Bet you’d thought we’d dropped off the radar (or the roof) after such a long gap between blogs! We’ve had some visible progress but we’ve also been occupied with a lot of fiddly organizing bits.

First job once the roofing was up was to finish it off with barge capping (covering the edge of the roofing panels), ridge capping (covering the join along the top of the roof), ceiling capping (covering the same join on the interior), z flashing (a solid edge at the bottom of the panels for the gutter to hang from) and finally guttering. Apart from the guttering, which is a standard profile, we ordered all of these profiles to our own measurements and angles. I wasn’t aware that this was possible but apparently its pretty standard. When the barge cap and ceiling cap arrived they were not the angle specified so we had to have them remade. This was unfortunate as we were hoping to have the gap at the peak of the roof closed when my Dad, Nanna and brother arrived for a stay. My dad camped out on the mezzanine and I was worried that the rain might leak in through the gap. It turned out not to be a problem.

Bernt pop riveting the barge capping in place.

Bernt carefully sliding the ridge capping into place.

 

Attaching the ceiling capping, you can see sunlight on the left where we haven’t attached it yet.

 

The guttering was a bit tricky. It is designed to hang from something vertical but because of the nature of the roofing panel, the edge is not vertical but at an angle. We puzzled over a non-ugly way to solve the problem and settled on cutting neat wooden angle blocks, which we screwed to the z flashing. These gave a vertical surface to attach the gutter brackets to and are a not too shabby solution.

The ‘bespoke’ blocks in place with the brackets attached and ready to the hook the guttering into.

 

First length of guttering up.

 

Next we waited for our double glazing to arrive, well the first 4 windows anyway, deciding to order the glass as we are ready for it. We were able to order the non opening pieces (as the frames are already built in to the structure of the house) but are still waiting on getting a 3 phase power outlet installed so we can start work on the window frames for the rest, seemed too risky to order the glass before the frames are built as Bernt is still nutting out how he will build them.  We had some fiddly bits to do to get ready for the glass, including attaching double sided foam tape to seal the units in, a little bit of rendering around the edges and some frame building. Our new Planer/Thicknesser came in super handy.

Installing the large double glazing units was the one job I had decided I didn’t want to take part in. All along I had expressed that I wanted to be absent the day that any large glazing units were to be carried around and put in place. When we watch any building show, this is always the part that has my muscles tensed and teeth grinding with stress. So I thought Id opt out of that job, and I felt super justified; knowing that Id been a part of everything else. As the day grew closer Bernt started joking that I wouldn’t be able to truthfully say that Id co- built this house by hand if I didn’t help carry the glazing… It may have been this harmless teasing, I’m not sure, but when the units arrived and Id recovered from the stress of watching the delivery guys casually hoist the panes off the truck I decided that Id give it a go. I think it was the excitement of being able to see some glass in immediately, without having to wait to organize for someone to give Bernt a hand. Unfortunately the guys had laid the panels out in such a way that we had to start with the biggest and heaviest panel first, rather than easing our way into it.  It was a panel roughly 1.5m by 2.5m and it weighed over 100kg! It was so heavy that I could only lift it from one side, with my right arm doing the work and my left supporting it. Apparently I’ve been building lopsided so I’ve got monster muscles on one side only! HahaJ

Anyway, we took it slow, laid out some supports on the floor so we could rest frequently and built a platform under the window so we didn’t have to step down once we were outside. And we got it in! After that the others seemed easy. It’s really awesome to have some glazing in. We have been enjoying sitting in the corner with a cup of tea and not being blasted by wind or rain. Now I can’t wait to get going on the other windows!

 

The delivery guys made it look like a piece of cake.

 

First four windows in!

Our favourite corner to sit in, enjoying the view while sheltered for the first time.

 

As I mentioned, we have also been organizing lots of fiddly behind the scenes things. We chose tiles for the bathroom and kitchen/living area. They are a dark, charcoal grey which in some lights have a purpleness to them. And we chose a wine coloured slate (a very similar colour) as the border tile. We had wanted sandstone flooring but when we investigated we found that the colour of the sandstone coming out of the quarries these days is not the same as in the historic buildings around Hobart. Those have lovely tonal changes; with deep burgundy swirls… today the sandstone is very uniformly beige. So we changed our colour pallet totally and chose the deep grey/charcoal colour. The tiles will be laid uninterrupted through the kitchen, living area and into the bathroom and walk in shower.

