Progress

Progress indeed. Mid January saw the boys helping out with house site preparations.

We headed off to Golden Bay on the annual pilgrimige ( brilliant weather this year!) with some trepidations as the slab was due to be poured in the first week of our holiday and the frames erected during the decond week.  Texts from home kept us up to date while co-ordinating heating and building teams saw some delays. In the event we returned to a nicely curing slab and were here to see frames erected.

It is an extroadinary process that seems to hobble together skilled processes with error management. It has been observed that if medics managed patients the way builders erect building tribunals would be very busy but somehow it seems to come together. Not much is irrevocable or as the builders quip “everything is fixable”. Two builders down to health matters saw a new man on the job and with only one frame put up back to front the skeleton was erected relatively quickly.

The build is about two weeks behind schedule but there is the potential to pick up time on the window order.

Murray and I have been doing our valiant best to make final decisions and after a few days researching tabs, basins , tiles and wooden flooring we think we may be getting to th point where the thing starts to gel…. nearly…

New Year

In the nick of time before Christmas we got off the ground with filled foundations.  We  missed the slab being laid by a couple of days due to bad weather and possible a bit of is communication but in the end it should  mean a positive start with all action from Jan 12.

Founds 20ish December

This  image shows dining room and lounge, bedroom in far corner. The pile of rubbish in the foreground will become deck that adjoins old house.   The far pile of wood just visible is the old shed which now awaits ceremonial burning in Autumn.

Old and new house joined by lights for Christmas

The anticipation is that some time before June we will be in the long anticipated ‘new bit’.  The time line for the build ends with a hand over date of April 29th  with the all important watermark “Subject to Change”!  It is unlikely Tom will be holding his 17th birthday party there but maybe  it will be ready for my 50th? – or maybe I will have my 50th when it is ready?  Whatever we are out of the ground and those who have done it before say things will move pretty fast from here until they slow again for interior detailing.

Before Christmas a friend got the old dining room converted for Tom ’s bedroom to start the new school year in. This will mean condensing living spaces for a while… Thanks to the team at Portabuild we have temporarily aquired a portable building for drums and otherwise  hanging out which is to the boys what the old living rooms will be when  we move.

The break has been spent waging junk wars.  Today may well see the long dreamed of shed workshop come to fruition – it is to be a long dreamt of a masterpiece of classification.  Murray also put up a shade sale over the deck of the old house . Thanks to the efficiency of a mega hardware store  (whose heiress is dear to Tom’s heart! ) it was effected in one afternoon – we went to buy mouldings!

More soon on kitchen design.

Foundations

We did some work on WordPress and discovered we could export using Picasa and that it is possible to insert a gallery to the post.

A big day today – foundation digging has begun!

(as I write this the boys and Murray are following a pandemic spread around the world in some flash game -  a strange suspension of reality as Murray occasionally ensures their pandemic definitions are vaguely plausible! )

Digging the foundation trenches

David in the retaining wall post hole

New Septic being delivered

New septic in the ground – connected by new drains

Breaking up the old septic

From old house study door

The old septic

Engineer checking the old septic

Foundation digging

The outline emerges

Foundation trench meets old house – retaining in background

Sunday 19 October

The house yesterday from a similar place to the photo in the last post.

Jim made something of a ‘hobby’ of planting walnut trees. The largest and most splendid provides shade for lunch on summer days.   We took a break from processing the felled trees…

David on chipper, Murray on chainsaw

First Post

Nearly 10 years in the making our house project is now underway.

We have spent the last few weekends dropping trees where the extension to the house is to be built.  It was hard to begin this task.  For while it was satisfying to see the space and the views open up.  But today its a bit bleak.

Yesterday we cut down the broadleaf by the back path.   We delayed this until one of the boys was  ready as it has provided an archway of green on the path to the ‘front’ door ( more about the front door another day) and its shade has been the repository of birds and other small creatures that have moved on.  Jill Dickinson (Minson) , who grew up here and provide me with the photo below, also loved this tree.  Today its is the maple….

We have seedlings of many of the trees we are taking down to plant around the new extension and are chipping all that are removed to help many other parts of the garden  thrive.

The digger arrives on Thursday…

The vege garden on the what is now the tennis court.