Lights! Cladding! Action!

After a couple of weeks of not much seeming to happen, we finally are seeing some tangible progress and it actually looks like a house that we might live in kinda soon. We were getting rather frustrated by nothing but painting going on, whilst the electricians installed a couple of lights here and there, some upside down (!). Finally in the last week there has been real progress and we are surging towards our move in day, which is in two weeks time.

The spotted gum cladding, an element of the house we were really looking forward to seeing, was delivered to the site in about March, ready to be applied. Well, after 4 months of sitting around, it is finally going on, and we are pretty pleased with how it looks.

Most of the lights are now installed, with the exception of the upside down numbers, (which are sitting, in pieces, in the pantry). This is the 2nd living area/ play room:

In keeping with the spotted gum theme, the high cupboards in the kitchen are of the same, seen here with the only real colour in the house, the green kitchen cupboards and the new cooker. I've spent the last 12 months using an electric cooker with a psychotic personality and the 12 months prior to that with a toaster oven, so you can be sure I can't wait to fire this baby up. Got to love cooking with gas.

Ensuite has lights, and a mirror, and a loo. Everything sans running water!

More spotted gum in the kitchen, and the handsome italian light which made it here from germany in the post in nothing more than a flimsy cardboard box. I didn't consider the possible logistical problems in shipping a 1.8m long light when ordering it online....

We have a study "nook" in the master bedroom, which was designed to re-use a pre- existing sewing-computer bench we had constructed out of ikea kitchen stuff. The house had already been built when I finally realised that the bench for the space was 2.4m long and the space in the house was 3.3m..... we have still re-used the cabinets, but had to have a new bench top made. I'm now considering creative options for a 2.4m long kitchen benchtop.

Hopefully the next post will show everything looking totally schmiko, but don't hold your breath!

Pedal to the Metal...

Things have certainly heated up in the last week, with the bathroom basins going in, the laundry basin, taps, part of the kitchen, bookshelf, the wood fire, and bath being installed. Even something resembling cladding has been applied (in a limited way) to the exterior....

again, these are phone images, apologies...

the hallway bookshelves-

the laundry bench...

the spare WC....

the bath...

the kitchen with spot for refrigerators...

the pantry with benchtop....

the ensuite basin...

the elusive cladding...

Needless to say we cannot wait for it all to be completed. So far we are very happy with the interior design decisions we have made, let's wait and see what the rest of them are like!

A Slow, Agonising Road....

The closer the house comes to completion, the slower the progress seems to get. We are up to the pointy end of the process now, with painting, joinery etc. The pain is increased by the fact that it is bitterly cold, and our current house is akin to living in a damp cardboard box in a siberian summer. Even before the new house was weathertight (and it's still not..) on a sunny day it is warm and pleasant inside despite the cold out. In the midst of the chaos of our daily lives we have lost the camera battery, so we have had to make do with mobile phone images.

Choosing paint colours...

The hallway cupboard (sans doors)

Tim's crazy pump manifold for the house water supply and fire fighting setup. It connects the diesel fire pump and house electric pump to inside taps, sprinklers on the house, on the ground and to the fire hose reels at either end of the house.

Our beautiful spotted gum front door with it's handle installed- this door weighs a ton, but we love the simplicity of the design and the rustic appearance of the timber.

The most significant improvement has been outside, Tim hired a dude with a bobcat to level out around the house and then spread out and compact 50 t of quarry rubble- so you can now access it without rubber boots. It was only a matter of days before one of the tradies had to dig yet another trench through it- returning part of it to mud, because someone forgot that the septic thingy needed an alarm. The builder suggested that, instead of putting the alarm in the house, where it should have gone, he could put a flashing light on the top of a tall pole, about 20 metres from the house, rigged up to the alarm so we could see it if it was going off? We didn't think that was such a good idea.

The exterior of the house has been sitting for a long time without cladding. With the wind and the rain the sisalation has now blown off in several places, with insulation coming out, and rain going in. Meanwhile the cladding still sits patiently waiting in the living room for carpenters to put it up! At least it's dry.

Gyprockers- the noblest of trades...

Ah, nothing like the knowledge that your project of so many years of planning and many months of carefully making precise decisions to do with all manner of detail is in the safe and trustworthy hands of unsupervised apprentices weilding large sheets of plasterboard. The plasterboard, when bashed into the rammed earth walls, makes obvious white marks which cannot be removed, and the plastering process fills the entire house with dust. The learned apprentices were then followed by the bosses who took considerable time fixing all of the things the apprentices cocked up. But they are finally finished, and the walls look beautiful, leaving us to perseverate over decisions such as wall colour (half strength lexicon or whisper white?), tile orientation and placement (horizontal? vertical? brick bond?) and cabinetry finishes (expensive, very expensive or ridiculously expensive).



A very welcome visit by interstate relatives has allowed Tim to have some extra man power to get some jobs done- installing the ground based sprinkler pipes, and erecting the pump house. (read: stratco shed, but a very flash home for a pump nonetheless). Our plans to do most of the landscaping ourselves may be a tad ambitious... spade, anyone?

Outside the house pretty much like it has for the last couple of months, with the exception of the addition of a couple of eaves (gyprockers!), but soon we will have doors, and cladding, so the builder says.....

I think I have been bit lazy on the product shots, perhaps because I know you won't be excited to see photos of power points and the like. Most of the sexy stuff has already been aired, so here is the proposed lawnmower....

Starting to look like a house

Amazing what a difference it makes when the walls get lined with gyprock. All of a sudden it starts to feel like a house inside. Hopefully one day it will be a home too.....

So thats pretty much what has been happening the last two weeks.... internal walls. We will be at lock-up soon I hope.

I hope electrician knows what he is doing!

Photos, corrections

So apparently it was more like 20000L which went on the ground rather than into our rainwater tanks. (more expletives)

We visit the site with the kids most weekends. Building sites are wonderful entertainment for small children. Zoe played for ages with this bag of brackets, not to mention the mud and furniture free rooms for riding bikes in. It's also great to have them witness the process of building and all the steps which are required.

The site, especially after the rain, is becoming a tad messy. Those of you with millipede aversions beware. There are piles of assorted dust, debris and deceased small animals in every corner. Tim occasionally sweeps in vain, because it is always followed up with another barrage of sawdust/ small insects/ high caffeine and guarana drink containers

On a more positive note, the render on the exterior is now finished and looks excellent, just like a bought one. It is now the actual colour we selected, and, thankfully, we still like it!

Sorry No Postie

Many apologies that I have not posted before, no good excuses, but a lot has happened on the building site.

Tim would add many expletives in here, but as those of you in Adelaide know a couple of weeks ago here it rained (very unusual). This was fine and good, with the drainage connected to the rainwater tanks and the guttering ready to go, the tanks were waiting to be filled by nature's bounty. The only stumbling block was the absence of downpipes (which to this day are not in), and thus 12000 litres of water poured onto our roof and onto the ground. Big mess.

After Easter the ground around the house was still like a mudbath, so the gyprockers(who know's what they're actually called) couldn't do the eaves as planned, so they started the interior, which meant some rushed decisions re placings of light switches, heaters, etc etc. But it is going forward. And I will post some photos very soon. Promise. So the interior walls are going up, the insulation is in and everything is progressing well.