meanwhile, upstairs and in the nation's capital...

Just a quick post to let the blog know I still care but not enough to stay up too much later this evening after a rotten sleep last night.

Downstairs is mostly done. It needs paint and carpet, a couple of doors, a new new toilet to replace the first new toilet that didn't flush properly. It has been undercoated and this weekend coming it gets a topcoat. Stuart has moved upstairs and as paint is added to one end of the house plenty of the other end is ending up in a skip in the garden.

The former sunroom and master bedrooms and Harrie's old bedroom are now a single open space with no ceiling but some impressively large steel beams strategically placed to stop the roof from falling. The back wall of the house is gone, replaced by a large hole that is almost exactly the same size as the bifold door that has been leaning for some time against the silky oak tree in the garden.

Wires criss cross the roof rafters waiting for lights to be attached. I got home this afternoon to see our toilet and bath in the garden, so it is now the shower and WC in the laundry or nothing. Yes, things are coming on apace. I doubt we'll be having Xmas on the deck, but soon after. Already the hole on the left-hand corner in the picture above has been bricked, apart from a gap for the splashback window.

In other, related news, I took the girls to Canberra last weekend. Alex the painter was here on Saturday and Sunday just-gone so Saturday at home was paint fumes to the north, brick dust to the south, not great for the ladies. I really should go into more details as the little ladies had a great weekend. We left at Saturday lunchtime and they slept while I drove to Marulan, a truck stop with a little history that is about 30km north of Goulburn. Dinner was Chinese and complaints about don't-like-it until the ice cream arrived. Sunday morning we drove to Canberra and the Floriade flower show, which occupied our morning before a drive to spend the night with Derek and Jo in Berry on Sunday night. Good to catch up, more fun for the kids an then an early start on Monday to drive the kids to daycare and then head to work. Sal meanwhile house and dog sat in the dust and fumes and relative peace of a kid-free weekend while we did our 660km+ road trip.

Yes, a simple list of we did this then that then this. Not especially inspiring and I should do better. But we're up to date.

renovation, Rowlf and wreck

renovation

Not a great deal of big-stuff progress on the renovation but some things of significance. We now have light downstairs. The hallway, bedroom, walk in robe and en-suite on the inside and outside we have lights either side of the entry door and a sensor-floodlight for the garden. These things make taking the rubbish out and getting to the laundrty after dark less perilous.

We've also had the en-suite waterproofed, the floor tiles are down and the wall tiles are going up. It is starting to look a lot like a bathroom. Upstairs the veranda has a ceiling and the inside of the half-height wall has been gyprocked and plastered. This week I get to swing a paintbrush again.

I did another small run to the lockup as we move completely out of our three upstairs bedrooms, sunroom, main bathroom and WC. Stuart has measured up for steel beams and other big things as he prepares to take the wrecking ball to the house again.

As for the curernt living arrangement, it is relatively comfortable. There are the sore throats resulting from shouting Harrie to sleep most nights: "go to bed" "I've been to bed" "go to bed and stay in bed!" "I no want bed" "GO...TO...B-E-E-E-E-E-E-D!" But other than that, pretty plain sailing so far.

Rowlf

The big fella is an OCD mutt. I think one of the builders once threw an empty chip wrapper into the skip at the back of our house and since, right after dinner each night, Rowlf trots around the house to rummage around in the skip. Luckily it contains nothing spiky and horrible at the moment. I am not sure what I can do (lie - there is nothing I can do) to stop him from being such an arch-scavenger.

And on that...Yesterday I got home to find Sal in the garden looking poised to kill. To kill Rowlf. He had eaten the just-cooked tuna bake Sal had made. No matter that she knows Rowlf is a scavenger and that simply shutting the kitchen door or putting food up high can prevent such a disaster. No, the dog is a bastard and someone this was also my fault. Yesterday I though this was especially harsh on me...

Wreck

...harsh because I was in the Harbour. Literally. I was 3km away and underwater. How I was supposed to keep an eye on MY dog or close the kitchen door was not made clear. Before I got home I had spent a reasonably pleasant 30minutes or so in the greener-than-I'd-anticipated Harbour.


Having not videoed the kingfish on either of my previous two trips I was keen to capture them today. Actually, rewind; I wanted to dive the Bower, but parking was impossible, so I went to Fairlight again, GoPro at the ready. It looked very nice from the shore, not bad from the edge, green from the wall. Nevermind. Basically the same as before - without kingfish - I went up and down along the wall, chased a Port Jackson shark and found the wreck. Eventually.

A few things saw me get out after a relatively short 30mins. The water was pretty green, I'd spent a bit of my free time trying and failing to park at the Bower and there was a reasonable amount of boat traffic about on Father's Day. I was on the wreck when I heard a boat that sounded quite close...but sound can be deceptive under water. but it was fucking loud. I headed back to the surface - no real option without a tank - to see the back of a speedboat a little way off. Not too close, but close enough. I had my videos so I bailed.

