As per my post from yesterday, here are the missing photo’s from the floor inspection “team”.   As you will see, ‘team’ when used in this blog is actually singular.  I was doing my own helping by ensuring that the view from the main living space was ok.    (You will all be pleased to know that it was )

The photos record another stunning day in paradise and had it not been for a very special post wedding lunch we were due at, I would have happily sat there all day.  Bliss.  Almost seems a shame to put a roof on it… until this morning when the wind had spun to the south and the rain was coming in and I was slip sliding my way back from a trip to my outdoor bathroom facility.   Get those frames up boys!   Need me a roof  now

Hopefully there will still be some light left when I get home tonight and that the frames might have gone all vertical on me and thus helped me on my way to fixing my spatial awareness problem.

Tell you what though, having learnt the art of patience, the rate things are moving now that lesson is fast disappearing into our long grass and my impatient nature is winning over nurture once again.

floor level double checking. The zipper is the yellow box and cord on the left.

Checking out the view from the main living area… bliss

Keeping an eye on the work ‘man’

Hi everyone. Sorry for the lack of posts over the last few days.  The blog site had had some issues and not only was it saying that my blog no longer existed I couldn’t find anywhere on the site to contact anyone!!  very frustrating.  However the universe has now starting re-spinning in the right direction and we’re back on track. So, the update since my last post: The lad came home for the weekend armed with a “Gas Level” or Zip Level as they are otherwise known. (Oh the extent of my building terminology is now getting out of control – lol).  So Sunday morning we raced out here and the zipper (as it’s known by some others who use it more than me) was deployed. An intial survey of the finished pad on Friday night under the glaring gaze of car head lights had us believing the worst! That my baking had infact had the reverse effect on the concrete crew and they’d left us with something resembling a roller-coaster track.   However, all fears (and hasty judgments of the concrete boys) were quickly dispelled by the zipper who gave results that say we have .10millimetre of variation across the whole pad. Apparently the council people  or builders will allow up to .25 before they require remedial leveling so we have a super duper job on our site.  :))  Maybe the baking was ok after all  – even if they didn’t eat all my healthy museli bar slice.  (B says i have to just quit with trying to convert them and just go straight to the pies next time – sigh). Will post some photos of the zipper and it’s operator in action tomorrow.   Anyway – on to the most important news of the day – Winston Peters is secretely married to Judith Collins – kidding. No – far more important than petty politics – our frames have arrived!!!!  Wooo HOOOO.  However, upon inspection tonight, i’ve had another spacial failure moment and determined that they all look far too low/ small and that perhaps they have the internal height of our house all wrong.    I did contemplate lying onthe concrete to measure my height against the frame height but there were puddles and i don’t do lying in puddles (that’s next weekend at the Tough Guy Tough Girl Challenge when my team will beat the one B is in ) There has also been some progress on the start of the timber for the retaining wall which is good as i was getting worried about exactly when i was going to fall into the very deep holes dotted along the base of the hill – because it was only a matter of time before my nightly dash to the toilet went horribly wrong.  Just as well too because those holes are so damn big and deep being my height i’d never have got out and no doubt Kia would have taken it upon herself to eat my dinner off the bbq. Ok – enough waffling on – here are some more pics to show that we really do have a kitset house ready and waiting for the guys to put number 45 next to 46 and so on…

Photo bomb by Kia – again!

Guess they do belong to us…

So excited.  Got home last night to find my new skating pad all laid and ready for graffiti.  (Of course I put mine and B’s initials in it!! – Isn’t that what you do for a new house?!)

My inside source (Brett phoned the builder himself) tells me that the patio area (big area in the front cut out) and the outdoor shower (man area) will be poured separately.  The front patio will be aobut the same height though so that will make it seem a lot bigger.  I’m still in the ‘can’t visualise the size’ space but everyone says that it is a big house.  We have 276 sqm  but the size is really dependant on how well the space is arranged in my view and we’ll all soon find out how well I’ve done on that front with my insistence on the enormous scullery lol.

Anyway – here’s some pic’s of the floor.   (B says that the dog and I have to promise to now stay off it until it’s completely set … fun sucker).

Notice that the dog has photo bombed my picture – again!

