Xmas break

We have moved into the new home and it feels great! The feeling of a space for everything is wonderful.
The kids have been playing hide and seek......inside!
They are tearing around and sounding like a herd of elephants as they let off steam and adjust to the new house and their new space.

I wish you all a merry christmas and a great holiday season.
More to follow next year.

A seriously powerful rain attracting device (SPRAD)

The fire continues to burn and get larger by the day.  It is now almost 40,000 Ha in size. Recently a windy day helped it to jump the containment lines that were so painstakingly prepared. It has jumped the lines in the North, East and West however, there remains a huge effort in place to get this monster contained in time and finally out. Yesterday the low thump, thump thump of distant choppers could be heard all day. It sounded like a distant thunderstorm that never arrived, always in the distance.
In order to do my bit to help with this fire I decided to roll out a seriously  powerful rain attracting device (SPRAD).

For it to work correctly a few things need to happen.;)

Firstly Weatherman Graham Creed on the ABC news needs to say something along the lines of "sadly there is no rain predicted in the foreseeable future with at least a week of predicted sunny days ahead".

Secondly the ground needs to be baked dry and hard as stone.

Once I saw these preconditions I needed to get to work on the SPRAD.

This involves the use of tools such as pick, iron bar and trenching shovel.
To dig any holes in the sandstone and ironstone country requires a serious commitment in time and sweat.
I got to work digging the SPRAD and once I was past the point of no return.... the rain forecast changed!
Next there is a mad rush to get the services in the open trench before the rain starts.Will I get everything in place and the trench filled before the rain? Lets wait and see.

Every single time we have had an open trench during our building project it has eventually rained, quite often it has poured. In the past I have enlisted the DW to bounce up and down on the conduit in a rain and mud filled trench while I madly back fill to keep the cable and conduit from floating to the surface. Surely the wildlife were laughing at our frantic attempts.

The last trench which carried the gas line received a downpour and it funneled rain water under the house only a week before I was to start laying the floor boards! It was 300mm deep in place!

part of the trench

The SPRAD otherwise known by the boring term of "trench" is really to take the remaining
services to the house. Including the electricity cables which I have buried around 700mm deep.  The water pipe goes on top of that at about 600mm deep. Because this trench is over 16m long in sandstone country it is a huge effort to dig by hand. So when ever a trench is open I place a few extra conduits in it for future proofing in case I need to add anything else.
Hopefully very soon we will have working lights and power points.Now that will be nice.

Flooring Progress....look at those floors!

The recent fires near us has had me paralyzed with fear for a week or so....(I am not finished yet and aren't fully prepared for fire). Everything was just so dry,.....scary, crispy dry. Walking on the grass gave a sound similar to walking on potato crisps! The trees all around were starting to drop their leaves in an attempt to enter a type of dormancy caused by water stress. This all combined with the smell and sight of smoke had me worried, really worried.

However, a single recent thunderstorm has helped the situation and broken the grip of fear that was upon me.
Things seem back to normal, even though the fire which is yet to be contained continues to burn in the distance.

Regardless of the smoke and at one point dropping ash and leaves, work continued on the house especially by the DW.

All the rooms have been sanded, most are finished and a few just have the edges to do with the final grade paper. I think each board has been passed over by the sander 37 times when you take into account the different grades of paper!

I am sick of sanding now. 

We have decided to give the standard polyurethane finish a miss and have gone with a preparation based on Tung oil. The timber, oil and appearance is the same for each room but the camera has darkened some of the images.

Master bedroom looking out to deck

Master Bedroom

It is exciting to see a finished floor. So much so that we have already started to move "stuff" in with the Study receiving some furniture, paperwork etc.

Study

Bed3

The study, master bedroom and other two bedrooms now have finished floors. The hallways will be done this weekend.

Bed2 with dust on my camera lens!

The monster sized lounge room awaits the last edge sand and then the first coat.
I am off to finish those edges.....

The old Dunny.... just blew away!

We have had an unusual year of very strong winds. The last extremely windy day was something very strange.
The wind was so strong that the tops of many large Gum trees had the top branches twisted out of them. They now have some very large branches broken and still hanging in other branches waiting the right moment to fall.
A gust picked up my concrete mixer and threw it against the car! Next a empty 9kg gas BBQ bottle was picked up and deposited against the car along with one of those fridge trolleys!
Poor car.

I walked around later to pick up stuff. I was still shaking my head at finding the concrete mixer against the car,  when I discovered that a box trailer, which had a brick behind one wheel, had been blown so hard that it was driven around in a circle to overcome the obstacle of the brick. Once free the box trailer was then pushed about 4 m into a fence.

The final shock came when I walked up the hill to investigate those dangerous large hanging branches. Something didn't seem quite right .... and then I realized that the old out door dunny was gone!

The Dunny was made of corrugated iron and was loved as a quiet refuge from my noisy kids by a visiting Nana. I think the Dunny must have been at least 30 yrs old. 
The only thing remaining was the bowl and one wall that was nailed into a tree. The wind could only blow that wall harder against the tree.

