Wednesday, 13 July 2011
Been a bit of a week for Blackheath – some incredible winds ripped through last Tuesday and Wednesday and caused a huge amount of damage, with massive trees falling down everywhere (including onto a train with passengers – with no serious injuries, miraculously). The street we first lived on in Blackheath looks like a warzone – these huge pines are down everywhere you look, some with root systems taller than a large adult still exposed, carved up and piled along the kerbs. A few houses were badly hit, including a brand new place built by a family from school not far from here; looks like they'll have to rebuild as the foundations were so damaged by the direct hit of a huge pine. I thank my stars that we deliberately chose a street that had very few of these bloody awful pines – not through any foresight but just because they are so hideously inappropriate to the climate up here in so many ways. Council has always had heritage issues with many of the pines and stopped people from removing ones on street frontages, despite the fact that they are a recognised weed species – maybe now there will be another approach...
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| Tree meets train – and no one hurt |
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| New house smashed (right next door to our much-loved Romaine St fifties inspiration house, which now has a large tarp covering it...) |
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| Jem's 5th bday in Manly, instead! |
The kids and I were in Sydney when the storm hit and had planned to return the next day – Mat called that morning and said 'don't' as there was no power, it was utterly freezing and still blowing a gale, and the town was a mess, with streets everywhere blocked by fallen trees and debris, not to mention the highway closed. Turned out that it took five days for the power to come back on at our place – hard to imagine having to live here in freezing conditions without heat, light and hot water, but many people did. Other wimps (like us) became Sydney refugees in the balmy northern beaches until the power finally came back over the weekend. (I did get to do a lot of homewares shop cruising though – more than I ever hope to do again...) We only had one tree come down on The Block, and it just happened to be the one tree that we'd recently realised we should have asked to remove...is that fate?
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| From lounge to dining |
So after all that excitement, we missed a full week of daily building pop-ins and updates, which I'm sure Warwick and the fellas were pleased about (though I think they had their hands full salvaging their own houses and rustling up generators to get something done). Trent finished the internal brick last Monday with a light bagging, and it looks good – a bit easier now to imagine what it might all look like once painted (which can't happen until the mortar is thoroughly dry). The boys finished bits and pieces off then cleared out all the floor protection that had been in place for the brickies, giving the place a good sweep out – looks like a house! Then Warwick and co. went on holidays this week, leaving Phil and Sam to potter on with painting the internal plasterboard areas and trims.
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| Loungeroom |
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| Hallway bagged |
A couple of days ago James the plumber popped in and got the underfloor hydronic heating working – theory is that a warm house will dry the mortar out faster. Did I say a warm house? Try toasty as, gorgeously snug, utterly cosy, perfect internal climate... I seriously considered camping that first night!! It really is the loveliest heating – no blowing of air, no uneven areas, no cold corners, just totally comfortable. Yippee!
My job (well, one on a very long list) for this week is to work out what we are going to do with the floors as Warwick wants to get onto these next week – do we clean and seal or grind and seal? With different answers re the surface 'spots' and possibilities for grinding coming from everyone I spoke to, I was starting to despair... Then I got lucky and a rep from the company that supplies the concrete colours and sealants happened to be coming through Blackheath yesterday on his way back from Mudgee and said he'd pop in to check out the floor. Turns out the 'leopard spots' that have been obvious on the floor from very early on are what he called 'aggregate shadow' – basically the aggregate in the concrete mix holds onto the water in the mix longest, then can sometimes release it last and cause this effect which is basically a shadow of the aggregate that is sitting lower down. Might be caused by the slab being exposed to a lot of rain soon after being poured, but doesn't seem to be any definitive answer as to why. Also hard to tell how deep they go, so we either learn to love the look (which is quite possible) or experiment with grinders/sanders and see how hard we'd have to work to remove the spots (which of course runs the risk of exposing aggregate as you grind, so need to be prepared for that possibility once you start messing with things). After a bit of ringing around I'm starting experiment number one tomorrow: renting a small handheld concrete 'mower' to see what effect a light sanding has, if any.
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| Aggregate shadow...anyone, anyone? |
To be continued!
Been a bit of a week for Blackheath – some incredible winds ripped through last Tuesday and Wednesday and caused a huge amount of damage, with massive trees falling down everywhere (including onto a train with passengers – with no serious injuries, miraculously). The street we first lived on in Blackheath looks like a warzone – these huge pines are down everywhere you look, some with root systems taller than a large adult still exposed, carved up and piled along the kerbs. A few houses were badly hit, including a brand new place built by a family from school not far from here; looks like they'll have to rebuild as the foundations were so damaged by the direct hit of a huge pine. I thank my stars that we deliberately chose a street that had very few of these bloody awful pines – not through any foresight but just because they are so hideously inappropriate to the climate up here in so many ways. Council has always had heritage issues with many of the pines and stopped people from removing ones on street frontages, despite the fact that they are a recognised weed species – maybe now there will be another approach...
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