Of ents, trees, rubbish, building and an old friend is resurrected

We arrived at lunch time again this week, having some things to do in the morning. Imagine our surprise to find the backyard covered in a corpse of trees [sic]. We missed the tree slaying ceremony, but arrived in time to dispose of the bodies. Lacking sufficient carpets to roll the corpses in (typical of Brunswick's crime past [I assume]) we were forced to go Dexter on their wooden asses and cut them limb from limb from limb. There was sawdust, branch and leaf all over the place; a veritable tree killing field. We hungrily breathed in the stench of tree death, wallowed in its misery. I can't confirm unholy rites were performed so we could absorb its power...

The clean side path (see previous posts) proved a real advantage as we carried and dragged load after load of now decomposing tree from the backyard to the front. Not only the tree corpses, but also the large wood pile that had been collecting in the backyard. Old joists, studs, more goddam lathers... all out to the truck. Tiring work. And after The Shadow had a run in with a ginormous [medium sized] spider it was a little slower as each piece carefully inspected for arachnid infestation. I'm pleased to report that the unconfirmed unholy rites obviously paid off, no more spiders. 

AND THERE NEVER WILL BE MHWUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Sunday started with a trip to the tip to empty the trailer of the wood and the truck of Treebeard. Then back to load Treebeards wife into the trailer for a second trip. Goodbye stupid trees, goodbye $300 in fees. Should've bought a Council Transfer Station instead of the Old House, then I could gold plate the Old House with the exorbitant fees I would charge suckers to dispose of tree corpses. 

Our electrician stopped by after lunch so the Master's could walk him through the project, seemed easy enough. I think he starts this coming weekend. 

While all that ent disposing was going on the Masters continued to rebuild the inside walls and put the third new window in place in the pantry. Hello sun, hello food! 

It's taking more and more shape every week.

Photos:

Once was tree, now is a future cat scratching post. Who says we don't care for the environment? We are recycling re-using an annoying tree into our cat enclosure. You could even say we're tree-heroes!

Trees take up a lot of ground space:

Gettin' my cut on:

Alas poor Treebeard, I knew him well. But he was a real jerk so we chopped him down and now he's fertiliser. Let that be a lesson to the rest of you ents trees!

Broom 2: Revenge of the Resurrected. Sometimes you just cant keep dead things in the ground. Except for Treebeard, ain't no comin' back for him.

No trees, no wood, just a pile of dirt:

Even MORE recycled  re-used tree (total environmental heroes):

Treebeard's wife, Fimbrethil, didn't heed the lesson, she joined her husband in eternal mulch:

It's got huuuuge... tracts of land:

Walls, paths, windows and a poor broom

The weekend started well, some shopping and a latte. And then we went to the house where the Master's were already hard at work. *sigh* Who knew rebuilding a house would be so much work every weekend?

Saturday was a pretty horrid day, weather-wise. It rained most of the day and was quite cold. Sunday was quite pleasant.

The new windows arrived, and a new temporary door for the back wall. We unloaded them and then spent most of the day watching the Masters work, occasionally getting in their way, occasionally actually providing some assistance.

For example, carrying stuff around, making coffee, removing more goddam lathers from the walls.

Meanwhile, walls with poor timber were replaced with new, good timber. New walls were added. We now have a clear bathroom frame and walk in robe. And the space for the laundry and walk in pantry are partly framed.

On Monday the Masters continued their labours and replaced the bedroom windows with the new ones and put the new door in the back wall. In time this will be the door between the kitchen and walk-in-pantry, for now it opens to the backyard.

What was quite interesting was cleaning out the path beside the house. It fell to me to use the high-pressure hose to clean down the side. It was muddy, slippery, full of crap and dirt. Everything I hate about being outside. There is a reason I work a 9-5 job in an office - the outside is for other people. And I've always hated mud and getting dirty. 

The Shadow and I assumed that the path was just crapped-out broken bricks with dirt on the wall side. Well, we got quite a shock. By the time we cleared all the mud and dirt out we found there was a ceramic gutter running the length of the path next to the fence. It actually turned out to be quite nice. As the entire path receives some sun everyday, as it runs north-south, it could be quite nice in the future.

