Validation

Just Because

3-Dec-2015 Update

It's been a few weeks without a blog post but the work hasn't stopped.  Far from it.

External Carpentry

 Bird board sealing and painting

Finished off some extra detail on the southern end of the house and a section around the Laundry that needed some more complicated joinery to finish.  Resulted in a much nicer finish overall.

Work is ongoing on gap sealing and painting the birdboard.  Like everything on this house it is a BIG job.  We are about a quarter of the way through and probably looking at 4-5 full days to complete which equates to about 2-3 full weekends.

Backdoor surround

Framed up a door surround then sealed against the cladding to make a nice finish

 Gardening

Before

After

Spread some more mulch around along with some sheep poo. re potted and planted out a few plants.

Brush-cutting

The bulk of the block has been slashed/brush cut ready for bush fire season.  This involved cutting the weeds back to about 50mm high or less.  Next year we either need to get a small tractor with a slasher or some four legged lawnmowers.

Miscellaneous

Added fan blades to the fans in the boys bedrooms.
Cleaned a bunch of stuff out of the shed
moved some tools from the bottom shed upto the top shed
installed the new work bench to the shed.

Storage

Big day of carpentry on Sunday.  We left a recess in our entry passage during the build, with the idea we would come back later and build in storage and frame up around it, add a double door frame and some doors.   

The lack of storage in this recess has led to boxes of stuff being randomly stacked there.  So the time has come to do something about it.  We started out creating a built in shelving unit from pine and melamine sheeting.  With the aid of the nail gun and some glue this went together really quickly.

 The next step was to frame up around the opening to crate a wall for the door frame to sit in.  We then added some plasterboard before taking a well earned beer.

Before

Building the shelves

Framing up the doorway

Plasterboard goes on

Paving

Paving- one of my least favourite jobs.  It's not that I'm bad at it,  it's not that it is particularly technical and difficult to achieve a good finish but simply it is hard on the body.  With the weekends efforts of around 50 Square meters laid I will be walking around like an old man on Monday.  

The key to paving is preparation and string lines.  Spend the time to get the area level and compacted and lay string lines with your edges and it is difficult to do a bad job.

 The Finished Patio Area

The primary area of paving to complete was on the west side of the house for an area that will become our outdoor entertaining spot.  A timber framed patio will be built over this in the coming months with shade cloth over the top to keep the sun off.

The pavers we are using were recycled from a street in Cottesloe.  They are heavy duty full thickness bricks so twice as heavy as a regular paving brick.  Combined with the fact the packs of bricks are nowhere near where I was laying them meant a lot of effort to get them on the ground in a nice tight herring bone pattern.  Beers well earned on Sunday afternoon.  Two beers down I could almost convince myself I wont hurt for days....

 Saturday Progress

Granny's Path

In addition to the entertaining area we also completed a path for granny out into her garden to her rain gauge.  Timely as we had 22mm of rain Friday night and a further 6mm Sunday night.

The rain was a blessing for the tanks.  20mm ~ 10,000 litres which is 2-3 weeks of usage over summer.  Every bit of rain now coming into summer is a bonus.

Dog Fence Extension

The weekend was spent building/extending the dog fence

Dog Fence Extension

We identified the need early on for a larger dog run as having them tightly constrained to the front of the house  with restricted room to poo wasn't pleasant for anyone.  The extension takes in the area along the front of the rock wall that we have set aside for a future lawn area.  The idea is the lawn will feed mostly off the underlying leach drains and provide a green buffer in the event of bush fire. We will look at establishing this next winter.

 Guitar chair

 The finished product in the music room.  Matches in nicely with the floor

Grey Water Recyling

Grey water recyling drum minus lid as it is still in testing but so far is working a treat.  Water is diverted from the washing machine into the drum and gravity feeds down into the orchard.

Another busy weekend.  A lot of time was spent on the brush-cutter this weekend slashing the grass to make the place more fire safe.  It was a pretty hot day on Sunday to be doing this kind of work.  Managed to slash about a third of the block before taking a well earned ale.  

We installed curtains on the Master bedroom and retreat.  It makes a huge difference.  We can now close up all the curtains and blinds along the west side of the house in the afternoon and the house stays cool.  Once the sun is down we open all the windows and get nice flow through ventilation from the cool air coming up from the valley.