PS.   Forgot to say that we have been told to expect the frames on site by the middle of next week… poor driveway.

Morning everyone,

Today is the first time I have actually been truly and over-the-top excited since our build started as it now is starting to feel very real.  I guess that’s because concrete is so permanent!

Thankfully I got up super early this morning and had the sense to change from my pj’s to some training gear (unlike last week when the plumbers had the pleasure of my pj’s and slipper clad self complete with sleepy face!), because the concrete pump truck arrived at just before 6:45am!!!   I don’t want to even think about what time he got up this morning in order to be at our place by that time!   The first concrete truck was then backing up the driveway at just after 7:10am.   I understand that our poor beaten shredded driveway is having the pleasure of about 9 concrete trucks today.  I might need a set of crampons and some climbing gear to get back up onto the section tonight.   :\

I made the guys a batch of healthy museli bar slice and left them with the rest of it when I finally left for work at just on 8:30am.   They ate the first offering so I guess I’ll find out how popular or how hungry they all were when I get back and see if there is any left (or whether the birds are just looking really full and pleased with their new neighbours).

It’s our niece Isabelle’s 11th birthday today (Happy Birthday Goose xx) and so I’m currently trying to work out how to get over to her to give her her birthday presents and then back out to the section all before 5:30pm when it gets dark so that I can a). see to climb back up the shredded driveway   b). take some more pictures of the new slab.   Who knew concrete could be so exciting??  

Anyway – better get back to doing some work before my office manager finds out that I am still in “section mode”.

Here’s some pic’s to keep you all going. x

Here’s comes the first batch of the hard stuff

busy busy getting it smooth

morning everyone.   I managed to get out to the section just in time last night to snap a couple of quick shots of the results of the busy worker bees from yesterday.   Very exciting.

I’m told that we might have a floor pour happening on Monday – weather dependant.  Or maybe they are going to surprise me and do it today!!!!  Now that WOULD be exciting!!

It will be good once the concrete is down because then my trek to the toilet “room” won’t involve a cross country course with obstacles.  Although in saying that, Brett and I have entered for the Tough Guy Tough Girl challenge in Hastings in a few weeks and the course sounds similar so maybe I shall just call it ‘additional training’  and then I’ll be even faster than him again!!

However last night I was left wondering if the section really wanted me there when I realised that the water was still not on  (it was almost dark at this point – 6:00pm) and then the bbq wouldn’t light so I could cook my tea.   But we got there eventually (with the bbq – not the water – that still wasn’t working) and I got myself fed which is the most important thing as a hungry Kirstin is an ugly Kirstin as some others in my immediate family will no doubt rush to confirm.  The ongoing saga with the water supply relates to the fact that we are using the river draw which is to be our secondary supply once the house is built.  However, without a roof and a pump I can’t get any water into or from our water tanks so don’t have any other option but to use the river water.   But our lovely friends Vicki and Tony  in Havelock came to the rescue and allowed me to slide through their shower after training this morning and even gave me my very own set of keys to their house!!   How lovely is that!! :))

Righto everyone, time to get back to the grindstone that is my desk.  It appears that I have done virtually no work in the last 3 weeks judging by my time recording so before I get sacked and then really do end up living forever in a trailer park I had better get on.

Well I’m rather embarrassed to admit that my ability to upload photos has now been cured by someone a little more senior in years than myself (or the 10 year old I was thinking I would have to find to show me how).  Thanks to the Woodworm for his knowledge, advice and tongue-in-cheek comments by email today on what I needed to do.  Still – at least it’s fixed    Thanks Tony C.    So – now watch out everyone – there are going to be pictures galore – provided of course that I can get back out to the section before it gets dark each night which is becoming increasingly difficult with the onset of the colder months.    And don’t suggest I can take them in the morning either, as I leave the section at 6:00am Mon, Wed and Friday to go to training in Havelock so unless you all want pictures of inky looking shapes then my lesson in patience is going to have to extend to you all.

Anyway – here’s some pictures from last week’s action…     Enjoy.

And we have the technology…

The view from where the outdoor shower will be…roughly…

But where’s my room Dad????

HI everyone, so hopefully now I have worked out how to upload some more photos so you can more easily see the progress. *   Nothing much happened over the weekend except for Brett and I moving bits of timber around trying to see how big each room actually was.   Small panic when we discovered that my demands for a LARGE scullery have been granted and that it is almost twice the size of the entranceway!!!    (opps) Oh well, the way I see it is that i’ll be spending a lot more time in the kitchen scullery area than the front door so it deserves more room…

This morning heralded the arrival of three van loads of Advanced Plumbing gear and worker bees.  however a problem with the main water line into the subdivision still being silted up meant I had to call in a favour and have a shower in town so that my clients weren’t left wondering if I had really actually truly gone feral.

The guys were busy beavering away when I left and hopefully there will be some pipes running all over the floor area by the end of the day.  Wow – things really are moving quickly.

Yesterday I managed to “distribute” 5 kgs of rye/ clover grass seed all done the front of the newly scraped bank so that some grass can start to get a hold before we get another big rain.   Don’t want it all slipping away and creating a moat around the bottom of the section now.  That would be bad.

* – nope – technology is still failing me… sorry everyone but my phone is clearly so awesome at taking pictures it doesn’t want to let me shrink them.   Will have to do some more investigation and come back to you on this.  But trust me – we’re making progress.

So, yesterday I bunked out of work (sorry everyone in my office) so that i could be on site to see the digger arrive an start creating the base for our new home. As you will see, the morning started off very foggy but luckily the digger was a nice bright yellow colour so we couldn’t lose him.  Very obliging neighbours let us use their gate/ driveway so that the 12 tonne yellow creative monster could come up the front of the section / hill rather than going round 2 on our poor already destroyed driveway.

And with that – the work began.  The digger very nicely dug our the flaxes that were doing so well – but now in the way and two magnola’s trees that we have resurrected twice now from the brink of near death.  Here’s hoping that their sudden eviction from their home hasn’t finally tipped them over the edge.

By the time I returned to the section at just on 3:00pm the digger had finished the retaining wall excavation, done all the site scrape, scraped off the top layer on the front of the hill and then pushed all the remaining excess over the front so that we could crib a little more space on the western end where we needed it.

I’m told that the digger with the big auger (spelling??) drill bit was coming back today to drill the holes for the posts for the retaining wall so tomorrow will see us go back out there for a look see.  I also understand that the guys who are going to be responsible for the rib-raft floor pad were also planning to be on site today to start their bit.

The framing has been ordered and booked to arrive in 3 weeks!!!   Wow!!

So i guess that we’ll just be finishing the clean up from the permit and pad party then to go straight into a framing/ roof shout hahahaha.

Sorry for thelack of picutres in this post everyone but apparntly my camera on mysuper smart samgsung makes the files too big and i am yet to find a way to shrink them.   ( Some technology is just a bit beyond me.)

So, we had the digger on Wednesday last week doing it’s clever thing and the site srape was all finished that day.  Thursday heralded the arrival of the rib raft floor crew (who i am yet to meet) and by the time we got out there on Friday afternoon they had over halof the exterior floor layout boxed up!!  I’m not good on spacial perceptionin a two dimensional sense so loking at the boxing area mad me think we hadnt’ allowed enough room!  Despite the fact that the whole house is 277sqm!    I guess i’m just going to have to wait until the framing goes up and the roof goes on (not that i can actually then change anything at that point!).

So Brett and i spent about 2 hours on Friday afternoon with a measuring tape and some long pieces of boxing timber marking out the rooms and trying to work out whether the concept that had been in our heads had fully translated through.   We also had to try and understand where the kitchen dimensions were so that we can properly place the centre island bench as the plumbers arrive on Tuesday to start their thing and they won’t want me moving stuff I’m sure.  (That would be the 101 of how to test a good friendship with Mr Watkins and his crew. Lol)

Sadly the front dooe entranceway seems horribly narrow and the scullery (situated right next to it) ridiculously large!  Brett very nicely keeps reminding me that I had insisted that i didn’t want a pokey scullery and that it needed to be big.  hmmm.

So after a very long wait we’re off at a million niles an hour and now thetime pressure is on.

The glazing joinery and kitchen fit out are the next things on the list that need to be finalised.