Learning to Build

For more than 30 years I had dreamed of building my own home, well when I say home I mean somewhere to live, somewhere as a base for the adventurer in me to return to and somewhere to sit on a porch and reflect on places I had been.

Finally I was in a position to make this dream a reality, my bush block in Tasmania was the perfect place to build a base, surrounded by so many great places to explore and also within my budget.

I had been successful in getting my development and building application approved so the next stage was to actually build my cabin.

As I had never built anything before and to ensure the best possible outcome on the advice of a friend I attended a ‘Timber House Framing’ course at Holmesglen TAFE, this course was fantastic, a really great Lecturer that himself had run a building company and a great group of guys all keen to learn the basics of framing.

Timber House Framing Course

This course was run over six nights and covered setting out stumps, sub-floor construction, floor, wall frames and finally roofing.

Each night was well organised and we learned many trade secrets that would help us with any building projects we planned to undertake. Even the techniques for framing the roof were well explained and we were introduced to the ‘bible’ of roofing the Little Red Book of Roof Cuts and Rafter Lengths.

This little pocket sized book is invaluable for calculating the lengths and angles associated with the various cuts required to pitch a roof.

After attending this course I feel more confident to tackle my own building project. Holmesglen TAFE also offer a course in fixing and lock up which I plan to do early in the New Year.

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