And got home to the murderous missus.

Ho hum and a happy father's day.

...I'll get in trouble if I don't...the girls got me things made at daycare, a photo book from AJ and a picture form Harrie. It was very cute. AJ had spent days waiting to give me the present and H just loves presents. We had breakfast in Manly, played on the beach and then Sal did the shopping while I took the kids to the local playpark. Post swim I went to the lockup with AJ, and that was Father's day with the family.

And yes, I know I should write more about the girls, but it is so much easier to to just quickly waffle on about general shit. So my blog, my rules.

lounge-diner-bed-1-2-3-sunroom ahoy

We've been put on notice. In as little as two weeks we may be moving into our lounge room as Stuart moves upstairs and takes the wrecking ball to our bathroom, WC, master, second and third bedrooms, sunroom and back wall of the house. Downstairs has come on a lot; we have the new stud walls, the new bedroom window and the entry door frame all in place. The wiring and plumbing are done - apart from having anything wired or plumbed to their ends; the wires and pipes are in. Next downstairs we get the walls plastered and ceiling up then Stuart hands over to, and we are left to the mercy of, the plumber, plasterer and tiler who will get the en-suite finished.

Stuart will continue to call the shots on site and to keep himself busy will start upstairs. This is where the disruption starts. Other than getting to and from the laundry and our larger fridge we don't use the space downstairs. Removing the rear wall and the slab did make the place a bit colder and until the new slab had dried it was a bit more damp than usual, but without any impact upon our comings and goings. Now the fun starts (he types ironically.)

Over the next couple of weeks I need to move the function and most of the contents of 3 bedrooms and the sunroom into our lounge. Our lounge is a good size, so fitting the stuff in won't be a problem. Getting the kids to sleep in the same room as each other, mum, dad, the tele, PC and Rowlf could create a little friction. The loss of our bathroom and WC is not such a big deal as we can use the shower and toilet in the laundry.

Exciting times; I'm looking forward to seeing the walls complete downstairs and the walls removed upstairs. We'll get a real feel for the space we're going to end up with, and once the space has been created upstairs we can get our new kitchen fitted. Which will be nice.

It's about time I added a few more pictures to this blog.

some stuff

cheese

Two things I believe to be true. If I eat cheese just before going to bed I will have odd dreams, and the memory of a dream fades quickly so if I want to remember the details I should write them down as soon as I wake up. Saturday night I had a chunk of Edam before bed and sure enough had an odd dream. There are two things I recall from this dream; one is that part of it was set in some old-London seedy area, very dim, possibly a gambling den. And the second thing I remember is writing down the details. But I wrote down the details in the tail end of the dream, so alas the rest of the detail is gone. It was a good dream though, I remember that.

no cheese

I had the cheese because I was hungry and I was hungry because I had not eaten between 13:00 Friday and 13:00 Saturday. This was a fasting day of my 5:2 "diet." I put diet in quotes because I'm not dietting per-se, just following it because it may do me some good health-wise, and hey, why not? I like the idea of fasting for 2 days and eat what you like on the other 5. I've been having two periods of 24 hours without food each week for a little over 3months (excluding the week prior to the Glow Worm Marathon. I figured it wise to feed-up prior to a 5hour run.) The Friday-Saturday fast was my first with zero calories. I am allowed 600 calories on fast days and these normally come in warm, milky, caffienated form. Last Friday-Saturday I had only water. And really, I wasn't that hungry by Saturday afternoon. One thing I have learnt from the diet (and "dry July", also in quotes) is that I have no trouble with abstinance. As long as I have a hard and fast rule I can stick to it. I think I would be shit at any other diet, and if there is beer and chocolate in the house I will drink and eat it all.

reno

The renovation moves on and last week Stuart ripped the 4.8m wide sliding doors out from our rumpus room and replaced them with boards. Our new slab was poured and we narrowly avoided disaster as Rowlf bolted down the side of the house to investigate. The scaffold has gone and the new bits look all lovely and new while the old bits stand in start contrast and leave the viewer in no doubt as to why we are giving the facade of the bunker a bit of a polish.

pics

I took over 400 pictures this weekend with 4 different cameras, 313 of which were with my old nikon D70s SLR. It is a brick of a thing compared to the point-and-shoots I've become accustomed to and also to the Micro 4/3 Olympus Pen Mini I recently bought. But the brick just encourages you to take more pictures. I think it is because it feels like a real camera, and I know it is because it has a viewfinder. Two things that give me far more pleasure than you would expect them to; framing a picture in a viewfinder and not on a screen, and changing camera lenses. Neither of these things make my pictures any better, but they make me feel better when taking them. The downside; carying an SLR does nothing for my time management.

