Board yet?

158 floorboards, sealed by Captain Laird on Friday night and ready to install on the upper verandahs this week.

That would be these verandahs:

Front

Back:

Meanwhile, house stalking was taken to a new level today: as I walked in the back door you see above, I was met by a fellow and his spaniel, walking down my hallway and into the kitchen, if you don't mind. 

Just having a look, totally unapologetic. 

I wonder if he would like me to come around to Clapham St and appear uninvited in his front hallway too?

Another Post post

Well. Things are continuing to hurtle along - so much to tell you, but so little time for the telling!

This week saw the continuation of the plaster process. No cornices or ceiling roses to show you yet, but I believe they are imminent. 

It got all biblical on us today with gale-force winds, flooding rains, and the Aussie version of snow: hail. None of which is conducive to the delivery of our delicate Victorian cornices.

That weather also ruled out the commencement of the verandahs - their posts stacked forlornly in the front yard, feeling all threatened by the close proximity of our scrap heap.

The pre-sale makeover of the Principle Residence was also on hold, with a lovely delivery of fresh turf but appalling conditions saw it merely stacked under the carport.

 "I was awake all night worrying about it" cried the landscaper. No doubt because the AFL grand final is the day after tomorrow and I have a sneaking suspicion he may be a supporter of one of the combatants. 

It's like "Sophie's Choice" - will he choose to let the turf die in favour of his other love? 

Meanwhile, the verandahs have proved to be our biggest headache of all so far. As recounted in my last Post post, we couldn't wrap our minds around post holders etc. Then we could not make a decision about the verandah flooring upstairs. Or rather, we could - but then kept changing our minds half an hour later. None of which was helped by suppliers' hours and weekend hours being two different things. 

So in the end we did what anyone would do and ordered flooring we have never seen over the phone from a business we had never heard of until this week. 

Decision made, payment made, job done. There was every chance we were going to meet the challenge of getting sealed boards to the site by Monday.

Then about an hour later, after close of business, a text arrived from T2 informing me that the verandah boards that we all believed were due to run perpendicularly, appeared on the plans to run parallel.

The 158 pieces of set length jarrah I had JUST ordered were suddenly rendered pointless. Not only that, but parallel boards seemed an affront to our "vision".  Captain Laird referred to it as the "Verandah of Shame".

I sent an after-hours email to the Very Lovely Building Company, hoping it might catch someone's attention and elicit a response that would stop me from worrying about this all night. Alas no. So I fretted the evening away thinking about whether some 24 hour mill somewhere was cutting those boards irrevocably. "Mid-level freak out" was how I classified it to the VLBC. 

At 7.15am on the dot of opening time, I called the supplier and urged them to pause our order until I had clarified the situation and its remedy. "No worries". Breathe out.

Then true to form, the Very Lovely Building Company rang on the dot of their opening time and patiently explained my options, sent a new plan,along with a list of the precise additional materials, and a promise to organise delivery. 

They simply can not be faulted, these purveyors of lovely homes. I can not emphasise that enough.

So all that's left to do now is be at the Homemade House tomorrow morning at 8.30 am to get certain wiring issues sorted out with the deputy sparky, as well as being at the Principle Residence at the exact same time awaiting delivery of the verandah flooring. 

Easy.

So back to posts: here are a couple, freshly hand-turned and waiting to be installed as newel posts in our new stair case:

A post, post-posts.

Last post suggested that verandahs might be further down the track - in fact this week at Homemade House culminated in the casual remark by T2 that he would do the verandahs NEXT WEEK.

Just a final twist in what proved to be a week of heightened cortisol levels for your correspondent.

It all began with the earlier than expected arrival of the plaster sheet hangers. "It's a bit of pressure.." my low-key plumber said, as he slaved to finish off his work before access was plastered away forever. That would be code for "Geez Woman! What were you thinking!?"

The answer is I was thinking they weren't coming for another couple of days, but as per usual I am beating them off with a stick. Unsuccessfully.

Never mind.

Next to head for the hills was T2 himself, who either had other work to attend to or a holiday in the Carribean, hard to tell which.

