Welcome 2010! May this be the year that we finish this build J We are now jumping back into it after a little sojourn; about a week of guilt free/ work free holidays and a scattering of guilt ridden lazy days off. The New Years period welcomed a few guests to Tassie, the ger and the build. Bernt's mum, Froukje, left yesterday after 2 weeks with us camping out in the ger. Together we explored our primitive roots, fossicking for oysters at the river for a bit of a feast and watched an experimental damper cook on a slab of rock on the woodstove. Neither of these bush skills came easily to me, but somehow the need to Google for instructions didn’t dampen my grassroots enthusiasm.
The experimental damper rises in our makeshift oven; a rock carefully selected from the river and an upside down Pyrex bowl.
My aunties Jen and Bev were also here for a couple of nights during their Tassie campervan adventure. We accompanied them to Salamanca markets for what was the busiest market day of the year. With the Sydney to Hobart yacht race having just finished and Tasmania’s biggest food festival on the wharf; the harbour was full of boats, boaties and thousands of tourists. Bit of a shock to be pushing through all of those people after so many months hiding away on our own at the block.
And we had some campers at the block too. Friends of ours camped out in the future bathroom for New Years. A total fire ban meant the sparklers stayed in the drawer but we did get treated to a beautiful lightning display. And the ger got a visit from its mamma! Saatia (who we bought it from) brought a couple of friends for a night after having set up and taken down 10 gers at the Falls Festival. What a sight that would have been!
All in all it has been so lovely to have people around. I’ve really enjoyed having some human interaction, which was also important as Bernt returned to work yesterday so things will change around here. But this blog is not about the future, its about where we are at now so I will focus on what we did on the lead up to Christmas/New Years.
We decided that the best use of our time in the lead up to guests arriving was to focus on building the mezzanine floor into the apartment. We were unsure as to when people were arriving and how many guests would overlap. As the ger is fairly tightly packed and the only undercover area on the block it made sense to create another area undercover from sun and rain. So I ordered in a serious hunk of steel angle (specified by the engineer) and managed to squeeze its delivery in before companies closed for Christmas. We bolted it to the wall running through the bedroom and bathroom where it forms the structure for the mezzanine floor joists to sit on.
Steel angle running through bathroom.
Bernt realised that we could save a substantial amount of money by building the joists/ I beams ourselves. It was really straightforward. We used the Lucas Mill like an upside down table saw to cut grooves the length of pieces of framing pine. We then glued strips of ply between 2 pieces of pine to form the I shape. These were then cut to length and hoisted up (not as hard as the timbers, these are very light) to sit with one end supported on the steel angle and the other on the interior bedroom wall. Cutting the beams to length around the opening for the spiral staircase required Bernt's mathematical genius (always handy to have one in the family).
Gluing up our homemade I beam ceiling/floor joists.
Joists up in position in bedroom.
Next we pulled green tongue boards (they have a strip of green plastic which locks them together like tongue in groove boards) up onto the joists and screwed them down, sealing between the joins with sikaflex (to keep the floor like a watertight roof until we have the roof on) A long anticipated detail, for me, was to see the curvy bit on the timber frame intersect with the flooring. And it turned out just as beautiful a detail as I had hoped. Once finished we coated the whole floor with an anti decay product as it will be out in the weather for a month or so. We also cut the circle out through which the spiral staircase will poke.
Green tongue in position on top of joists.
One of the ‘curvy’ bits protrudes through the mezzanine, my favourite detail!
The void for the spiral staircase, covered in platforms for safety.
It is really exciting to stand up on the mezzanine, it gives a different perspective on the apartment and how the space will work. It will be so cosy up there in the nook of the angled roof that we are thinking about changing our room layout a bit. Don’t worry it doesn’t impact on anything expect the placement of furniture, I’m not about to start redesigning building elements now! J As the mezzanine is also the ceiling of the bedroom we now have a really nice little bedroom space with 3 walls, a ceiling and an amazing view. I can’t wait to sleep in this room.
Mezzanine.
Mezzanine; looking back into the apartment.
The bedroom.
While Froukje was here we cut some logs and got started on Frame 4, we also laid some blocks to build up the wall that separates the apartment from the workshop. That wall is getting high now, It’s a matter of carrying blocks up a ladder in order to get them on the platform. Now we have to finish that wall, and get Frame 4 up so that when the roofing arrives we can get part of it up over the apartment as soon as possible.
This wall needs to be built up to the apex of the timber frame.
Exciting stuff. Now we have to learn to work a bit differently with Bernt back at work but that certainly will do wonders for the bank account.
Till next time.