Oh fuck. It has just occurred to me that I might have grown up...

By all rights I should have hated today, spent the majority of it like a bear with a sore head and now, instead of blogging, be cursing Dry July for stopping me having the beer I so richly deserve. (I do of course realise that Dry July is merely two words and it is my own determination to have a dry July (small D, I am not "doing" Dry July) after a wetter than usual June that finds me eating chocolate and chocolate covered Hob Nobs and salted peanuts because that is so much better than a couple of Guinness. I digress early; back to today.)

Today started typically early with H's 04:20 call of "daddy I want milk." I got up, she had milk and went back to sleep and I spent the next hour logged in to work fixing stuff. With stuff fixed I went back to bed and failed to fall back to sleep, convinced that H would be waking up again any minute, so what's the point? I did get up to her again and managed to convince her it was too early to get up, scoring maybe 30minutes of light shut-eye before the whole house woke up in pretty much reverse chronological order.

The epic fail of the Virgin Australia computer network on Friday night meant Sal was at home and not in Queensland. She was rebooked on a 10am-ish flight which meant a delayed start to my near-5-days-solo-parenting. When Sal is away Rowlf has a dramatically reduced exercise regime so I took the opportunity presented by the 90mins before Sal left for the airport to get the big lump down to and in the Harbour for a swim.

It is a shame that the happier the big lump is the more he can piss me off. In winter he knows a walk in the hours of daylight will almost certainly involve in a swim. When we head from my coffee stop towards the water he launches harbourwards with a shoulder dislocating pace that would probably pull most people off their feet; I have learnt to lean back a bit, bend my knees and hope he doesn't hospitalise me. If only that were poetic license and not gospel truth. He does calm, a bit, but never really walks to heel. He can. He does sometimes. But when he is off for a swim there is no heeling.

I got a couple of OK pictures of him swimming and was back home by 8 to deal with the brief our-world-is-coming-to-an-end tears and tantrums that can sometimes accompany Sal's departure for a pilates course, let along 4 days away. But armed with a new video of Rowlf swimming I employed distraction and things calmed down. I hung out with the girls and we packed lunches and changes of clothes and at 10 headed to the pool for their swimming lessons.

Their official lessons are an hour apart, H first and I go in with her. I was hoping AJ could slot into a lesson at the same time as H, but in case not we packed a book and her camera so she could remain occupied and hopefully where I could see her.

I had a bit of luck and AJ got a lesson at 10:30, same time as H. It really is not much fun swimming with H in her lesson. If I go in alone with her she will happily and fearlessly hurl herself from the side, hang on to my shoulders and kick her legs, laugh when I dunk her and generally have a great old time. In the lesson she screams her arse off and insists "I'm done, I'm finished!"Lesson ends and she is fine again. Ah well, she'll get there. While it was good to not have to worry about AJ it was a shame I could not watch her continued morphing into a fish; she is going great guns in her lessons.

Swim done we had some lunch at the kiosk by the pool. I had my second coffee of the day and would have loved to share the hot chips I bought the little ladies to go with their packed lunches, but on my 5:2 regime I was not allowed to eat until 3pm. The girls destroyed their food, I finished my coffee and then paid for their continued lessons, a little over $200 dollars each. Money well spent on AJ and a step nearer me needing hearing aids and therapy where H is concerned.

There is never an issue with getting the girls down for their lunchtime snooze on a swim day as they're usually knackered. As soon as they were both asleep I grabbed my old Nikon D70S and 300mm lens to take a picture of our ocean view. Yes, I need a 300mm lens, and yes I get the view from the roof, or rather the scaffold, but I don't care; we have an ocean view. I needed to patch up some of my poorer painting efforts from Wednesday while the kids slept, but as I went to start a reasonably heavy shower, that had not been forecast, arrived. Annoyed that I might not get to paint I was half pleased that I may get a catch up nap of my own. So the weather cleared and I painted.

Once the girls were both awake we all got changed and headed for the supermarket to do the grocery shopping. This would, for sure, be the moment my levelheadedness would evaporate and I would revert to type. But no. I had a great time.

You can read that again or I'll simply type it again. I had a great time.

The girls were probably still a bit tired from the swim so not their utterly mental selves, just a bit mad. I plonked H in the trolley and armed AJ with the shopping list. H was on put-stuff-in-the-trolly detail and AJ was finding the things we needed and crossing them off the list. Lots of spelling and counting and, thanks to the short checkout lines of a Saturday afternoon, I escaped unscathed. Handy hint here; ChupaChups. Buy them last and pay for them first, hand one to each child when at the checkout. It's like a mute button.