The house was filled with surprisingly massive plasterboard and quickly followed by the surprisingly fruity hangers. After a "gentle" reminder from me that perhaps a "swearing in" of the plaster was neither necessary nor entertaining for the preschool families parading in next door throughout the day, they got down to the serious business of walling in all the pipes and cables I was worried either weren't in the right place or incomplete. On the one hand, they were fast. On the other hand, they were freaking me out.

After all, they DID back their car into my brand new house, knocking off the corner and leaving the scene without a word.

Meanwhile, the freshly painted external architraves were either sitting out in the rain and mud or being trampled inside while T2 stocked up on coconut oil. Or worked on another job. (He's a hard worker, so I'm thinking the latter).

A site meeting was clearly called for, a summit was held and nuclear launch aborted.

We went our separate ways for the day, and then came the text: "I'll do the verandah next week - can you organise the materials?". 

Lets just say there were a lot of decisions and technical details that had not yet been made, leading to a degree of panic I normally take care to avoid. Verandahs seemed a frivolous detail that I had relegated to "later". Captain Laird gently reminded me that in fact they would be a requirement for our occupancy certificate.

And so, I ended up thrown by a seemingly minor detail: what size post holder did we need? 

Enter the King of Rock, who you may remember from an earlier episode involving boggy driveways and  early winter mornings. I'm sure he thinks we exist in a permanent state of last minute disorganisation, but he tolerates it well and by that afternoon he was on the doorstep with a brochure, pricing, wisdom and a promise to return at an ungodly hour on the weekend to scrutinise our post footings. 

This was set against the backdrop of  dashing about from Croydon to Clifton Hill making last minute decisions about corbels and roses, meeting with a tiler, and getting the laundry re-measured which necessitates prolonged discussion of the AFL finals, State (not confined to our own state) and Federal Politics, and the irritating habit of goannas secreting beer cans in their outback burrows.

Suffice to say, it has been a little distracting. But I need a challenge, so now I am going to do all that not just with a baby on my hip, but with school holidays in play too.

I'll tell you all about the electrical cable issues next time, but here's a few snaps to keep you occupied until then:

First the kitchen was a woolly Ugg Boot:

Now it looks like this:

Lovely green tree waving outside the master bedroom:

The dining room gets its chimney breast:

The exterior gets roughed up in a hit and run:

To add insult to injury, by time I had returned to collect that piece, the guilty party had parked his car fair and square on it.

Now that's just rude.

House stripped bare

The scaffolding is down! Stay tuned for verandahs at some time a little down the track.

Sunday morning perspectives

Out on what will be the front upstairs verandah - French doors to master 

From up above:

Leafy street, mountains in the distance

Parents' retreat

Lots of snuggly stuff going in:

Rough times

This week was rough-in week, which basically means that anything that needs to be in place before plastering (such as wiring, cabling, ducting of several kinds, and plumbing) is "roughed-in" to the frame, ready to be connected up to all bits you see in your normal everyday functioning home.

There is no doubt I was a bit naughty, as I decided to push my luck with all the tradies and have them there working simultaneously. Most were only too happy and raring to go. It's possible that one was a bit irritated, although it can be hard to tell with him.

At one point I had 5 different trades like Whirling Dervishes all over the place,and even men on stilts. Yes it was a little crowded - but I don't plan to use that method as a general rule of thumb and frankly, getting through that bottleneck ASAP has kept us on schedule and saved us a bunch of money too.

T2, the carpenter absolutely whizzed through the internal bits and pieces that needed doing, catching me quite by surprise with his speed. 

The plumber is the quiet achiever, steadily working away, nothing causing a drama. 

The painters continue to come and go, and are quite the talk of the neighbourhood with the rapid transformation they have delivered. 

Hydronic heating pipes now run everywhere in the walls, competing with the wiring and cabling winding its way around too. 

Ducted vacuum man popped in for a slight adjustment as well.

The next distinct phase is plastering. The men on stilts came this week to install the ceiling battens for that and will return next week to start hanging the sheets. 

All those pipes and cables better be in the right place now!

But just before that, the insulation team will slide in tomorrow to put the snugly stuff into the walls and ceilings. 

Then the scaffolding will come down Monday, facilitating the entry of that big load of plasterboard. 

Goodness - within a couple of weeks we will have internal walls, cornices and ceiling roses - just like a real house!

Spaghetti in the wall between ensuite and kids' bathroom.

Standing in the formal lounge looking across to the dining room:

Looking down the hallway - temp stairs are gone and the only way up is via ladder for a while now:

Faux chimney built into dining room:

Laundry chute internals, ready for cabinetry:

Laundry room:

Friend, Romans, Countrymen

So last Wedsnesday I almost finished writing a great post about "stuff tradesmen say" but got distracted and sadly it didn't auto-save so here we are. 

Test pattern.

Might get back to that one.

In the meantime, this :

That's the house when the top deck of scaffolding was taken down. It seems timely in this week post-Federal election to mention that not only did the scaffolders not take my instructions seriously over the phone (calling twice to confirm) but they turned up on site Monday  hoping to catch "the builder" to confirm prior to works on Tuesday. Sigh. Hello boys, I am the builder - please do my bidding.

I am a builder of "calibre" after all.

Then some unsuspecting suppliers turned up to do a rough-in for a particular service that I shall not name because I am awfully nice and not willing to burn them in hell just yet.

What did they do? They helped themselves to the 20 x 3 metres lengths of timber I had just had Captain Laird deliver there at great effort for the carpenter. They told their boss they used 6 lengths - which was actually 15 lengths. I say they are unsuspecting because the lolly-providing, sweetness and light lady of the house was handed the perfect excuse to unleash her angst upon them. 

"You should tell them off!" goaded the chippies.

"Don't worry, I am taking them out the back!" I retorted.

 And thus it was so.

Meanwhile, chippies sat eating Ritz crackers and saying mid-afternoon that they had needed that timber  this very today. So how about actually saying something to me then when I was there earlier?

Dashed to Bunnings with Baby B in tow, narrowly saving her from decapitation by another "Don't be so reckless" tradie with a large pole. Like a scene out of Matrix, it was. I felled him with my steely gaze and promised further fear and retribution drawing on my Shaolin Monk training, circa 2007.

Then I stomped back to the building site to deliver my "don't mess me around " speech to the chippies who attempted to appease me with a look at their bolts, and when that didn't work tried to distract me with the air con guys' conduit. But I was ready for them, not only defending the conduit but determined to get all knobs right where I wanted them.

Ahem.

Spaghetti

Great things are happening at the Homemade House - in fact so much is going on now that I was going to hold off on a new post until I had taken photos of all that is there now. But it's been so hectic there, I am just going to go ahead with a post anyway, despite a shortfall in the photo file.

Ok - so the best bit was seeing the very last bit of weatherboarding and decorative trim go on the house last Friday:

That's the front of the house, looking pretty. "I just love it!" I gushed to T2, our carpenter. "It's not my taste", he gruffly replied. "And it won't look good when the scaffold comes down until the verandahs are up". He didn't succeed in quashing my buoyant mood however. It was Friday arvo and T2 was most appreciative of a celebratory beer or two to take home. "I'm so thrilled with how the house looks, I felt I should have bought you flowers!" I teased. "Yeah, I would have given them to my wife and told her I bought them" he responded drily. 

Special Ops painters have been chasing T2 around the exterior as well. It's like icing on the cake to see window frames, walls, and fancy bits getting their colour on. Every time I turn around, there's a painter there busily putting a huge amount of effort into getting all that timber into perfect shape - not just pretty but as weatherproof as possible too. 

So the exterior stuff is all going so well we thought why not stick some stuff inside too?

Ducted air con rough-in has been done, assuring me I will not, in fact, be baked alive over the coming Aussie summer.

And what else? Well really serious stuff has started too - plumbing rough-in is well underway. I cheerfully informed the girls that "poo pipes" and "poo holes" had been done - trying to keep it at their level of understanding. "That's not a very lady-like way of speaking" the middle Homemade Kid gravely responded.  The same kid also does not like the "wrinkles" on the roof and is "sick of the red sticks" (scaffolding). Tough crowd.

We continue on our winning streak of truly great tradies, with the arrival of the electricians to do their rough-in as well. They are so pleasant, so helpful, and really "switched on"- just had to say that ;). The house is like a bowl of spaghetti on the inside, cables running all over the place. 

Lots of last minute changes and realisations on our part - this is the bit where we need to problem-solve on the fly. Random questions can come at me at anytime - like, "how high do you want your light switches?" Or "Do you want a trimmer on this cavity?" Or "what's for dinner?".

How would I know?