Native Visitors and Non-Native Temporary Residents

We have been popping up to Howes Valley on a couple of over night trips to try and get a bit more done than when going up for a day. Someone is sleeping on the job again! His trampoline bed certainly takes up a lot of space!

In the morning we had a visitor right up close. Better let Batman out the other side of the house so he doesn't scare our visitor away!
A bit of a closer shot out of the Bedroom window...

View from the loft floor to the new ceiling fan. We have our picnic table down stairs but this was originally going to be where the fireplace/woodstove was going to go... but maybe it would be better as a dining area?

The other cavity looks into the kitchen area and where the original dining area was going to be... I still like this spot for the dining area as it's next to the kitchen...

Outside not much has changed visually but the oiling is continuing and is almost all done!

The upstairs loft area has had all the ceiling panels oiled now with two coats. Looking up the unfinished pine staircase to the coated balustrades. The balustrades have turned up a lot more golden than we liked. But suspect it was because we looked at a sample of the Sikkens Light Oak on WR Cedar and we are putting in on pine... hmmm... after 3 coats it's still very golden and needs a bit of red and walnut. How to fix it?

We're thinking of doing the stairs in a different colour but this time we'll be doing samples on bits of offcut to see how we go. I don't look forward to sanding back the balustrades so hope by putting another coat of something we can salvage it? Somehow I doubt we can get away with the easy option
We do have POWER! The solar panels seem to be doing a great job... but then what would I know? Although Will keeps telling me how many volts we have (I still have no idea what it means and it's bringing back bad memories of Physics... P=I x V etc)
The inverter sits under the stairs. The first time we turned it on I was "Oh my god, I can't live with that noise" but it only lasted minutes and then it was silent (or quiet enough that I didn't notice it). Apparently it's when the fan turns on so may be noisy if it gets hot.
The Kitchen. One day it may actually be OK. Return my call Damian!!

Other progress photos

Looking up to the loft landing. This is prior to varnishing or the oiling of the ceiling panels.

The space in the loft storage areas is quite good. Here is a peep into one of them.
The downstairs is looking quite good now but this is prior to the kitchen going in or the ceiling paint...
Outside is looking pretty good with the decks now oiled. I think this photo is prior to the oiling happening. More progress photos would be good but the weather has been pretty miserable at this point.

With a little help from our friends

Painting, painting, painting (and oiling and varnishing)...

With the help of Julie, Sue, Pauly and Nikki we are getting there...

As of 31 December 2009, we have now oiled the decks, oiled the ceiling panels in the loft area, varnishing the balustrades and done some of the painting of the ceilings. There is a fair amount to go though... we're less than half way!

Sue is running away after doing a heap of oiling. I think she claimed a number of posts after smearing herself with decking oil (and of course the posts).

I don't think Batman is helping too much... but is enjoying the kitchen!
Pauly is doing a great job with the fiddly balustrades. She seems to like getting a fake tan courtesy of the varnish.
Ceilings are awful to paint. Now I know why we never did ceilings before. Even harder on plasterboard.
Onto the ceiling panels in the loft area. We're just using decking oil which was recommended by the guys at the local Bristol store. (btw I'd recommend using Bristol over Bunnings just for sheer efficiency. It was quick to get advice and also quick to get in and out of there. No queuing at the paint counter for us!)

Nikki is helping us out with the ceiling panels. Sanding first.. and then the oiling... back to work!!

Kitchen Woes

Damian is a lovely guy, but definitely not organised. Our experience with DIY Australia so far has been pretty disorganised.

Whilst the quote was great and Damian (who runs DIY Australia) is lovely we have had some issues ever since the quote!

When I followed up on the delivery, it turned out that they were missing the doors. They were made... and ready but just couldn't be found! So they have to make them at a later stage (unless I wanted a different colour? No I wanted to stay with the theme.)

The delivery of the kitchen was delayed even after I did a work from home day. At 9pm I called to find out where it was... late shouldn't mean that late... and shouldn't I have had a call before that time? I gave them the benefit of the doubt as maybe they thought they could still do it... but it turned out the delivery would happen the following day when I would try and rush home to be here around 6.50pm to take delivery of the kitchen.

When I got home, Will was helping Damian unload the truck into the garage. All good so far... Damian even showed us how to put together the cabinets with Cabinet one as an example.

I'm glad he did... but I was hoping also for a set of instructions? And what about a list of parts? But no... we had to guess how many handles there are meant to be... and I counted them up and told Damian that there weren't enough!

But the worst things have been:

• When we got to Howes Valley to put the cabinets together we found we didn't have all the pieces to build the two base corner cabinets! It was very very irritating especially since Will then took a day off work to build the cabinets later that week (and Jason had allowed Monday to do the kitchen installation which now could not be done!)
• We found out yesterday that the benchtops were scratched (we don't know to what extent) and more importantly one of the benchtops wasn't the right length :(

This now means that the kitchen is delayed... the plumber is delayed, the tiler is delayed... which this close to Christmas means... we won't be in before then! It was making me physically ill but I think it's my high expectation thing. I just need to resign myself to not being in during the forced xmas break period.

Locked up and almost there

We went up this weekend and were very excited to be able to use the front door! It is fully locked up now and the plasterboard and ceiling lining is in. The french door was a bit of a surprise as I was expecting the glass style one but the doors are solid with frosted glass instead.

Goodness knows what we are going to do with the front door as we'll have to paint it. I'm very tempted to go a radical colour... but how radical can I be! Already there are quite a few timber 'colours' involved with Merbau decking, timber supports, pine lining, Elm flooring... and then the colour scheme we're going for is the same one as at home. It's a Taubman's colour scheme but we won't be getting it in Taubman's paint as it was the worst paint we've used thus far! I think it's back to Bristol or Wattle or Dulux for us.

The front door whilst it is unpainted is a very

unappealing green colour. (I was trying to get awa

y from the photo but Batman had other ideas!)

The interior is looking great with all the plasterboard and the place looks a bit bigger now than it did before. I don't know how that optical illusion works with space and finishing a house. Still not a large house and the ceilings are very low... good thing that we're pretty short people :).

The bathroom is looking fabulous! I'm glad we went and got the 'special' feature tiles as I think it makes the difference. The larger tiles also look good. I can't wait to see what it looks like with the floor tiles which are a milk coffee sort of colour.

The loft floor is almost finished! I suspect we should be able to paint / oil from top down as there isn't much work for this part left... probably just the light fittings.

The main thing to go in is the kitchen which I'll have to chase up. Thank goodness we now have the means to get the kitchen up to Howes Valley. In it's first test run it did pretty good with Batman and me sharing the passenger seat! I am not sure if he'll be a good "ute" dog!

Almost at lock up

We've been up a couple of times so the photos here are across a couple of trips!

The transition has been from this:

Majority of the frame up... except for the top floor/loft area

To this:

Frames including roof up and even the cladding is on! The zinculume doesn't look too bad and I think it'll help reflect the heat from the sun. It's looking pretty good now!

To this:

Railings for the balustrade are in and even the decking should be in at this stage. Just missing a couple of doors (front and the french doors) otherwise it'd be considered lock up.

Some other photos:

This is the South facing decking looking out towards the view. At the moment the balustrades aren't in so we can see quite a lot... I think the veradahs are going to keep the downstairs area pretty cool in summer!

After our trip to Canada I wanted to build some little statues of people from the rock we had (Inukshuk) so I started doing so with Will letting me know how silly and lopsided they were...

There is plenty of room under the house for... something!

I particularly like the supporting post that Jason chose to put in which has a bit of character... the problem is how are we going to install floorboards around this post?