Home and I took the girls inside then ferried the groceries in past Rowlf who, despite my food-filled bags, seemed to care little about our return, probably still tired from his swim. I packed the groceries away and cooked dinner. That's right, cooked dinner. Our Salmon pasta is no Masterchef challenge but the kids love it, so first course went down easily. Dessert was custard; I was not facing a challenge getting that eaten. Pretty soon after dinner we hit mental o clock; I called Sal but the girls were too busy running up and down with a small tent on their heads to care much about speaking to mum. As far as I could tell Sal, at her folks along with her two sisters, was in the middle of a heated political discussion of Australia's recent Aboriginal rights and wrongs by successive governments. It was, I was assured, going very, very badly.

So AJ had an early night and all was quiet in the house. I started cooking.

Yes, that's right, I started cooking. This is unheard of. Almost certainly a first. Another of Sal's signature dishes is her "zucchini slice" which the girls love and is packed full of veggies. I'll happily throw fish and chips down them tomorrow night at the local club, but the slice means Monday and Tuesday will be veggie-packed dinners.

And that took me to a little after 8pm. A day of running around and chores, a day doing things I rarely do and have convinced myself I like even less. A day without a run, without getting in the water, without time to myself. Until now, and this blog.

I think I'll go and watch some cricket and eat some more peanuts and Hob Nobs. I've already done the washing up.

Oh fuck. It has just occurred to me that I might have grown up...

Before I forget, I have to mention Sal's contribution to today's parenting duties. While I walked Rowlf she took the girls out to the local bakery to get some bread and breakfast croissants. I asked AJ how H had traveled, walking or in the pram to which she said "no, mum drove." Distance to bakery from home - 400m. Just saying...!

a day out on the tiles

I dare say I would get used to it, but as I am not used to it working on a roof is not something I enjoy. The Colourbond has gone on to the new sunroom and the Hardiplank on the smaller gable end. It was this plank that I needed to paint. It would be nice to get the pros to do the painting, but with a new slab and roof hitting us for over 25k we need to economise somewhere.

As well as the gable end I also needed to paint the framing of the sunroom, and as there was a little dew making the steel wet it was that I started with. It was a bit fiddlier and more time consuming that I expected but not too tricky. Then it was up on to the roof.

Stuart, through Sal, had put the fear of God into me. Not about falling but about spilling paint, scratching or denting the steel roof. So it was with some trepidation that I stepped off the scaffold onto the nice new sheeting, being careful to keep my feet on the screws that marked where the roof was over rafters and would hold my weight. Over the 2m of shallow-pitch steel and then on to the 30degree concrete tiles. Being 167cm and not wanting to step on the bottom course meant I was stretching a bit to get  from tin to tile. But the tiles held (of course) and I clambered up in a somewhat scaredy-cat manner to take a look at the job at hand.

Then it was back down again. This I really did not enjoy. I am no spiderman, and reversing off the tile on to the tin, then picking out screw-top footholds was a little nerve-wracking. The worst bit was the step from the roof to the scaffold, which had a small drop and was over a gap; it really did not matter that I knew all I needed to do was push backwards and put my foot down, I was borderline terrified. Not at all heroic.

But I made it and the subsequent trips up and back were less pathetic. I could not work out how to get a drop sheet under the bottom edge of the board to protect the tin, so dropsheets were used to balance the paint tin, which Sal passed up to me, and a wet cloth to wipe off the worst of the inevitable spills. Working on a 30degree angle, even for a short time, is pretty tough on the calves and I was glad of a rest after my piss-poor first coat was finished. I put a second coat on the framing and left the second coat of the gable end until Sunday, hoping my legs would be OK after the morning 10k run (they were.)

So there we are; progress last week was a roof and small gable end plus more painting. Most of the rest of the Hardiplank is on the outside of the sunroom and should be ready for me to paint this week. I really do need to make a better job of that than I did of the framing and roof, which was pretty shabby. I was dreading seeing Stuart yesterday morning; his craftsmanship is wonderful, and I was somewhat ashamed to have coated it in my horrible paintwork. But hey, our house, and it's done. Apart from the little bits I missed.

Despite being able to see the ocean from the roof top I have no desire to go up there ever again. Yes, I am that soft.

snow blind

No, I have not been to the snow but I did spend a good chunk of yesterday and a little bit of today painting the gable end of the house. It has had the Hardiplank weatherboard (fiber cement, but it looks like weatherboard) cladding put up. The weather has been glorious all week and that means Stuart and Jason were able to get back to work on turning our veranda into a sunroom and covering the gable. The scaffold is only here for another week, so that meant this Saturday was set aside for painting.

In not such good news we now know beyond reasonable doubt that our roof tiles, despite having just survived an apocalyptic fortnight of rain, are w-a-y past their best. They are old concrete tiles which lost their glaze long ago. Give one a scratch and the concrete easily breaks down; in fact most of the crap in our gutters (of which there isn't much, and the gutters are reasonably new) is dissolved roof tile.

