Week 10, day forty-seven

Wednesday,30 March 2011

The slab is curing nicely, apparently (looks like a patchy, dirty floor to me, but I'm assuming-slash-hoping sealing will change all that). Tis nice and smooth, though, and only one real defect to speak of where a small piece of styrofoam must have blown into the slab while it was still soft and left a little dent when it was pulled out again. Warwick reckons we fill it up with resin or something, no worries. I say: keep a clean site, boys!!

Meanwhile, Trent the brickie has made two little garden walls. One continues out and along from the side pergola wall, creating a garden bed-type retaining wall where we had a bit of a difference in ground levels between Peter's place and ours. The other comes out from the carport wall and across the front yard to the verge and forms the side of the driveway. It has a bit of a kink in it (by design) and also tapers down to the street - this caused a bit of discussion between builder, brickie and client. Warwick couldn't quite see the point of tapering when the ground levels were so different to what we'd actually expected (and to what Charlie had drawn in the plans according to the survey) and thought

Charlie's neat boundary solution (and slab)

 the wall should stay the same height all along or it'd disappear into the ground almost. I saw his point, but also felt that the tapering served a purpose, even if I couldn't quite explain what that was yet... In the end it was Trent who helped decide: despite it being much fiddlier, he said the taper would look really good and 'draw the eye' into the house, in his opinion. Yay, Trent! He's an artist, our brickie. Here are the pics: decide for yourselves.

Is that regulation site footwear, mister? And where's your union card?

Shed becomes glasshouse

And sub-project A this week has been the shed. Warwick and offsider Toby, no doubt inspired by big pumps and boofy concreters, whipped together a slab for the shed on Friday, and we've been piecing together what the rest of it will be made from over the last few days. Found some FAB (we think) old fifties style windows on ebay for the bargain (again, we think) price of $100 on Sunday, and Warwick's apprentice Ben did a run to Penrith this arvo to pick them up. We'll see tomorrow whether the interweb lied or if they really are as cute as they look. Still hunting for a similarly styled door solution, then we're fully in shed business. The boys will start framing it up tomorrow - it was supposed to be a cheap whip-together so we'd have somewhere to shove all the stuff that won't fit in the house, but it's starting to look more and more like the studio of the future...


Back to my endlessly fascinating colour-consulting front, met with the lovely Anita on Friday and got to bring home the swatches she is so far suggesting - they look pretty great on the whole, though I'm fairly certain I would never have chosen them if left to my own devices (but that is quite possibly a good thing, given what oddities I sometimes choose to wear together most days). Still waiting for a colour swatch of the ceiling colour to come from the roof panel people, Kingspan, as, believe it or not, this could make a significant difference in which white we choose for the walls... Don't scoff, those who have never picked a white paint - there are ruddy millions of them! Then all back to Anita with final feedback so we can get her last word on it all (and a bill, no doubt - but worth every cent for it not to be my fault).



House framing starts Monday, apparently!