We had been looking into Kitchen bench materials and finding it hard to find something we liked. Most stone or stone composite material is polished to become a really blingy reflective surface which isn’t the look we are going for (plus it too easily shows off a less than perfectly clean benchtop). I had found that Caesarstone and Silastone do a honed finish (matte). But these were going to prove tricky to find as they aren’t that popular (story of my life). So I went back to my original preference and convinced Bernt that a timber bench top was the way to go. We had recently picked up some bargains at a timber auction in Hobart so we took a day off the hard grind of the build and planed up some figured myrtle to have a play and see if it was suitable. It definitely was and we now have the raw materials for a beautiful bench top for only $70!!!

I spent a day in Hobart organising plumbing fixtures for the bathroom and kitchen. Taps, a shower head, kitchen sink, toilet etc. I went uber-prepared with images of what we wanted and found a superstar of customer service who sat with me for half a day sorting through it all and finding the perfect options. Everything arrived a few weeks later and they are sitting patiently in the ger waiting to be installed. I cant wait!!

We have also been working with a lighting designer (a service at a lighting shop in Hobart; free if you buy through them). So we feel like we have our lighting sorted. I, yet again, fell in love with something I couldn’t have. We were looking for big industrial pendant lighting fixtures for the apartment (which would look awesome in its big open barn-like space). The lighting companies we talked to didn’t have access to anything lovely so I went snooping on the net… bad idea. I found the perfect fittings, and not dearer that the not-so-pretty ones suggested by the lighting place. But they are American and the company wont ship to Australia. I was considering finding a way past that problem, being aware that our electrician would have to rewire them to Australian standards (but he would have had to rewire any fitting we got as they would never be long enough). But then I got talking to guy in a different lighting shop and he lectured me on the substandard standards which American lighting is required to meet compared to Australian fixtures and I decided it was all too hard and possibly a bad idea anyway. Now I’ve started designing fittings that we will make ourselves and we have organized the electrics in such a way that we can take our time getting organized with them.

The pendant light I fell for *sigh*.

 

Next step is getting the electricity moving. We have an electrician organized for next weekend to run cables etc. and we have decided on power points and switches. We are also in the midst of putting up plasterboard, which is really changing the look of the interior. Pics when we have finished.

On a personal note, Bernt has finished up with the company he was working for (as they are closing down). He wants to focus on getting the build to certificate of occupancy and start making furniture for himself. I have picked up a retail job in Hobart (with casual hours). It is so good to be dealing with people again after 2 years of dealing with building materialsJ On a tragic note; our cat George passed away a couple of weeks ago. He was hit by a car. We are both devastated as he was an awesome cat who we were all very bonded to.

RIP George

Monday 8th June 2009

Talk about few and far between; this blog is turning into a quarterly update!. Things have been slowed significantly due to a few factors. Bernt’s 3 weeks in Holland have meant that we had to wait for 3 decent looking payslips after he got home to take to the bank to beg for more money. So that meant waiting a month after he was home and since then we have been playing one sided paperwork tennis with the banks. It’s been 2 and a half months and we’ve just managed to sign the final documents for our loan. Still have a couple of weeks to wait till things are finalised… mmmm, don’t get me started…

Bank issues aside we have been having other progress on the block. As well as our exciting side adventure which I will cover in detail in a few paragraphs J. After over a year of dealing with the local electricity supply company we finally got a power pole put in on our boundary! Yay! That was a pretty exciting day, full of trucks and fluoro vests! I watched on with worry as they decided it was easier to drag the power pole up the driveway than trying to haul it on its trailer. Surprisingly to me (not to them, they were very confidant about the whole thing) it didn’t damage the driveway even slightly.

Then, not long after the excruciating 3 weeks of Bernt being away (with a traumatised dog who kept running outside to check if ‘daddy’ was coming home or insisting on checking out the bed to see if ‘daddy’ was just having a really long sleep in) we decided to add to the family and brought home George the cat. He and Charlie were playing and sleeping together almost immediately, though George wasn’t real keen about the ‘head in Charlie’s mouth’ game… which not surprisingly turned out to be one of Charlie’s favourite new games.