So it looks like we'll be biting the bullet and replacing the roof as part of this renovation. We could try a roof restoration, but the chance are the pressure-clean would smash some of these old tiles. There is a cost to re-bedding and capping the roof anyway. We had a tiler quote $16k for tiles but we are almost certainly going to go for a Colourbond steel-sheet roof, probably in a bluish colour. It should look really nice, and we'll just put our fingers in our ears and sing 'la-la-la' when discussing the budget. Spending the best part of $250k on a renovation while skimping on waterproofing from above and below (remember the slab downstairs?) is daft. Ho-hum, the new windows will definitely have to wait.

Anyway, painting white boards in the noon sun, even with a low-sheen paint, is a bastard and I needed to borrow some of Sal's sunglasses. My eyes were stinging today. It was a very nice day, and I think I made a reasonable job of it. If I didn't I'm sure Stuart will let me know and I can have another go next weekend, weather permitting (so it will almost certainly rain.)

And that is pretty well it for progress this week, other than to say removing bagging from bricks is my new least-favourite task. Bagging is basically the practice of filing the gaps between bricks with a mixture of sand a camel spit. Digging it out again, with a screwdriver is not difficult, but it is as sould destroying as painting a roof of exposed rafters, my previous least favourite. Someone decided to bag half of the bricks around the veranda, so to even things up we're removing it all.

rainovation

It turns out that this was not the best week to have no gable ends on our house. Well, the ends are there but are currently plastic sheet nailed to the timbers after the asbestos was taken away just before the heavens opened. And stayed open for a week. They're still open. Fortunately the plastic seems to be keeping the weather out, and the roof (which will need to go before to long...) is holding up OK. I think. I'm not game to go up into the attic searching for another bill.

So Jason switched attention indoors and got to work levelling the slab on the lower ground floor that will be our new master bedroom. It was supposed to be a simple case of removing the slab surface and levelling with a new surface that tennis balls would not roll over without a push. The wheels fell of pretty quickly when we found skinny reinforcing bar just below the surface. Starting to rust, too close to the surface and not so much laid in the slab as dumped and then covered with a bit of concrete...so the slab had to go.

Ker-chung, that'll be around 10k then. Ouch.

Wednesday was a particularly fun day when I got home to find the house - the bits we're still living in - under a coat of concrete dust. Fortunately I had remembered to close the kid's bedroom doors before leaving for work, so I sold the idea of playing in AJ's bedroom to the girls when I collected them from daycare then quickly removed as much dust as possible before making them some dinner.

And that's about it for this week. The slab has gone, ready to be replaced by one that will have a waterproof membrane, drainage (to replace the rather random water filled terracotta pipes draining to nowhere that we found embedded in the old slab) and give us 2.4m of clearance to our ceiling.

And it's still raining. We have a swamp where once was a lawn. But at least it's the weekend.

quick renovation update...

We got off to a flying start in week one and are now in a waiting week.

Downstairs we dug up part of the old slab and poured the new slab for our new en suite. We created the doorway to the walk-in-robe you'll walk through to get to this new en-suite. Upstairs we removed all of the balustrade and fencing around our veranda, which we'll be replacing. We decided that my shed would go in the "back" garden instead of the "front" and by we I obviously mean Sal decided; I just agreed. I prepared a spot for it, moving a load of my plants and once testing their hardiness and patience with me. My dragon's blood in particular must be wondering when I'll make my mind up. And that's it construction and destruction-wise.

The plumber came over and decided our new hot water tank can go under the house instead of outside, which should mean it will last longer. A small (new) window in the kitchen has been nuked from the plans, meaning windows are finalised and ordered. To mitigate against possible future delays we've cleared out the main bathroom; Stuart can get cracking with that if he wants to - we'll use the shower/toilet in the laundry. Which currently contains our large fridge. I think we (and again I mean Sal) has bought outright or ordered everything for the bathrooms, tiles included, apart from the bath and extractor fans and lights.


Next week we should be back into it with a bang. The first full skip will be removed. Scaffold will be put up. Asbestos in our eaves and the rumpus-room ceiling will be removed. Turning the veranda into a roofed-and-plantation-shuttered sunroom will start. And of course, Rowlf will have his playmate back, Stuart's young staffie Ellie.

That's about it.

the renovation begins

A quick renovation recap. Quotes of over half a million dollars and a painfully slow development approval process that saw Sal pregnanat with Harrie before we'd got anywhere near building resulted in us selling the 2 bedder in Willoughby and buying the Seaforth Bunker. A far smoother development approval (with Manly Council) and a quote coming in at a little under a quarter of a million and we're ready to do a few alterations. And by that I mean ready to pay Stuart, one of the builders who quoted for us in Willoughby, to do the work. So about three years later than expected we're ready to build.

