In the thick of it

With all the best intentions of writing regular posts about the progress of our building renovation project, I appear to have written... er, almost none.   I know why that is, it's because the whole thing has been so crazy and at times totally traumatising I've stopped being able to crack jokes about living in a garage for 18 months, let alone pen pithy upbeat blogposts about the whole grueling affair.

However, I feel that I must today, stop the clock and make a visual record, as progress seems to be steaming along now, thank god, finally.  The sound of bandsaws is music to my ears (probably not so to the neighbours but that's karma as far as I'm concerned) and a streetfront that resembles the trade car park outside Bunnings fills me with peace and hope that there is a future beyond living in one room with my family forever.

... skip... four weeks.  LOL, I didn't even manage to get these pics up then.  Needless to say, lots has happened since then and I shall write more soon.  If I can muster the cheer required and get over the most recent drama of the plasterers, that is.  Don't ask.

The longest time

Lord, it's been so long since my last post.... you should see how much the garden has grown!



Nature is a wonderful thing, it just does its stuff all by itself.  It brings a joy that is the reward of patience and time lived.  Unlike building house extensions, which does not.  That requires vast amounts of cold hard cash.  Yes well, we're working on that one, which is slowing things down somewhat.  But as you can see, we have made quite a bit of progress, from the outside anyway. 


All the Victorian windows carted out from England ten years ago have gone in now, blended with what will be strips of modern louvres for ventilation.

And... I'm losing my sense of humour after now a year of living in a garage/studio, with no laundry, or privacy.  "Why are you whispering Mum, you know we can hear everything you are saying". 

A bit like waiting to give birth, some things seem to go on FOREVER.  Blahhh!

Out the ground

One of the things I love about the world of blog is that there are no rules.  For example, you've not bothered to post for, oooh, five months, but guess what, no one cares!  Few read them anyway!

After a blogging sabattical I can feel a few posts in my waters at the moment.  For those in the know, we have dragged ourselves through the pain and misery of getting phase two of our renovation project off the ground and are now rising from the ashes.  I suspect there will be plenty more pain and misery and financial hardship where that came from, but at least I can bring myself to tap away some reflection and general complaints.  I must be feeling better.   I've promised myself I won't go into detail here, but you can rearrange the words:   council, mean, expense, neighbour, stress, wanker   to get a general idea of where I would have been coming from.

Anyway, fast forward from the demolition of our lean-to kitchen and bathroom, and here we are with a brace of bricklayers in the backyard putting up the walls of our extension. It is lovely to watch. Well, maybe not that view, but the progeress is most pleasing and I may even allow myself to start thinking about frivolous things such as kitchen design and tiles.  And that's waaay before we get to the icing on the cake Kylie!

The delicate topic of toilets

The builder has insisted that this week, before the slab is laid for the extension I must go immediately to the plumbing merchant and select all sanitary ware and bathroom fittings.  Whooaa there, but I want to dither endlessly over such things, why so soon?   Apparently plumber needs to know such things yesterday, search me.

So we go for a romantic outing to the plumbing merchant in an outer suburban semi-industrial part of town (builder's guys, major discount, which we like) to choose taps, showers and .... lavatories.  When I suggested to the sales guy that we look at lavatories, he said 'you mean toilets?' which immediately got my English snob husband on edge.

Having a brief discussion before we leave home it is agreed that the loo we've put in the studio has a major design fault.  Whilst it may be groovy and sleek, the inside of it has a large flat area with the water sitting in a small recess at the back.  How to put this issue delicately?  Well, not how my husband explained it, that using it was like having a shit on a dinner plate that you had to scrape into the hole.  I don't know who was more embarrassed: me or the Ygen salesman, but he kind of got it right.  

(The builder explained to us later that due to toilets now using less water, the design of them has had to change so that the water area must be smaller to allow for the reduced amount of water to have enough whoosh to adequately deal with the, ehem, contents.)

My bug bear with modern toilets is that they are not very comfortable to sit on.  True I have got a bony arse, but I find toilets today feel like they have no seat at all and you are actually sitting on the rim, as opposed to the nice old big flat bakerlite seats that you could settle down on for a nice long magazine article, or two.   When I explored this topic with the Ygen and suggested he might like to sit on the toilet and see what I mean, he got very embarrassed, but did it anyway. 

Sorry, but if you are in the game of selling dunnies, you've surely got to be get over being embarrassed about what they are actually for, non?

Anyway, we finally found a lavvie that had a more central larger water hole, but I compromised on the uncomfortable seat. 

Since when have I had time to read a magazine on the kazi in the last ten years anyway?

Ground Zero

Demolition is now complete. The guy is in with his bobcat today to clear away the final debris of our house's rear.   The lavvy was the only thing left by the time he arrived this morning.  As you can imagine, there has been lots of great photo opportunities with the below, which I won't share.

I've been sifting through the soil which was underneath the stumps, the builder thinks I'm mad.  There are lots of little fragments of packaging and other ephemera which are like clues and DNA to the past life of this house and its inhabitants. 

 

I've also been taking photos from this vantage point below nearly every day.  My plan is to do a time lapse series of the old coming down and the new going up.  Given the drip-drip approach to our building budget, that is going to be one hell of a file, if I take one every day.

You can see the old kitchen wall, which would have been original to the house, whereas the section to the right which housed a dining area and bathroom were added in the 50s.  When we were pulling it apart we found a load of newspaper rolled up to fill gaps from 1957.  More on that later.

Timber!

I've been stupid busy the past few months, blogging is a distant and luxurious memory.   My book is soon to be printed (another post, note to self: write) and the house reno has now well and truly kicked off.

We've now moved into the recently completed garage/studio and set up residence for the foreseeable future, while the house is partially demolished and extended.  Some say we are mad, some say genius.  Time will tell.  If we are all still speaking to each other in a year's time it will be cause for celebration in itself.

Task one: turn garage into livable dwelling.  Upstairs we have loo, shower, kitchen, so downstairs is sleeping zone.  Our lovely builder put up this partition made from a bunch of Victorian pine doors we'd had getting in the way for the last ten years.

That's one less pile of crap under a tarp to shimmy around. 

So work begineth.  The old side sleepout was first to go.  One push, give or take, and it's gone.

Then work moves to the rear - old kitchen, diner and bathroom.  It's clinging on a bit harder, but another day or two and it will also be toast.

The plan is to reserve all the old jarrah timbers and reuse them in the build, somewhere, somehow.  Cue: five more piles of crap under tarpaulin.

When the inside wall skin was removed from the kitchen, this was revealed.  It's the old original weatherboard wall, with flaking paints and lovely patina. 

We might try and fiddle less rather than more with that and enjoy its distressed tones.  Not that there will be much distressing to do, that's for sure.

Rubber's Made

Those that have been following my blog might remember my rubber flooring post, where I was drooling over this rubber product put down on the floor in the new garage studio.   After much dithering over colours, we resolved our decision making with a 'what the hell, let's have both' solution to the can't-decide-problem.

Work has been frenetic over the past two weeks to get the studio finished for Mother in Law's visit, and I reckon we are nearly there.  Still a long snagging list, but  I suspect that will take a long time to go away.   There's lots to show, but I wanted to just get up some pics of the rubber flooring.

What do you think?  I'm loving it! 

W.I.P.

It has been busy busy out the back this week, with progress on the garage studio ramping up to a cracking pace.   Yesterday was insane, with the cabinet maker spitting the dummy when the plasterers got in his way, who we needed there so the tiler could come next week.   I've decided the real skill in building is largely in scheduling a bunch of uppity men and their egos.

The glass went in today, exciting, so felt like the right time for an update post.

Sitting on the corner of two laneways, there's easy access which puts a smile on the tradies faces.  Can't wait for the round window to go in, which we salvaged about ten years ago from an old power station in the UK.  

This is the rear/side view, sliding doors.  The garage space is quickly morphing from somewhere to put cars, to be a general games-room-hang-out-space.  Great, except now I'll need to find somewhere else to park the car.

 

We've had these salvaged ship's doors for years, which go on the loo and shower room.  The Ikea kitchen was fitted this week, now shrouded in cardboard while a bunch of clumsy blokes bang around her for another month.  (Did I mention I've been to Ikea three times this week?  And that's a week that included a public holiday.  I kid you not.)

This long thin window looks out through the Jacaranda tree.

Upstairs, still lots to do here.

 Downstairs the guys fitting the sliding glass doors.  Note the lovely sanded concrete floor,
which was a weekend of hard work for us.

This bit felt like an episode of Grand Designs.  One pane of glass, three men, a huge sigh of relief.

Of course husband has gone quite OTT with the details for which is swiftly turning into a mancave to beat all mancaves.   Once finished, the plan is that we will all move in and live here (partitions downstairs to make some bedrooms) while we take the back off the old house and extend it.  If there's any money left, that is.

Oh my edifice

Following on from my brick obsession, I thought it was time to update on the garage studio building work.   Returning from six weeks away, some bricklaying progress sure has been made.  With 40 degree plus temperatures over much of this time, these guys have my major respect.  Their craft is pretty good too, never let it be said that there is no skill in brickworkery, there is loads.  Now they are building the second story they need a lift to get the bricks up to that height.   Of course they do you say.

But the transition between a plan on a piece of paper and an actual real structure is something to be amazed by.  Dimensions on piece of paper are just concepts, really.  Now it is going up, it just seems so...... big!  A veritable edifice!

Here is the lift.  And plenty more bricks to still travel upwards.  They look great, and definitely the mid-century look we were after.  This will appear even more so once the shaped facade goes in at the top.

But like most things in life it is the unexpected that gives the greatest joy.  Building in between two existing old trees has seemed to impart an instant sense of being settled, hopefully like it has always been there.  Can't wait to get in.

Bricking It

Our garage-studio project is making progress, albeit slowly.  Now the steel structure is in, we are at the brick bit.  You might assume there to be little complexity around selecting bricks but let me tell you my friend, you are wrong.   The whole exercise reminds me of choosing white paint.  Anyone who has painted a house in the last ten years will know what I'm talking about here.

A few streets away from our house is an old telephone exchange built in the 1930's.  We love the utilitarian yet quietly stylish design of this building, and it has been an inspiration behind the design for the structure, a bit.  Here it is.

Not only does it sport this lovely relief design, but also boasts some gorgeous flemish bricklaying.  That's when a row of half bricks is placed between a standard row.  I bet you never knew there was so much craft involved in bricklaying.   Sadly the extra labour cost and noise pollution of 4 thousand bricks being cut in half has meant we've decided to pass on the flemish.


So, the most important task was to choose bricks that would render this vintage feel.   If we did not put in some serious effort  getting them right, we'd end up with something that looked like this.  Not good.  Equally naff would be to use ubiquitous recycled bricks, de rigour around here in the 90's.  At the risk of disappearing up our own backsides with attention to detail, it has to be said that either would be a major fail.

What we did was choose three different styles of 'tumbled' new bricks, from two different suppliers, to be blended thus creating a genuinely vintage-looking brick facade, an oxymoron if ever there was one.   This has proved too complex and out the box for brickie number one who has now walked with the bother of it all.  All halt for a week now as we await the start of brickie number two.  

Here are some of the new bricks ready to go.  These will be mixed with other batches that are less or more 'tumbled'.

Speaking of bricks, in the process of digging up the backyard this baby below surfaced, along with other miscellaneous items.  I did a bit of research and found that it came from the State Brickworks in Armadale which cranked up in 1915 and ceased to operate as a State-run facility in the mid 1950s.  Our house being weatherboard, maybe the brick was a token purchase to be admired.  Weatherboard houses were traditionally half the cost of brick dwellings to build.

Just think of the money saved if I'd dug up another 8,499 of them.