I managed to high-pressure spray a heap of mud, dirt and crap into the drain between our house and the road. That was great. In my defense I'm pretty sure the drain was already pretty clogged up! I tried to unclog it, even put my bare hand into the freezing water. But it was clogged further down. Stupid 'great outdoors'. 

But clogged no more, some clever thinking by the Masters and the drain was cleared and we were able to have water flowing from the path all the way to the road. 

Walls, bathroom on the right, robe on the left:

Clean path - looking south into the backyard:

Path, looking north to the road:

The latest casualty, a $9 Coles broom. It lived a pretty hard 6 weeks before The Shadow broke its back. If you're thinking of Bane breaking Batman's back as a comparison, good for you, we should hang out!

A new opening:

So much crap:

New windows! The frames are actually smaller than the old windows, but as they are aluminium instead of wood, and awning instead of vertical sliding they have heaps more glass, and let in way more of the fence. Not a very exciting view, but its our view. The glass is 'Comfort Plus', which is supposed to be similar to double glazed in terms of heat and noise reduction. *shrug*

The rebuild begins

Over the weekend the Master's began to lay the new flooring down. And boy do my muscles feel the pain. Each floor piece is 3.6m x 0.8m x 0.045m and must weight about 800kg. At least it felt like it.

The house is not entirely square, and so a good deal of measuring, cutting, swearing, laying and swearing is involved in order to get a proper covering.

But before the floor is laid insulation is put in; and that was my job. Grab the insulation and nail it in place. Nail it good. The picture to the right shows the amazing job I was doing, with the first piece of flooring laid at the hall entrance.

Good luck to anyone renovating this in the future! The floor is glued and nail-gunned down. Not even Optimus Prime can pull the floor off the joists its on so good.

It was quite nice on Sunday being able to move the table and chairs into the front bedroom and have lunch in their. The floor really made a big different to not having a dirt pile, but having the makings of a home.


Magical laser device. It emits a laser that is received by a receiver tied to a spirit level. At various points in the house the tester places the spirit level against the joist and determines the height at which the laser hits the receiver. Hopefully its at the same height throughout. Sadly, it was not. There were some variations, but they could be easily resolved.

More flooring being laid, and the nailgun taking a well deserved rest.

The outlet for the ducted vacuum system:

First bedroom:

My excellent stapling:

Almost the entire house re-floored:

De-plastered, de-floored; de-natured. Is a house a house if it has not a floor and plaster?

But a house, especially an Old House, needs a foundation to rest on. And so for two weeks our stumpers diligently rebuilt the foundations.

It was a very interesting process, restumping. The wooden stumps were replaced with new concrete stumps, just under 100 of them. Old rotted beams and joists were replaced with fresh new timber. A mountain of dirt was excavated to provide additional air space between the ground and the floor.

Holes were dug into the clay and filled with water. As I understand it, the water was left to stand to see if it would leach into the dirt, as a test of soil strength. After two days the water did not move. Good, strong dirt. Well, good for the stumps, not so good for the stumpers who had to toil against the merciless clay.

It took just under two weeks, as per the initial quote, to complete the work.

A condition of the contract was the floor would be level. The Master's checked the leveling using their laser magic: it was a little off in parts. By a little I mean between 5 and 15mm. No big deal; the Master's dealt with it.


Kosmos, Master Re-Stumper:

Holes, so many holes:

This used to be the base of the fireplace in the front bedroom. A previous owner had removed the fireplace above ground, but the base was left behind. Apparently over time bricks can push up into the house and disrupt the walls and ceiling and what-not.

Well, this is why we decided to have the house re-stumped:

And this is its replacement, wonderful concrete:

Doors and windows and security Oh My!

Wednesday 3 July and we headed to Geelong to meet with our draughtsman. He had sent through the first draft of the sketch the week before and we needed to meet to discuss it and modify it accordingly. We had spent some time working through the plan and really only made one change. In the first draft we had a cupboard in the laundry that protruded behind the laundry wall and consumed part of the walk in pantry. We decided that was kind of stupid, brought the wall back out and gave the entire space to the pantry.

Food > brooms.

The meeting was not scheduled until late so we met with our Masters before lunch. A long conversation about designs, products, contracts, etc etc ensued. All very useful, and again we feel in very very good hands with them.

And then more shopping.