There is not a lot wrong with the house. It is ugly as hell, but solid. Really very solid. It was built in 1962 by the builder who owned it. He was not short of bricks. Or concrete. It is a bunker. The windows are fairly shitty, but the rest would survive a nuclear strike. It sits on a 450sqm block that is 50m long with a street frontage at each end. It is 2 storey to the noisier northern end and single story at the quieter southern end. The house is 7m wide, so sort of long and skinny. Our renovation-stroke-alteration will have the effect of spinning the house through 180 degrees. At the moment the kitchen and living area are on the first floor and look out to a busy road; the other has the master bedroom and sunroom sitting a little above ground level and facing a quiet road. We're moving the bedrooms towards the noisy end; it isn't noisy at night and beefed-up glazing will keep it quiet. At the more peaceful end we'll combine the sunroom, master bedroom and Harrie's bedroom to make an open plan kitchen-dining-casual-living area. Bi-fold doors will open to a 6mx4m deck and we'll retain a bit of garden to play with. A walk-in robe and ensuite off the master bedroom, a new kitchen and bathroom, a roof and shutters over the first floor verandah and a carport over our parking slab complete the picture.

It kicked off last week. Stuart had said he would start on Thursday. Drawing upon my considerable building experience I'd assumed that meant he would be getting clear on the job at hand, maybe doing some measuring. What it actually meant was jackhammering a hole in the floor of what will become our ensuite. Sal, who was working from home on Thursday, said it was a bit loud. The plan is to complete the northern, downstairs bit first. That will give us the laundry and bedroom (that are not being altered), our new master bedroom, walk-in robe and ensuite and a "front" door and hallway. While that happens we live upstairs. When downstairs is finished we swap with Stuart. We move downstairs and Stuar moves up and to the southern end where he'll complete the kitchen-living-deck and the new bathroom. So yes, we are living on a building site, but the long-skinnyness of the house means that should be OK.

Each workday now ends a little like Christmas morning as I get home to the suprise of how much has been knocked down, dug up or added on (that will come later) since the morning.

House - Season Finale

With the delivery of my second daughter less than 24hrs away you would think I'd have something to write about that, and although I have, I will not be. Not today. Too much thinking involved. Been very slack since Jan on the blog front.

Anyway, the renovations are off. Try as I might I cannot but hand most of the blame to the architect who, knowing our budget from the outset, overshot it by quite some way. She, of course, has been paid.

I am not too surprised. I'd spoken to a couple of builders shortly after we moved in and each said, straight up, that a knock-down-rebuild or renovation-addition would cost around half a million. Where our wildly optimistic 350-400k came from I cannot recall, but it was probably dreamt up between me and DJ when we were tossing around ideas about design, construction and building materials. But, sigh, we then got an architect involved, I stepped away from the process, and our planned addition became the standard brick-on-slab construction beloved by the majority of Sydney builders.

Sal is scared to death of the bigger number and, although less shocked by it, I am not over-pleased at adding to the already decent-sized mortgage. We could have gone back to the drawing board, stripped back the design and got close to budget, but honestly, after a couple of years of to-and-fro with the council we're over it. So we'll tart the place up and shift it. Just go and buy one that's already built.

We've had a bit of a look around and if we move twice as far from my office as we are now we can upgrade from 2 small beds on a 467sq block to 4 big beds, rumpus room, pool, double garage, big living area on over 800sq. In fact, dollar for dollar i is damn near a straight swap. And keep in mind that the doubled distance becomes only 15km from the city. My travel time to my usual beach cafe in Dee Why would go up by a whole minute. It really is a no-brainer.

Unfortunately - for me - the abso-fucking-lutely perfect place is on the market at the moment. I can see myself living in it; properly see myself, proper day-dream this-is-MY-shangri-la. But it is on the market now, which is piss-poor timing. But worse, Sal doesn't like it because it isn't very pretty. No matter the awesome practicality, if it don't look right it don't get a look in. Oh well, I'm (not at all) sure there will be others...I was speaking to Pete in the dog-park on Monday morning and told him about the place. I said "it's bloody fantastic" to which he said "man cave?" "Yep", I replied "and a double garage with internal access." "We're simple creatures" he said. He's right y'know.

Exciting times to come. Did I mention the impending birth of my second daughter? I'm sure I will soon enough.

House Episode 11 - are we there yet?

How many months since I could last be arsed to put finger to keys to give an update on our painfully slow progress towards getting persmission to add another couple of bedrooms on our house? Four. Anyway, after hating on the son-of-our-neighbour's-landlord for a while we have moved on to slack-jawed incrdulity at the workings of council. Stormwater planning is our last hurdle. Well, the last one we know about. We had to do two things; ask our neighbours for stormwater easement access to their property ("can we dig a hole in your yard, bury a stormwater pipe and then put your garden back as it was?") and put together a stormwater management plan in case our neighbours said no. Which they did.

