The floor was stained today. It looks great and marries well with the kitchen cupbaords - which I keep forgeting to take pics of.
Sparky made house pemanently wores. I am unconvinced about two way switches.
Brian Honeybone beginning the staining.
Archive for the ‘site’ Category
Floor
Thursday, June 4th, 2009The Outside
Thursday, April 16th, 2009
Serious action in the last week has seen the house take shape. I am starting to get a little excited though still finding managing the details of it all and all the deciding very tricky being at heart a perfectionist. The house has been such a long time coming and we will live here for so long to come, choices must be compromised between two people’s taste… and as the choices are made the budget inevitably rises. No wonder Grand Designs is our favourite TV programme.
My favourite photo so far! The dark is the finished colour.
The hebel guys have been here working for the last week or so. This has involved screwing the hebel panels to the wall and layering plaster and rendering over it. You think it looks good at each stage but the final coat , a finely textured layer, renders the coating into a lovely finished form. Unlike many of the practices and materials being used in the build, the tools and skills they use are essentially those which my father had when her was apprenticed. I have them stored carefully in the shed. ( Of course the light weight concrete panels and the gib panels internally make a huge difference to his day of lathe and plaster).
The final coat is then painted - Murray chose Half Masala , the colour specially formulated from a sample, painted on a test pot, sent to Dunedin and recalculated into the Hebel Supercoat . Its looking well with the old house and looks good with the window colour. We have been wrapped up but today I stepped out of the house just as the plastic came off the living room windows. It was a nice moment.
Plastering has also been going on inside and I especially like the reinforced palster corner papers. Again, layers of varying plasters are being layered to get a good finish.
Yesterday the concrete guys came back and ground out the high bits ready for the tiler to come after the painters. Yes, it’s beginning to come together. The grinding would normally be done with a water system but these guys don’t usually have to come back and they were using small hand held thing. Understandably the gib stopper left !
"Fog" in the living room.
Things progress in the kitchen refinement but the subject is a tad raw as the joiner is not prepared to start without all in place and there are a few bits nad pieces - like what is going on the top cupboards - stillin flux. Check back soon!
Oh… and I found the perfect tap @ $1299 plus gst…. Regretfully I think it is better spent on the deck.
Not quite the same one as on Grand designs... but close
Big Day
Friday, March 20th, 2009Well - lots of action today at the site and around the town.
The final windows were delivered and installed, building inspector signed off, hebel guys mounted battens, sparky finished most of pre wire, Red Dwarf finished pre pipe. The storm watere was done yesterday which meants asump in the back bit and windows for the old house that open onto the back section were planned. The windows in the link were installed yesterday and it is going to be a great sun trap which may well feed warmth to the old house. Plans for tree ferns in a garden out back took another step in the imagination.
leaning windows
sorting the back bit.
Meanwhile in town months of research came to fruiton.
1. I settled the kitchen design ( pics coming soon) . Ongoing battle over the undersink cupboard was settled with a $60 toe kick pedal. I have transformed the colour palette to light and teh ever patient Steve and I spent the good part of an hour minutely disecting shades of putty, irish cream and designer white to get the precise colour for the bottom cupboards.
2. On to Red Dwarf and selected a heated towl rail from the, again, ever patient, Michelle.
Chat to Doug about whether the toilet will fit …
3. On to Spazio Casa ( turn off the music with the wee off icon) where Angela and Gary finally extacted some hard earned $ for an oder of floor wood. I came home with a botte of wine and a tile option for the bathroom.
4. Taps … I don’t like any taps I have seen. They all are obesessed with little stick handles, have odd try hard designs … maybe I should just design my own.
A visit to a bathroom reatiler yesterday was ecuational - everything we think would be obvious is out of the ordinary : two mixers for to showers turns out to be an odd request! The solution is a worka round - converting one mixer designed for two shower heads to work two shoers .. but we have to have teh same temperature which defeats the purpose. Somebody is missing something!
Still.. light emerges at the end of the tunnel….
Delays
Monday, February 23rd, 2009
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From Met Service today.. there were images of rain here but they disappeared.
Frustrating delays in getting the roof finished with flow on effect to the rest of the work . End of April hand over now very unlikely!
Things are taking shape however and the decisions are coming thick and fast. Form and function are inevitbaly challenged by budget!
Kitchen being finalised, Bathroom stuff being ordered and laundry is on the drawing board. Tiling just awaits the tiler to price and ok the tile choice. Wood colour for living room floow is also close to settled.
A quick post here - blogging is not very easy to maintain!