The wind simply picked up the rest of the Dunny, roof, guttering, door, walls (including the attached ceramic cistern) and blew it away!
A close up inspection revealed that the rear wall made of corrugated iron was set into the concrete slab. The wind simply ripped the sheet out including the last 5 cm of concrete!

A local resident later told me that I had experienced a willy-willy (twister).
Later I realized that the damage did occur in a line. Damage to the tree tops was found continuing over a mountain and down the other side into the gully where the damage stops.

Now that simply was an amazing wind!

House update

It has been some time since the last house building update. I have been getting some gentle and not so gentle reminders to do an update, so here it is.
The reason is that I have been busy working on finishing off little projects. A lot of them are a important step forward but aren't that photographic, a picture of a dug trench or a light installed on a ceiling just does not seem worthy of a picture.
See what I mean...

There still is a lot to do but the house project seems to have moved on from being a building site into a home.

The main bathroom tiling is now almost finished.

 We are waiting on a few special edge tiles to turn up.

The next leap forward will be the final fix requiring the Plumber to install the bath and the vanity. The Electrician still needs to finish off installing the lights and the extraction fan.

The floor board laying is now over. All 180 m2, 2190m l/m of it!

I feel that the quotes I have received to sand and seal the laid floor are just crazy. I just can not see how a weeks full time work is worth the figures I am seeing.
So I guess soon I will be learning to sand and seal the floor that I have laid. I realize doing it by myself will take longer than a week but it would take me months to earn the $ to pay someone else to do it!

I have been busy installing the sandstone window sills. I had these cut from local sandstone.

Externally the landscaping, including some huge raised garden beds have started to emerge.

All of the eaves are now in place. It was a very uncomfortable, difficult job which my Father helped me with. (thanks Dad!)

 I am about to add a metal sealing strip against the wall to spark proof the eaves. After that I am onto the painting!

More soon....  

Bookweek 2013

The Kids took part again this year in the local schools book week activities. It is an incredibly busy time of the year but the Parents and Kids put on a good show. I only saw a single child turning up in school uniform.
This year we had Gandalf the grey, and two Pokemons. I can't remember the Pokemon's names however one is a pink cat and I have no idea of the otherone.

 The Kid's had a great day. The DW again pulled out all stops and whipped up these costume's on the night before the "day" after a long day at work.
I think the Kid's are very lucky that they didn't have to wear one of  Dad's creations!   ;)

I wonder if when my Children are taking their Kid's to school if there will be a "book week" or if their kids will know of these bound paper things called books?


  

Another milestone.

 The kitchen is in! 
The long suffering DW is overjoyed. 

 I hope so as it was her role to design it, get the quotes, redesign so it was affordable and finally commissioning the construction and installation.

Anyway here are a few shots of her kitchen, [doesn't that floor look good!  ;) ]

She has been using a $100 toastie oven for years now and is looking forward to the upgrade. We still have to add a few little things like the window sill and the range hood and tiling.


The floor board laying continues ...... well there are more that 2kms of boards to lay!
So far the kitchen, walk in pantry, store room, hallway and third bedroom have finished floors.

Below are a few shots of my flooring progress.

Hallway flooring.

A peek into the kids bedroom. Flooring complete!

 And a progress shot of the tiling in the en-suite. This shot was taken just prior to the grouting which I hope she is doing today.

En-suite prior to grouting.

 

Sunflowers

 This year a local farmer decided to put in a crop of sunflowers along with his usual crops. 
The crop looked very beautiful. It was a joy to drive past the fields.

 Sunflowers are such a happy looking crop with the big yellow flower heads following the sun across the sky.

Unfortunately not long after this photo was taken the big wet period arrived and the crop was flooded with water to two thirds of the flowers height. I am not sure if anything will be able to be harvested. It is a tough life trying to make money in farming these days.
I hope next year he is able to put in another crop of these beautiful happy flowers.

2013 Grape Harvest

In the past we have helped a family friend bring in their vineyards grape harvest. The phone rang a few weeks back, they were asking if could we would help out. The number of pickers was looking like being low compared to past years and he was in a tight position. They insist on hand picking their hard grown harvest as they find that the quality is much higher when compared to machine harvested grapes.
Naturally we helped out.

The grapes were beautiful!

The location magical and full of friendly faces. Just after dawn the vineyard was a hive of activity with everyone busily sniping the bunches off the vines and carefully placing them in big buckets by the rows side. 

A trusty old farm ute made it way up and down the rows collecting the harvest and transferring the grapes to pallet sized containers for the trip to the winemaker. Not long before lunch the harvest was finished and off to be turned into this years vintage. Shortly after the harvest the weather turned very wet. Luckily the harvest was in before the big wet period hit otherwise the years crop would have been lost.

It is nice to help out friends and also help a small local business.