So we asked our neighbours and they said no. But,we didn't ask them right. We needed to make sure we made a fair and reasonable offer, and apparently saying we will pay all costs and make good any repairs was not fair and reasonsble enough for council. So we had another go and slung a two grand sweetner on top, compensation for inconvenience. The neighbours once again said no, which is fair enough. We had Plan B, the absorption trenches plan from a hydrological engineer, so we're all good, right?


Well no. The stormwater plan showed our trenches near a retaining wall and we needed an structural enginner to certify that the wall would not be impacted by the trenches. It didn't matter that the hydro engineer was also a structural enginner. Oh no, you see he was working in his hydro capacity. And that isn't structural. So he had to come back, kick the wall, draw another picture and say the wall he showed on his plans would not be impacted by his plans and would still be there if we follwed his plans. So now council are happy right?


Well no. The stormwater plan is ok, but the second letter to the neighbours isn't. The part where they indicate whether or not we can have easement access was on the third page, after the details and the offer. I had foolishly inserted a page break. And I'd not inserted page numbers - I was marked down for that as well. So (deep breath) I need to insert page numbers and move the signature part to page two. Then get the new and improved letter signed by neighbours who must be sick to death of me asking them the same question so they can give the same answer. You see council don't know that our neighbours read the last letter. I'm amazed that council can recognise the signatures as kosher, but there you go.

We're now being held up because council don't like the formatting I used. No problem with the content. My initial reaction was "You're fucking joking right? I mean for fucks sake, if you want to know if our neighbiours read the letter you could, I dunno, call them, or pop around and ask? How the bollocking fuck do you know it is even our neighbours' signature on the letter? I could have signed them myself! I didn't, but I could have."

Having had the chance to sleep on it my reaction is now "You're fucking joking right? I mean for fucks sake, if you want to know if our neighbiours read the letter you could, I dunno, call them, or pop around and ask? How the bollocking fuck do you know it is even our neighbours' signature on the letter? I could have signed them myself! I didn't, but I could have."

And how about this; two weeks ago I asked if this new letter was OK. Council could have been just a wee bit helpful and told me what fucking font to use. For fucks sake.

House Episode 10

After a year with not so much as a shovel of dirt excavated from our yard I have lost much enthusiasm for the whole house thing. It'll happen, but I'm buggered if I know when or how much it will cost or what colour it will be. Meh.

Anyway, neighbour had a grumble so we're moving a wall 200mm away from their boundary. Of course, if they'd had the good sense to talk to us, when we asked them to talk to us so we could work with them, we may have put a skillion roof on or done one of many other things to lessen their the impact of our renovation upon them. But they didn't, they chose to piss off Sal instead. Not a smart move.

Council are now a stumbling block. They have a bit of a hard-on about stormwater, what with a recent re-classification of our street into one "subject to local overland flooding." AAAARRRggggHHH! We're all going to be swept away! Or not. As far as I can tell "subject to local overland flooding" is council-speak for "hill." We're on the high side of a hill, the bottom of our garden is at the bottom of the hill, from where the bottom of our neighbour's garden rises. Unless our garden floods to a depth of around 12ft our neighbours' properties should be safe from the cascades of doom our renovation may cause. But, of course, there are a whole heap of hoops to jump through. Council listed a load of criteria, a bit beyond our architect's realm and therefore we engaged a hydro-engineer (kerchung!, naturally.) The letter from council was awfully nice, and said if we had any enquiries we should call their engineer.

So, our architect, engineer and I have called the council's enginner. Or tried. Many times. We've left messages. We've emailed him. We've made more phone calls and left more messages. The guy is a fucking shadow. And the kicker is - if we don't get our submission in within a couple of weeks we get penalised. Deep joy. Council can, basically, ignore us and then penalise us. Great. No, really, fucking awesome work. Love it.

Aren't you glad I came out of blog retirement?

House Episode 9a

No word from the engineer and the council bloke had to take his mum to hospital, so no news today. Arsechunks to my expectations.

House Episode 9

Of course the difference between a pre-DA meeting and the DA is that the first is a chit-chat whereas the second is a bit more serious and finishes with us being allowed to build. So it is to be expected that the feedback would change from the pre-DA's "should all be fine" to the DA's "we need clarification."

There are three areas that concern the council. First, we are in an area that was recently (re)classified as "subject to localisaed overland flooding." As far as I can tell tha simplyt means we live half way down a hill and water flows down hill. So the council is a bit concerned about stormwater travel over our land. If we're lucky we should simply be able to stick a pipe straight into the easement at the foot of our garden. If we're unlucky we may need to install an on-site-detention (OSD) thingy that holds a load of water before letting it go into the easement. Either way we'll be up for a bit or a lot more cash, spendies likely (I suspect) to start with a hydrological engineer.

On the engineer front, we have chosen a firm and a dude should be making his first site-visit late this week. We chose the middle of the three quotes and. This firm came recommended by the guys three doors up the street from us who used them for their renovations. And the back of their house is still standing. They know geotechnical enginners for all the soil stuff. Wonder if they have htdro guys? Hmmm...

Back to Willoughby Council. The other things they mentioned were privacy and shadowing. Not sure why, probably justifying their existence. Our propsed extension will cast a shadow on a fucking great oak tree, I'll admit that. As for privacy, our deck will face the windowless brick wall of our neighbours to the other side. But, on both counts, as we intend to minimise excavation our floor level, and hence deck level, is a tad higher than the floor level of our neighbours, so I'll allow them to ask the question. As our neighbours to the left and right did not raise any objections and the neighbour to the back, whose house we'll be looking straight at, is our architect, I hope everything will be fine.

But it is a council.

House Episode 8

Need to catch up a bit. DA has been submitted, basic plans sent to neighbours and a yellow sign is strapped to our front fence telling folks they have until the end of the month to have a moan. Of course NSW planning laws are such that you can moan all you like about plans, but should they comply with all relevant legislation you may as well save your breath. Our plans are fairly simple, so we don't anticipate any dramas.

So far we have had two letters from builders seeking business; I guess they scan local council websites for new submissions and sent out speculative details. Fair play to them. We are now getting engineering quotes. Assuming the DA is approved we then need to get a construction certificate that, I think, allows us to construct the place. To get that we need a structural engineer to spec a a structure that won't fall down or over. The first two quotes were a a bit over 8k and a bit over 3k. I suspect the budget thing will be fun...

In other news, because I am stupid I have strted to buy plants for the garden that will, before too long, be turned into a pit. Not my best timing, but in my defense I say the plants are mostly destined for the very back of the garden, up against the fence. As long as the builders don't trash the last 6inches of the block some should survive. The name cast iron plant and the blub saying they can be neglected and are almost indestructible gives me some hope.

My favourite purchase, that I collect tommorrow, is my DRAGON'S BLOOD TREE. What a hard-bastard name for a plant. Saw some pictures of them and they look magnificent. Unfortunately, for me, they grow slowly - about 1m per decade. Mine is 50cm. The oldest trees are thought to be 650yrs old. Ah well, my descendants will have an awesome tree to look at should they live in the same house for the next couple of centuries. Ho-hum.

House Episode 7

A slack blogger pops in.

So, we have had our pre-DA meeting and our plans, that basically show us doing what everyone else on the street has already done, look fine. No surprise there. The final bits and pieces for final submission are now almost in place. The shadow diagram will be created, presumably by someone who once needed some cool equipment, artisan skills and a site visit and now needs our plans and a bit of software. The plans show all the height and location coordinates and the sun follows a fairly predictable path; plug in, hit go, collect cash. OK, there probabaly is more to it than that. Or not.

The landscape plan was a doddle; where our trees are now is where they will be afterwards. Only tricky bit was finding the names of the trees, but I took a few pics and went to a garden centre where I pleaded ignorance with great convincingness.

Then there is the colour, which is Sal's domain. Now she has stopped telling me about the grey-blue house at the end of the street that she likes, which is actually mushroom or very light brown or some other not grey-blue, I think we are settled. Sort of. Oh, and we needed to indicate the type of fence we wanted, and the type of driveway and gate. Fence - pretty simliar to the one we now have only not cheap-as-fuck, driveway pretty similar to the one we now have only without the weeds cracking it and (of course!) electric gates.

And that's it. Next month we may actually get our plans into council. I'd like to start the building soon, what with Sydney's torrential rain hammering the roof I have little faith in the integrity of.

Oh yes, AJ is developing magnificently and I really must write more - some - about her. In the meantime, check out the pictures, of which there are many.

House Episode 6 - well, dur

The council, who need to approve our plans, sent us and all our neighbours a letter. They have done a survey of sorts and we live in an area subject to localised overland flooding. Basically, a hill leading down to a stream. They let us know that any development should not lend itself to flooding either our own or our neighbours' properies. Wow. No really, wow. We were going to dig a pit in the back garden that would fill with water and any overflow would piss into our neighbours kitchen. Guess we'll have to rethink. No, hold on, I think our plans are for something that won't flood in heavy rain. Sheesh. I do love the need for regulation the blindingly obvious. Sad but true - this is almost certainly necessary.

Anyway, we are meeting the architect next week to answer a few more questions and get ready for a "pre-DA" (Development Application) meeting. She will go through our plans with council so we know if we are ready to submit. That should be early in the new year. