Tuesday 18th Aug 2009

We are finally heading skywards!!!!!

Finally our build site has started to head into the 3^rd dimension, we have been working hard laying blocks for a few weeks now and are really excited to see walls emerging! Just finished off the 6^th course (200mm high concrete blocks so… 1.2m high). Tomorrow we start filling the blocks with concrete, having decided that doing it in stages will be much easier than hauling hundreds of concrete filled buckets 2.5m in the air. We are nearly at the point where we have to start thinking about scaffolding… that sounds like serious building to me! So it feels like it is all happening for real now.  The bank gave us a nine month deadline (with the possibility of a little flexibility but we did sign a contract so it would rely on their good nature if we went over… ) which is now 7 months away so I am feeling the time pressure. Mainly because we have no schedule or time line of any sort whatsoever and absolutely no concept of how long things will actually take us to do. The blessing is that the house only needs to be to ‘certificate of occupancy’ stage by then which means safe and liveable, not 100% finished.

 

Bernt, Stacey and Charlie hard at work on the front wall.

Bernt has had the last 6 weeks off work, first week with a nasty flu and then he decided to take time off to get a head start on the build. That time has just ended but he has decided to take a bit more off as we’ve had to fit so many things into the last month that building work has progressed rather slowly.

First he worked super hard to get the bathroom built and ready the ger (our Mongolian tent adventure) for us to move in. We started out camping in it with just our bed and a couch; progressed to having a basic kitchen, then water, then a bathroom complete with toilet and finally a fully functioning hot water system. It really is the most glorious thing ever!! I’ve included a gallery of pics. Recently mum came for a few days and we even fitted a double bed in for her. It has so far survived 24 hours of non stop rainfall, below 0 degree nights, gale force winds and our 50 kilo puppy without any dramas.

 Bernt's super fantastic and very civilised bathroom.

So in moving into the ger we also had to move out of the blue house. We tried to do it gradually but the moving process seems determined to be difficult and stressful no matter what! It took up a lot of time and the pets seemed pretty confused by all of the to-ing and fro-ing. They always seemed more willing to jump in the car when we were heading back to the ger, they love it here. We had to really cull our stuff down to the bare minimum to fit in the ger which means that our container is looking pretty full again. But Bernt has built a great storage system in there so it wont be hard to get organised.

Then we got stuck in to laying blocks just in time for a long planned for couple of days in Melbourne for mum and I. We had a ball roaming the streets (Note; don’t decided to wear in a new pair of shoes when on holidays… dumb me!), rummaging through shops and sampling lots of yummy food (Highlight; Hwaro Korean BBQ on Little Bourke Street, don’t be scared to ask lots of questions…). As before mentioned mum also took a detour and spent 2 days with us here in Tas, to check out progress, our new living arrangements and our growing furry family.

But back home now and we are going hard on the build… weather permitting. So excited that things are moving forward at a more realistic pace now!

One rather stressful event occurred in late June when my computer died. It was a nasty slap of reality as we had been too complacent to make back ups of any of my files…. Including all of the drawings for the build, some of which (kitchen design) I hadn’t even printed off yet…. STUPID!!! Anyway, after a month of waiting for the computer fixer guy (unworthy of a more respectful title) he actually managed to save all my files and burn them to disk. Now we just need to work out how to use AutoCAD on our new Mac…

My dream basin has not yet arrived but I found a very super spectacular one in Melbourne last week if it falls through. Apparently mine has been sitting in Launceston for the last 6 weeks… Lucky I ordered it waaaay in advance.

Hope to blog much more frequently now the build is going forward more quickly.