Charlie asleep in a very flattering position while George sleeps on his bed. 

Bernt and I plodded along on the block, tidying up and taking off the boxing (the framework for the slab pour). Waterproofing the sides of the slab and infilling nearly up to slab height with drainage rock, things that made it look much neater for the valuer. Also laying pipe to eventually connect the drain pipes to the watertank (we learnt our lesson and had a guy come with a little excavator to dig for us).

Over Easter we decided to build a concrete ramp so we could drive up into the workshop space. We built the boxing with a cool curve in it to follow the line of the driveway. Building it took a solid 5 hours of mixing and pouring concrete in our little mixer. It was utterly exhausting but we were very happy with the finished product. Because we had chosen to sleep in a little that day Bernt ended up at the block in the dark until nearly midnight waiting for it reach that right balance between set enough but not set too much in order to smooth it to a nice finish. Luckily it dried slow enough that we could put the final touches on it the next morning. Also lucky that ramps should have a fairly rough finish… because that’s as far as our concreting skills allowed us to get… Thank god we didn’t try and finish off the slab ourselves. None the less, it is a very pretty ramp and I still insist on rave reviews from every person who has the pleasure of driving on it J

Before ramp

Finished Ramp

We also got around to finding an electrician to hook us up to electricity by installing a metre box with power point. The most super satisfying feeling to boil the kettle and have our first cup of tea on the block!! Can’t believe we’ve been here for a year with no power, or rather with only a noisy and annoying generator to get the job done. Hallelujah for electricity!!

Boiling the kettle for our first cuppa (on top of our new meter box)

I received my Kevin money, fairly early judging from facebook feedback. Thanks Kev! And with that little windfall I bought my dream basin! Well ordered it anyway, it’ll take over a month to get here. Its an Aussie company so that means I’m doing my bit doesn’t it?

So, now… let’s get back to the exciting side adventure that Bernt and I are embarking on!! About 3 weeks ago we went along to the Sustainable Building expo in Hobart, thinking we would come across some cool innovative technology… What we ended up coming across was a beautiful ger (pronounced like ‘there’). A ger is a tent which Mongolian nomadic herdsmen (apparently 30% of the Mongolian population) live in, it is otherwise known as a yurt but apparently ger is the more PC term. It was standing, fairly conspicuously, amongst solar hot water and sustainable septic system stands. We decided to go in and have a look…. and…. absolutely fell in love. It is a 6.5 metre diameter circular tent with beautifully hand painted roof poles and a sort of latticework wall structure. In the centre of the roof is a wooden circle held up by 2 posts covered by a flap which is either open or closed depending on the weather. The walls and roof are made of layers of cotton (inside and out for aesthetics), thick thick felt (which keeps the Mongolians warm at minus 40 Celsius) and canvas (which makes it water proof). It had the cosiest, womb kind of feeling inside and I didn’t want to leave. That was when we saw the ‘For Sale, 60% off’ sign…. Oh no…. Bernt and I looked at each other and all kinds of craziness ensued. 

Saatia, who’s business it represented, told us that she was in Hobart till Monday at which point she would be driving the (our) ger back to Melbourne. It was understood that we would need some instruction on how to assemble it so if we wanted it the most logical and economical thing would be for us to decide tute sweet and for her to bring it to our block and set it up for us before she drove off into the sunset on Monday. An evening of negotiations followed between Bernt and I… An intense evening full of lists, shortness of breath and near heart attacks (the latter obviously being only experienced by me… not cool hand BerntJ) We decided no, a fairly definite no at one point in the evening but then I started breathing again, picked myself up out of the foetal position and we decided, what the hell, you only live once, lets do it!!! Oh My God!!! 

So we dove in, and by Monday afternoon we had our very own little piece of Mongolia sitting in its temporary position on our slab. We are now in the process of organising all of the minute (haha) details of how we can actually functionally live in the thing! CRAZY! We wont be moving out of our rental until it has a decent bathroom (I’ve ordered a very respectable self contained composting toilet) and we have worked through all of the other logistical issues. But I’m very very excited and have been playing around with super essential things like fairly lights J I hope you all want to come and visit when it is set up! Ill post photos of the interior when its liveable to alleviate any concerns! OH MY GOD! What a crazy adventure!