated Offsite you can look at the whole house in 3D right well that’s the whole thing there yet and I can put the trusses on for you yeah even looking at like what the detailer did and how he gets it into the computer program and the fact that

We could tune the house around in every which angle and look at every stud dang and block definitely has given me more of an appreciation for what goes into those sets of frames that turn up to Sight this is the subfloor framing for what’s going to be a little 20 me studio hanging off the front of our House just got a phone call to say the steel beam for our garage is Ready We could probably lift this beam if we really tried I mean it’s only 150 kgs but the track was past and itm was more than willing to [Applause] help cheers itm really appreciate It 500 It’s in it’s steel beam is in that literally took less than 5 minutes and would have taken us so much longer if we were trying to manhandle it ourselves thanks again itm Cheers I’m standing on the final floor for the house with only a couple of days before Christmas we got the floor finished an amazing Milestone considering that we only started building 9 weeks ago and we’ve had our Fier sheer of Challenges Frames are up uh Nets are in scaffolding is done we can now crack on with the roof Framing That’s the roof Roofing iron due to go on tomorrow these are called peins here these here are called trusses over there you can see the Skylight box we’ve had to form this is our hallway and you can see there that will be one of the skylights that we are installing and

That will actually showcase our protected tree that is the front roof over the lounge there’s another tree that we’re not allowed to touch but looks pretty Amazing another massive Milestone ticked off in the build a huge amount of work dealing with the odd shape of the building because of the easements and because of the weird shape of the section I counted up the other day it has 18 corners on the exterior and Each

Corner adds so much more work like literally I reckon every corner adds another couple of days of work that wouldn’t be there if you just had this you know normal boxed shaped House This We’ve gone from Earthworks to slab to frames up roof trusses and now we have a Roof Big milestone at this section nobody wanted just about to cut my last sheet of RAB here’s the building all rabbed up in the lounge I’ll tell you these are sliding door the architect was up here on the weekend and we all decided that it would be better to move it a meter to

The right to get more of the views of the Hill pretty much I’m going to spend the morning unpicking some of the work we did last week and putting it back together [Applause] [Applause] Usually reaching lock up is a massive an exciting Milestone this time has been a little bit different However the last few days have been a mad frantic rush to get everything in place to close down and walk away from 11:59 p.m. tonight we will close our border to any nonresidents and citizens attempting to travel here as most of you know on Monday afternoon the prime

Minister of New Zealand announced a 4 week Nationwide shutdown and so pretty much 1:30 everything that I had organized on this build went out the window and we went into closed Downing mode Now that we have to walk away from this build and the timeline is super an I’m so glad that I made the decision to install RAB board it means that our house is fully weaer tight and this stuff can stand up to 180 days in the weather I’m pretty confident

I can get the cutting on before Then morning first day back to work decided to ride the bike up today one this car on site planning to get the Wither board on and get the house fully closed In Just about to head home very long day on site finished this wo here this wo here and this wo here and so tomorrow we’re going to move around the back and start cleaning over there uh using linear oblique random pattern this wall here is already finished and painted spouting on doors in you’re

Going to have a light either side of the door and up down light and then we’ve got those screws there we’ve pre- bolted for the deck painted a few walls over the weekend this is what it’s going to start looking like pretty happy with how it’s

Coming up a few more things to do on this wall before we can finish that off and um we’ll be dropping the scaffold soon that’ll be Exciting That’s uh essentially what you can sort of look at a BN here just a plain drawer underneath and here you got to like a a magic corner or something so that PS Out yo so I’m just on site with Adam cool Kat how’s it going we’ve just done a pre pipe here for a heat pump um we’re going for a 8 KW um electric up there steers have arrived uh a little bit more work to do here It is so good to have a set of steers in uh this is going to be our big front door unit here uh so the door is 2.2 M high and then we have a big paint of glass above it as well as a skylight and the entrance way here

Today’s exciting job super exciting we get to install a hust loader Back Today we have the beginning of another Milestone we have another delivery arriving in about 2 Hours Getting the jib on the walls is one of those immensely satisfying stages of the build it’s where it turns from this Timber framing that you’ve been looking at for months to all of a sudden there’s a wall that you can touch I’ve got the plaster arriving tomorrow morning Monday and I didn’t

Want to lose that slot so I have worked 6 days and two nights to get this house ready for the plasterer to arrive this is our Lounge over here this is our kitchen here so this room here will be the second [Applause] lounge We have paint on the walls doors skirtings arraes painters are just finishing up now and we will have reached another Milestone on the section nobody wanted We are dropping the scaffold and of course the day we plan to do this it starts to [Applause] rain Painting is all complete in the Sparky have finished a lot of their work so the very next step is hard flooring so that includes a wooden overlay that we have purchased and it also includes Tiles there’s six of us on site and we uh going hard installing tiles and Flooring we have 900 M of this beach overlay to go Down We’ve got tiles after months of toiling away we’re finally at the stage where this house is starting to come together light switches you can turn them around and angle them where you want them pretty Cool it’s Tuesday afternoon and we are in the steel well today putting on the white faces It’s all happening today we’ve got the Digger driver got a couple of Builders inside got some boys downstairs doing a dig everything that you’ve been planning and working towards is starting to come Together a car goes Here This Make sure you use theck colors to look at it yeah Perfect cut This Uh I I don’t want to be one of those builders that moves in to a place and still has a thousand jobs that are just procras Forever today’s job is that fireplace needs to go in that corner bit of a mish we’ve had to cut out all of the old floor basically I didn’t read the specs properly I wrongly assumed that I could just use a 6 m steel plate like my old

Fire that I installed but this one we need to put a 20 mil layer of non-combustible Surface It’s nice and light though yeah good real light you Go it’s [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] Time so that’ll form an edge for the tiles rather than using the aluminium edging we formed a customade wooden Trim Next steps is the roofer is going to cut a hole in the roof and put a flashing all the way to the ridge there and that will keep the water out and then we poke the chimney Through Tomorrow we are attacking this area here this is the study knok just finished cutting the plywood for the Shelf up Steers We’ve got the shelves on the wall the desk is in I’m going to put a coat of oil over everything tonight and we’ll just touch up some of the marks we’ve left on the Wall Yo it’s Friday morning I’ve got the plumber and I’ve got the Sparky here and it’s been a morning of tying up loose ears we’ve been doing the kitchen rang Hood the island light the heated Tower rails although we’ve already moved in I’ve written a list for every single

Room and I’m adamant that we are going to get this place uh 100% Finished The steel beam’s in and we’ve started the joists let’s head up there and have a Look feels like it’s been a long time coming but we are finally laying the let’s crack on we’ managed to lay about half of it we’re going to continue to attack this part it’s looking awesome the hidden fixing loving the look of that as well let’s keep Ling Let’s just say sloping sides are a lot of Work We’ve been living here for 3 months now and we still have the wrapper on our front door I think it’s time to remove it our metal ballustrade is finally on site and it marks one of the last jobs we need to do for code of compliance So it’s pretty light Hey Che kind of fill up to the board from Theedge And we’re going to do a little bit more Landscaping get the kids fought a little bit more safe get it finished get the B straight up yeah just chunking away a lot of those little jobs that have been lingering and just really want to get it finished and out of my Head the area is starting to look men it’s a lot of work but we’re getting There so this morning we got this floor Square we’re also doing some workout here on the [Applause] driveway what I’m going to do today is we’re going to fill up some of the planter boxes down the bottom it’s all those little things that take it from a building site to a finished product it’s crazy that it’s taken this long to do it Over here we’ve built like a little garden box and then just up there we’re doing an edge we’re going to carry the ginas along We’re just going to do this feature area with a bunch of different size golf ball pter forums so they’re kind of like staggered random and then when you walk up the drive you see that got the firewood shed there and we’ve got the work from home office There boom we got a set of stairs from the top level to the the bottom level almost ready so much work in this kind of stuff now I’ll be able to drive straight up to my Wood over here I’m going to build my very own mini ramp only 20 years overdue from when I wish I could build One If you think that’s crazy we’re about to do it all over again just over there I’ve taken on a similar sloping site about to do the whole process all over stay tuned And subscribe for more