Pull it down - put it up

Looking from the bedroom through the E/S to the kitchen

It's been a while since the last update and a bit has happened.  A picture tells a thousand words, so the best place to look is probably Timelines 2, 3 and 4 on my gallery.

The kitchen and laundry are just a shell.  There is no walls (or roof)  in the back corner of the house.  The dining room is starting to look like the en suite and there is a floor about to appear in the extension.  Things are moving along.

Current Accommodation

Since my last post, the last of the piering was completed.  At the same time, the boys continued to get stuck into the remodelling of the old part of the house.  New walls went into the old dining room to create space for the built in robe, the pantry with the remaining space being for the en suite.  We took the old pine floor up and replaced it with fibre cement sheets to create a solid base for the tiles.  This has been handy over the last few weeks as the cottage I'm staying in has a wood fire as it's only heating and the pine floor has been doing a good job.  The cottage takes open plan living to the extreme with one room containing bed, living and kitchen with a small en suite style bathroom.  It is very spacious and we are, once again, lucky to have found such a nice place to live while we do up the house.  Picasso is enjoying keeping an eye on the alpacas that roam the property.

The cement floor in the laundry was chopped up and removed since it was at the wrong height to take the new floor.  They cut it with the cement saw and then Owen moved in with his big grabs and just lifted the sections out.  It al went pretty smoothly - once they got rid of the back walls which are now held up by a couple of temporary props.

On the fix-up side of things, it turns out the the house had a bit of a lean to the south east corner.  Owen reckons the chimney in the old living room had sunk a bit and pulled the house down by about 30mm.  I'm not surprised given the foundation for the chimney is only about 400mm thick - when you compare that to the 2.2m some of the other footings went down to, I'm surprised the old thing hadn't fallen down years ago.  Anyway, they jacked the house up a bit, but couldn't get it all the way back to level without cracking the chimney so the house will remain on a little bit of a lean - about only about half of what it was though.

There was a bit of a break in proceedings while we waited for the brickies to arrive.  They were held up on another job due to some rain we had a few weeks ago.  They took a couple of days to brick up the piers and planter boxes.  We have a large planter box at the edge of the back deck and a couple of smaller ones in the entrance courtyard.  While the brickies were doing their thing, Owen got the slab ready and had the cement pored for the garage floor, so now the final footprint of the extension is evident.

Robbie, the plumber and his off-siders have been crawling over and under the house 'roughing in' the pipes for the bathrooms.

This week Owen hopes to get the flooring down, and then the frame will go up pretty soon after that.  So finally, things will start to take shape, which is more exciting than just digging holes and filling them up again!  The other change over the last month has been the number of decisions that require an answer.  Where do you want the taps, toilets, drain, etc etc.  So when you all come and stay I don't want any "you should have put that power point over there" or what ever! I'm keeping detailed notes of excuses for putting things where they are so I have a good counter argument ready for you when you do!