Garage doors are in

Well it turned out to be a lovely day in the end today after 40mm of rain last night and this morning. And guess what? The water tank is full and the detention tank is half full. That means that with the new roof we get 1000 gallons for every 10mm of rain.

The black pipe you see above is the temp down pipe that the project manager did today - we are not sure why there was one down pipe not installed. As you can see the new drainage systems are helping alot - just this little puddle here really - and that's really just from dips from where the pipes were laid, and the earth has compacted now with the rain and also all the workers drive and park around here.

The garage doors are in - they look nothing like I thought they would so I was quite surprised. They look pretty cool - and now we are closed up!

So much so that we went to go over to have our coffee tonight and we tried the front door - locked, then the west wing door - locked, we tried the garage door (ranchslider) - locked. Finally we found a ranch-slider open. It was so warm in there tonight.
So - the bricks are all done and so are the posts - they look pretty good hey.

Inside some of the architraves have been done and some of the skirtings, and all of the downlight holes have been made in the ceilings.


This is the single garage.

We have a room!

Forgot to post this yesterday - it's the family room and kitchen looking towards the lounge and George's tv wall.

Countdown

It's ANZAC Day and the guys doing the lining showed up for a mornings work. I was quite impressed. And - they are very tidy - I went in this afternoon after joining the whole of Helensville at Woolworths, and they have swept up in all the rooms and all the house and double garage (but not the west wing) is lined!! The kitchen (and my pantry) look great, to have the kitchen, dining, and family room all lined really makes it feel almost finished.

I was thinking today about what I was most looking forward to about moving into the house; here's my list:

• the quiet - the lack of rain and wind noise. It's raining now and it sounds heavy but you go outside and you hardly get wet. The wind blows all the building paper in the roof and sounds like sometimes it's going to blow the iron off the roof - again we go outside and it's not nearly as bad.
• space - space to unpack everything and put things away in proper places. I love unpacking into a new house - finding places for everything. Plus to have space to scrapbook, sew, watch DVDs, do yoga - all that kind of space stuff.
• a dishwasher - oh it will be heaven to have a dishwasher again
• the quiet -oh did I mention that already lol
• warm - the house is already nearly warmer than the barn and it doesn't have any garage doors yet!! With underfloor heating, double glazing and facing north - I think we will be very cosy.
• Looking forward to being able to find things again - with a workshop and a messanine full of boxes you kind of think about looking for something then change your mind because it's too hard. To have everything out of boxes and in a place will be awesome.
• Internal garage - our cars have had to live outside for a year and of course we get wet getting to them, and back inside again - plus dirty feet - it will be nice to get into the car and stay dry and clean. At the moment we still have a manual gate but George has sussed out an automatic opening one which will get eventually.
• and not having any dust - the concrete floors in the barn create an amazing amount of dust so it's hard to keep anything clean.
• Our new washing machine (front loader) will be nice - and our new convection dryer (no vent required.
• A nice big fridge again with double doors - we have been living out of a bar fridge.
• Being able to use a stove top again - having most of our meals from a crockpot or the $34 Warehouse oven gets kind of boring and limiting. It will be nice to be able to cook pasta and veggies again and use a proper oven. I won't even start on about the bench space.
• George is at work but his top two would be 'to have light' and 'to have a clean house'. Then the rest as above.
  

Bricks nearly all done

All the building paper is nearly all covered up - the only room that is not done is our bedroom - and funnily enough it's really windy today and coming from the East so we have yet to appreciate the quiet because the building paper is rattling a bit up there today.

The rest of the house is very quiet though - oh how I am longing to be able to sleep well without the rain and wind keeping me awake like it no doubt will be doing tonight.

It's really looking like a house now and with just about all the lining up in the main house you can really get a great idea of how it will feel space wise.

Anzac Day tomorrow and rain predicted for next week but at least they can keep working regardless now.

Big jump

The bricks are all done on the north side so we reckon they may even finish tomorrow. Even under the windows have been done on this side.

We have walls in some rooms like the bedroom and ensuite...




Isn't the sky amazing!!

I love the way the sun is coming in here now that it's more North west in the sky.

We have ceilings

I wandered into the house today expecting some internal wall linings and saw gib dust but no walls and thought - that's strange. Then I looked up and saw all the ceilings were in (bar a couple of bedrooms). It looks very cool.



The brickies arrived at 7am and left about 3.30pm I guess so bricks are about 50-70% up on all walls. It looks great. I think the council are coming tomorrow to do the 2nd pre-line inspection.

I had a really busy day at work getting a new UK programme up and running (what I really love doing) and then picking up poos and feeding the horses, now doing the blog and then more on my new webpages. Not really enough hours in the day really.

One year

It's been one year since we moved on to the land!!! Gosh how time flies. We have done so much in 12 months. This was us one year ago!

This one before we did anything only 4 months previous to the one above.

Looking good

These are yesterdays photos.

This is the only un-bricked bit now. They didn't come today - wonder if they will come tomorrow.

The drainlayer dug the ditch for the power connection today so apart from hooking up the water from the tank, I think all the digging is done. It's nice to have some flat space around the house again. Really looking forward to having the top soil piles spread out again but the concrete truck needs to come for the patios first.



Looking good now hey...
This is our drain.....


We went to the North Shore Home Show today and got a new steam mop, and a new vacuum head which picks up hair and cat fur!! Looks brilliant!

We saw the lady from Wardrobe World - she had drawn a plan for us so we were able to see what it would look like in the flesh. We loved it so thats good - it's got drawers built in but you can vacuum under them - they don't go all the way to the floor.

Maths test

The cladding has to be 90% done for the council to approve the lining (inside). The bricks are 3/4's of the way up on half of the house, and half way up on 1/4 of the house with only one side to go (with nothing). So how many % do you reckon they will calculate that as??

The storm water drain, it's covered over now - these are yesterdays photos. It will take all the run off storm water down the pipe through the paddock to the edge of the property so it will be fantastic. It has three or four cess-pits (the biggest one below).


Looks good with all the paint done hey!

We have these brick cast offs in a pile. Wonder what we could do with these.

The gib board arrives Monday and if all goes well the lining will start on Wednesday. By then the bricks should all be done (fingers crossed). They have done all this in 2.5 days so it shouldn't be too much longer. But we don't think they will come tomorrow - they packed up all their stuff.

We have doors!

We have doors - on the west wing and the front door - and of course they still need painting. The painters are all done I think and the project manager was pretty annoyed that the brickies were not there today because the council needs to have 90% of the bricks on to give the go ahead for the lining inside... ridiculous hey!


This is the view from the family room today. Very lovely.


The poles have been painted and they look really good, as have the down pipes.

Me in my office!!

The barn life

Since we moved into the barn 11 months ago we have not really shown you much inside the barn, and how we live currently (and therefore why we are so looking forward to moving into the house).

This is our office/dining table/coat rack.

The coffee machine/cutlery drawer, the TV/crockery table, kitchen pantry/kitchen bench!

The floor - concrete covered in a few mats.

The wardrobe. LOL
The feed room/fridge/tack room, the toaster, jug, microwave and little $34 oven is out here - oh and the iron and distiller.

The bedroom (on the other side of the wardrobe, looking towards bathroom. Cini sleeping on the bed.

The storage area and the height of the roof!