Brian Clopper eat your heart out

The extension walls are up and suddenly there is a sea of brickwork in our backyard.  Which is good, because at one point I was about to go and do a bricklaying course as we could not find a bricklayer for love or money.  Both of which I'm feeling a bit low on at the moment after the recent trials in our renovation experience.  But find a team we did, and they have done rather a fine job I believe.  They have also been OK with working around our Victorian steel windows from England, which have caused a bit of head scratching.  Here are some pictures.

Our project is somewhat different to most of the building work that has been going on in this neck of the woods over the past years.  Most brick buildings are constructed with midis (get me with my brickie speak) and then rendered to give a flat finish.  We have built with quite a lot of face brick (or exposed brick) both inside and out.   Once the second storey (not brick) is up the brickwork will hopefully be not quite so inyaface.  Otherwise we run the risk of being referenced to the work of Brian Clopper. who was a very successful architect in Perth in the 1970s through to the 1990s.  No offence to Brian, I really like his buildings with their earthy tones and rustic materials, but when the modernist resurgence hit domestic design in the 1990s anything that looked like this immediately became a bit daggy and dated.



But I bet there will be more of Brian's buildings still standing in 100 years time than some of the stuff going up today, mark my words. 

 
Anyway, they say fashion is cyclical and hopefully we are pioneers in relaunching a more rustic and earthy (meets victorian industrial colliding with 21st century utilitarian) feel.   Reading that I realise we are sailing dangerously close to the seasick winds of design dog's breakfast, but I like to think passing by and through into the calm waters of contemporary classic.

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!

Number's Up

House numbers are a bit like lipstick, you put them up to look inviting and enhancing.  But of course they also perform a vital role of helping people muttering to themselves as they crawl down the street in their cars at night about how no one ever has proper house numbers.

We were one such offender, and in the past week our new house number installation has been born.  When the brickies started work out the back they built a small 'test wall' to see how the three blended brick varieties would look.   Chucking the mini-wall in the skip seemed sinful and wasteful, so we decided to turn it into a feature wall out the front for some new house numbers.

Here is the wall.  The jury is still out as to whether it works aesthetically in front of our wood and wire fencing, but it's recycling so who cares.  The letterbox sourced from the tip is enjoying the company anyhow.

I found these metal numbers which are made in India, perfect.  The trouble was, as they were hollow, affixing them to the wall posed a bit of challenge. 

 

Husband had bright idea of filling them with expanding foam.  Whoah there, enough expanding already!

Here is the finished product.  Cost not a lot, but looks pretty darn groovy in my opinion.  Now people can at least find number 38 and work backwards.

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.

Well I'll be (Amster)dammed

Far from wanting to morph into a travel blog for the next six weeks ('here, look at my fascinating travel snaps'), the fact that we are a family on the road will mean that any posts for a while will be foreign-influenced and probably iPhone generated. At least they will be short.

The last time I was in Amsterdam I had a pretty good time. Let's just day the sort of good time that a pair of cranky jet lagged ten and twelve year olds being towed around in the rain don't facilitate.

We did however manage to squeeze into today a museum, beer in a gorgeous original very old bar and visit the sobering Anne Frank Huise. It was all good but the beer was definitely the highlight.

It is so refreshing to be somewhere where the patina of time is given the respect it deserves. I'm rejoicing in the glorious yet understated style that you only get in mainland northern continental Europe. That old combo of historical architecture and cutting edge contemporary design does it for me every time.

And then there's the bricks. (I can see a bit of a blog theme emerging here). Beautiful, teeny, clay bricks laid with a craftsman's precision 400 years ago abound. A wonder what our brickie would have made of that brief!

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.