That floored me!

We went to have a look at the house and found that not only did we have fully glazed windows but we also have some floor. We took the opportunity to have a little dance on it!

Some floorish bits.

The floorish mess.

Here are the developing vegie gardens for whoever I promised this photo to.

Plumbing and windows and doors, oh, my!

At times this project does feel as if we're following the yellow brick road only to find that at the end of it is just a little, old dude with some dodgy special effects but unlike Dorothy's 'lions and tiger and bears' this post isn't about anything scary. I know I keep promising that it will start looking like a real house soon, well windows and doors should help in that respect.

window seat in the loungeroom.

bedroom window

big window/door in the loungeroom

frame for the trifold door from the kitchen

window seat again - it's mine!

As for the plumbing part of the post, the plumbers have been back to do the 'rough in' hence the pipes you can see here:

Unfortunately, we do not yet have gutters... you know those things that are so helpful for catching all this water that keeps falling out of the sky and directing it into our tanks!

More Mud and Baby Birds

I had thought I’d post more frequently now that there are things to see going on at the house. We’re always excited to see whatever new bit of render has gone on when we drop in but unfortunately, in photos, there isn’t much to show. All mud just looks like mud.

 The morning sun coming through our bedroom window.

So far the lounge and our bedroom are done both inside & out. The bathroom is taking shape with a first coat inside and the spare room has its initial inside coat too.

The first coat of render inside the bathroom.  

Both the bathroom and the spare bedroom have their final coats outside so this end of the house is starting to look pretty good.

 The spare room - final coat outside

Here’s the actual interesting bit. We had to do something about the curved wall in the kitchen. Initially it was meant to only go up to stair level so its height would step up following the height of the stairs to the study BUT that created problems for how we would attach the ceiling above the stairs (I don’t think of these practical things when I come up with my design brilliance… it’s up to somebody else to make it work. I should have been an architect!) To solve this problem we decided to make the wall the full height all the way around but to allow light into the stairwell we’ve done this…

I wasn’t keen on the idea at first but I came around & now that it’s in, I think it looks better than my original idea.

This is an arty shot of our curved wall from above :) Do you feel dizzy?

 This is still our favourite view – from the big window in the study:

The Grey Shrike-thrush who has nested in the shack before has come back now that it's a bit quieter without us around. Look, baby birds!

Of Mud and Pardalotes

Things are progressing at the house, we now have more mud on the lounge room walls both inside and outside.

Some locals seem to think the house is liveable as it is. Recently we had swallows build a nest in the storage room under the stairs, they have since moved out but left their renovations behind:

Now, it seems that the muddy walls have become too tempting for a pair of striated pardalotes! They have found a weak point in the first coat of render in the spare room (I suppose they think they're house guests). So, now we'll have to wait until the young are out of the nest before that wall can be completed, luckily that doesn't take very long.

Like a pig in MUD!

Well, the three little pigs references just don't get old, do they?

There has been some strange things going on around here: water has been falling out of the sky (I believe they call it 'rain') AND there has been some progress on our house.

A first coat of render has been started. See for yourself:

Mud-making equipment

Mud-spraying person

Mud-sprayed wall

Mostly mud-sprayed house

Just in case you weren't sick of it yet, close-up mud!

And here's evidence of the falling water stuff, a very full dam:

I'm sure there'll be more muddy posts to follow....
:)

Baled up

The strawbale stacking is progressing and we've been able to get a better feel of what the rooms will be like and what the views out of various windows will be.

This is from inside the loungeroom & shows the dining area and the front door opening in the middle:

Inside looking back into the loungeroom:

This is the loungeroom end of the house, today they were working on the framing for the bales to sit over the big window:

And here we have the main bedroom and upstairs study. The bales have been stacked into the second storey wall and they've started to frame up the upstairs deck outside the study:

The whole front of the house. The black plastic is to keep the bales as dry as possible:

All visitors are more than welcome just give us a call.

Cheers,

Deb & Nic

Other things we like...

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of showing my parents and grandparents around our building site. I think everyone enjoyed seeing the progress first-hand rather than from pics on the blog.

The laying of the bales is continuing; yesterday the builders were working on the walls to both bedrooms. They've tied down the bales for the lounge room wall and have framed up and baled the windows in the lounge and the bedrooms as well. Unfortunately, this doesn't look very different in photos to the ones I've already put up so I thought I'd share some of our flora instead.

Blossom on the ironbark

Goodenia

Running postman - Kennedia

Not sure what this is - any ideas?

Chocolate Lilly

Onion Orchid

Paper daisy

Sun Orchid

And the trick one - it's a picture of the Cassinia (curry scrub) really! :)

Posting bale!

The house is now really starting to take shape. The bales are being stacked and tightened in preparation for the render.

The western end of the house (lounge room) is up to ceiling height:

There has also been work done on the wall of the spare bedroom:

This is the window seat in the lounge room:

Nic is standing in the doorway of the trifold door into the kitchen (the brown blur in the bottom left is Luna who has made a racetrack of the space underneath the house!)

All of this sounds like wonderful news but let's not get too carried away. Nic spoke to the builder last week and the latest guess is that we won't be in the house until November. This is unfortunate since I had planned on having a house warming to coincide with the Heathcote Wine & Food Festival over the 1st weekend in October. BUT trying the glass-half-full perspective, the silver lining is that we will still be in the Wright Street house for this year's event and it is staggering distance from the show grounds where the Wine & Food is to be found... so, wine, anyone?

:)
Cheers,
Deb xXx

Ex-straw-dinary

Last night on the way home from work we drove out to the house site and in the failing light of the day (mostly lit by headlights) discovered a delivery of STRAW! That’s right, our walls have arrived and we could barely contain our excitement. In fact, I was so thrilled I sent blurry and underexposed photos of straw bales in text messages to my mum and my sisters – I figured they’d know what it was even if you couldn’t really tell from the photo.

Today the builders say the will start baling “very soon” and maybe I’ll even have a go myself. The next few weekends would be a good time if you’d like to come up and see construction in progress. Everyone is welcome.

You can see the final roof construction now too: