Week 27, day one hundred and thirty-one

Friday, 29 July 2011

Well yes, I've been a bit slack: I'm calling it end-of-build malaise. Not that we're quite at the end yet, but I can see it shining there, off on the horizon...

The Block is looking very housey, as it well should, I suppose. The painters almost finished up inside today, which means we're very close to pulling up all the drop sheets and cleaning the floor off before we seal it. The concrete sanding experiment last week was interesting: the result from a small sander was a kind of speckledy grey-ish look, and when I wet them both (to make them look more like the floor will when given its 'wet-look' sealant) I really did prefer how it looked without sanding, 'aggregate shadow' and all. So for now, that's what we'll do. Maybe in ten years when the kids have dragged skateboards across the entirety we'll rethink.

Lounge room fireplace wall: it's RED, not pink, okay?

A painted house is amazing – what a difference it all makes! As Phil the Painter says, 'we're here to make the builders look good'. I love all the different door colours, and our Fair Bianca Half walls are really yummy, such a lovely warm shade of white. Sam, who was seconded in by Phil to help with this big paint job (and was born in 1988, so keeps us all young and blares Triple J whenever he gets the chance, love it), says it was a challenge – 'not a straight line in the place'! Still a bit of paintwork to be finished off outside next week, but otherwise Phil's little red Postman Pat van will be chugging off to another site soon.

Hallway door

Looking down hallway from our (blue door) bedroom

Fire-engine front door

Rosie's red room to be (when she and Jem can bear to give each other up)

Chinese Leaf laundry slider

Jem outside 'his' blue bedroom door

Fluoro tubes along pelmet, with ply sides still to cover them

Paul the Zen Electrician has also been in and out, installing all the light fittings that have come in (and putting in bayonet fittings where the nifty still-to-be-constructed ply shades are going). We had the most trouble finding something we liked for the wall lamps in our bedroom, which needed integrated switches (ie a switch on the lamp itself). After almost settling several times for something that was cheap but we really didn't like much, we've gone on one of our few splurges of the whole job and ordered some gorgeous Rotaliana Luxy Italian wall lamps from a German website and are anxiously awaiting their arrival. One only hopes that the company in question actually exists and isn't in fact some elaborate Canary Islands front...

Heating boiler and hot water, how modern...

We took delivery of approximately $16-million-worth of brand new whitegoods on Wednesday (stove, rangehood, dishwasher, washing machine and dryer), which was a little bit exciting in a revoltingly consumerist way...certainly a completely new experience for me! Have only unpacked the stove so far (to get it in position so Micah, the stianless steel man, could come and measure up that morning to get started on the bench).

Kitchen carcasses and big boxes

Our lovely model demonstrates the new 700mm Glem freestanding stove...

Richie is tootling away on the kitchen, laundry, bathroom and cabinetry. All the melamine carcasses are in place and he's shaping and sanding the ply cupboard doors back at his workshop. Meanwhile, I've been oiling up some of the cupboard edging pieces with Richie's homebrew furniture oil (a fairly addictive mix of boiled linseed oil, turps, and orange peel oil, possibly with other secret ingredients), as well as the benchtops (one for the kitchen, the other for the lounge room cabinetry). The bench timber is mahogany that Richie sources direct from a farmer in Mudgee, who select fells a tree on his own property and mills it up for sale. I feel a helluva lot better about buying timber this way, and it's not the first time that I've felt grateful that Richie is on this job. He knows so much about wood and how to treat it, so it's lovely to just be around him as he works and learn the piddly amounts that I can.

Oiling station

Laundry carcasses and new whitegoods (at dawn)

Kitchen construction zone

Mahogany bench

Bathroom vanity carcass

And we have a bogger! Hip hip hooray... Also found out yesterday that it could even be used now, though the lack of bog roll in the vicinity makes me hope that nobody gets too serious on it yet. Vanity carcass cupboards are also installed and we await the arrival of the stone bathroom benchtop so basin and taps can be flung into place.

Out-of-focus thermostat...

We now have a thermostat attached to the underfloor heating too, which is a relief given that it was pretty much cranking out full blast for almost two weeks. Everyone was so hot inside this sunny maison that the doors and windows were left open during the day to avoid sweat overload! I feel I deserve an extra carbon tax...

 

Outside concreting complete, if snow bleached...

So it's all coming together, and now I'm starting to move on from house decisions and worries to landscaping nightmares...so much to do, so little talent!!