We also installed a grey-water recycling system to divert water from the washing machine to an underground tank set in the rock wall that gravity feeds down to the orchard. 

On Saturday we visited the Karragullen Expo and purchased an avocado tree.  Next doors donated some Alpaca poo to plant the avocado and to top dress the citrus trees.

 The Music Chair

Finished sanding the Log Chair for the music room and put the first two coats of varnish on.

 The Orchard

Brush cut the orchard area and ran the reticulation pipe from the grey-water recycling tank

Installed Shelves

Installed shelves in the study to get all the books out of boxes on the study floor so we don't keep tripping over them.

Grand Final Weekend

For the record the West Coast Eagles were outclassed in the 2015 Grand Final and convincingly defeated by 46 points by Hawthorn.  As a die hard Eagles supporter it was a very difficult game to watch.  

 Still Hopeful

Early in the day before the game started we were still daring to dream of an Eagles victory.

Wardrobe Inserts

We achieved very little this weekend.  Saturday was a right off as the beer started flowing in the first quarter (just after lunchtime).  Celebratory ales soon turned to ales of commiseration and despair.

One job that we did manage was to install wire wardrobe inserts. Quick and easy to install and they work really well.

Long Weekend

A reasonably productive long weekend interspersed with a bit of time out.  Went camping down the block with the younger 2 boys and took the oldest boy indoor rock climbing.  Also had our "Adoptive" daughter and her boyfriend over for lunch.

Outside that a bit of carpentry, moved about 8 cubic of dirt around to fill a hole and level out where our outdoor entertaining area is going to be in readiness for paving, burnt off some dead grass and tree pruning's and hung some blinds and curtains.

The plumber came and we did some investigating of a potential very slight gas leak but not sure we resolved it.  On the upside we fixed the dodgy hot plate that would never light.

Cherry Blossom

(Photo by Melinda)

Our fruit trees are coming into blossom

 The Great Camp Out 2015

A great example of how much you love your kids is when you spend the evening camping at the bottom of the block instead of watching your team win the Preliminary Final to book a spot in the Grand Final.  Sorry boys no camping next Saturday, Daddy is watching the football.

 Curtains and Blinds

Blinds have been installed on all the bedrooms and curtains added to the big open area window.  Makes a huge difference on a hot day.

 Herb Patch

We now have a herb patch that is easily accessible from the kitchen.  The soil is a combination of composted leaf litter and sheep poo.

                                              A shot of the house from down the block

Second Tank Finished

Another massive weekend on the house.  The second tank is finished and the storm-water pipes plumbed in.  Just in time for Summer.

Tank Finished

Connecting up the leaf catchers on the West side

Now the tank is in we took the opportunity to connect up the remaining leaf catchers on the Western side of the house.  Now all we needs is some rain.

 Sheeting the Verandah on the West side

We managed to score some extra corrugated roof sheets off the tank installer so the sheeting of the verandah is complete and has made an instant difference cutting out the sun on the window from 12.30 through to around 3.30pm.

Bird Board Install

Bird board is about 95% installed, with just some small zones around the open area to finish off. Then seal any gaps with sika-flex and time for a coat of paint.  Cordless saw and Nail gun made relatively quick work of this.

Work continues in earnest on the brush cutter to clear the area around the house in preparation for bush fire season.

Big Weekend

Another massive weekend has seen some really good progress on various projects

 Verandah/Awning

Designed to provide shade to the big West facing window  on the open area.  The carpentry is done and now we need to order the roof sheets, gutter and flashing's to finish the job next weekend.

Nan's Garden Paths

We made a start on Nan's Garden paths.  The main path to her shed is done.  This then needs to be extended out to her fruit trees.  We leveled the area around her raised vegie beds ready for paving next weekend.  We had to dig in some drainage pipe and unfortunately we didn't have quite enough to get the drainage past the end of the vegie bed path so we need to get some lengths of pipe before we do anymore on this area.

 Bush pole Trellis

Made a trellis out of bush poles cut from the block for Nan's passion-fruit vine

Bird-board

Started installing the bird-board to seal off the roof cavity.  Cordless saw and nail gun make this a really quick job.  Of course on such a big house there is still a bunch of board to still install.

September Projects

September is on us and the weather is warming up yet we are still hopeful of more rain and more chances to burn off before summer is upon us.  The weather has a definite spring feel so many of the projects on the go currently have a real outdoor bent.  

We are waiting for a call back from the tank installer.  Last time we spoke he indicated next week as a likely start date for the new tank.  Be nice to get a wet start to spring once the tank is in.

 Guitar Chair

So we decided to make a chair from a log to go in the music room to sit on while playing guitar.  We plan to make a pile more for sitting around our fire pit outside in winter.  Being an inside piece this one needs a fair amount of finishing detail, sanding and varnishing but should be a nice piece of furniture once its finished.  Its the perfect height for playing guitar.

Office Desk

The long term vision for the office desk is to use slabs of marri timber milled from logs felled to make way for the house.  As the milling and drying process will take around 12-18 months we decided to put in a cheap laminate version in the meantime to make the space workable.  The fact that Bunnings was running theses out at 30% off helped the decision making process.  Got to use the brad nailer to make the pine frame that sits under it.  Where has this tool been all my life?

 Asparagus Bed

Dropped in to see the old man at the brew shop for Fathers day.  We came bearing small gifts and left as always bearing copious amounts of beer.  Then swung past home to see mum.  She had a large asparagus plant that she wanted to get rid of and we had a need for asparagus for our garden.  We now have a 2.5 metre long asparagus bed chock full of asparagus corms. Happy days.

 Vegie Bed

More work has been completed on the vegie patch adding leaf litter and sheep poo with fire ash to start the first couple of beds so we can do some planting next weekend.

Verandah

We are putting a verandah over the big west facing window in the open area as this room will get very hot in summer without any protection.  The stirrups have been concreted in the ground and the carpentry will commence this coming weekend.

Second Tank Pad Finished

We had the excavator again for the weekend and managed to get the tank pad finished.  Tank installers should be calling soon.

We spent an hour or so spreading out the burnt ash from the fire heaps and some old composted topsoil and leaves in the orchard area as well as pushing the remaining logs and stumps around to try and form a new fire pile further down the hill.  Didn't have much luck with the bigger stumps.  Might have to give Shayne the Earthworks guru a call and see if he has his big loader coming over this side of the hill any time soon.

Leveling the Tank Pad

Orchard area

Still Burning

 Burning the big stump

Oh Dear

That sinking feeling when the fire jumps from the stump you are burning to the pile of logs you wanted to keep for firewood.  It's always the way... the pile you wanted to keep burns better than any of the other piles.  Went out this morning and it is just a smouldring pile of ash.  The stumps on the other hand are all still there.  Oh well saves me sawing it up and I still have all the straight logs for milling.

A weekend away

We took a long weekend Thursday - Monday and ventured down to Pullmans Bunker Bay resort in Dunsborough for some R&R. With buffet breakfast thrown in we didn't have to worry too much about lunch or dinner.  We did sneak a romantic dinner, kids free in.  

We did some indoor rock climbing, ventured down Jewel cave and spent time clambering around rocks at the beach.  Oh and visited some chocolate manufacturers and the odd micro brewery. The bulk of the time was spent lazing around on the super comfy lounge.

 Bunker Bay Sunrise

I snuck some pre-breakfast running and quickly discovered my running fitness is nearly non existent so I have quite a road ahead of me if I decide to do another half Marathon next year.

Lighting the Heap

Once home it was back onto the never shortening list.  Conditions were right on Tuesday to finally set fire to the heaps from the house pad clearing.  By Wednesday morning the bulk of the smaller stuff was gone leaving 3 large stumps.  I fully expect the stumps to smolder away for several days.  I doubt they will burn completely before the rain returns on the weekend and I will probably push them further down the block with the excavator into a single heap to burn down (in a few weeks time if not next year).  At least the area for the orchard will finally be clear and we can get some more trees in before Summer.

Burning into the Night

Not much to report this weekend.  A bit of gardening, felled the big dead jarrah tree down the bottom of the block and did a bit of carpentry.  Drank some beer, had a jam with Jack on drums and me on guitar.

The challenge is to turn this above into one of these below.  We have cut 1 ring of jarrah and 2 rings of Marri and given to Paul to mill and over the next 18 months try and turn into a snare drum to start creating Jack's drum kit.

 Strawberry Jam

The house was filled Sunday with the delightful aroma of strawberry jam being made.  Some very happy boys.  Melinda has perfected the technique.

 New Toy

Cordless Bosch saw.  Very cool piece of kit.