Doors. So many doors. Naturally they did not have the door combinations we wanted in the height and style we desired, but we made do and chose the internals. The front door will require a bit more time as we need it to match the rest of the facade.

Door handles. So many door handles. But the choice did not take long.

Door locks. Good bye keys, hello remote! No longer will I be juggling things in my hands, nearly dropping bags or my phone as a struggle to unlock a door. Bleep bleep, that is the sound of the future my friends.

Skylights without the sky. Amazing. I can't find the website of the product so I'll post it another time. Super cool though.

To the window guys. "I'll take that one." Two minutes later: "I'll take the other one". It was great seeing the windows up close and personal. And not that difficult to make a decision. Even if it was the second option.

Barwon security was next. Sam walked us through the security, ducted vacuum and data cabling options and we made our selections. A dog wont be able to crap anywhere near my house without me being aware of it.

I can hear you all now, 'ducted vacuum? But you have your robot, you greedy bastard.' That's true, and we would not have opted for ducted vac except for this awesome dustpan outlet that you put in the floor. Kick it open, push the dirt in and its gone. Perfect for the kitchen and laundry. IG-88 can hunt the rest of the dust to his droid-hearts content.

And not to rub it in to my country-folk friends, but data cabling is important as we will be connected to super-fast NBN. Just sayin'.

Then off to our draughtsman. Excellent meeting. We confirmed the windows, doors, deleted the laundry cupboard. There was a long discussion regarding the powder room and how to effectively fit a wash-basin in there. In the end we reworked the laundry-powder room design a lot, and we are really pleased with the result.

We should have the final sketch at the end of the week.

A quick stop to finish the day at the plasterers. Ceiling roses, wow, I never thought I would be selecting a ceiling rose. To be fair, I left most of the selecting to K, she was quite into it. And she is right, a period passage way require ceiling roses for the hanging lights to hang from. I agree, I just cant quite bring myself to an enthusiastic state.

Dreams of endless shopping

On Friday 28 June 2013 I dreamed a dream. In that dream it was night and I stood beside a still pond. The moonlight reflected off the still water. Occasionally a ripple would break the stillness as the breeze moved over the water.

As I stood in perfect harmony with nature the silence was broken by the sound of rushing water as from the depths of the pond a great, black and white fronted house emerged. I could feel it piercing my soul with its essence, I could feel its compulsion to act, to change, to improve. It demanded release into the 21st Century and it was fast losing patience.

I exerted my will against its restless spirit. I insisted it required patience, that it needed to slumber for a few more weeks and then it could awake anew. It agreed to wait for a time, but it also demanded action.

I awoke and went shopping.

First stop was a bathroom display centre. It was interesting, but more of the same. It gave use the idea that maybe the bathroom benchtops would look good as black glass instead of stone. The idea lasted about 2 minutes.

Second was a bath store in Richmond that specialises in stone bath tubs and basins. Now that was inspirational. The baths were beautiful, amazingly comfortable, and hand made. There was an appropriate price-tag to accompany them.

Third, another bathroom store in Richmond that was quite rubbish.

Fourth, back to E&S Trading in Chadstone for another inspection of the bath we are thinking of buying. It paled in comparison to the stone bath and we snubbed the lesser bath with great contempt.

I slept soundly that night so I think the house was satisfied with my actions.

On Sunday we returned to the E&S Trading in Cheltenham for the 800th time. We needed to inspect the Gessi Goccia tapware to determine whether they would work with the Villaroy and Boch basin we want. Short answer, probably not. A long stand is required which would seriously increase the price.

We decided to finally wave down a sales rep and work out what is what. For about 45 minutes we asked our questions and our rep was wonderful. We feel must better positioned to buy toilets, basins, taps, showers, and kitchen sinks. We still don't know what we will buy, but we have a better idea of what we are looking at.

We were thinking about tiles and color combinations so headed down to a display home village south of Keysborough. Wow, those display homes are totally ass. Terrible floor plans, awful fixtures. A pox on all those project builders for being so craptacular.

But it did give us some ideas on colors and tile designs.

A final visit to a display home in Coburg confirmed the design of the walk-in-pantry for us.

More restful sleeps have provided me some assurance that the weekend of shopping has met the demands of my restless house.

-D

Example of amazing stone basin and bath: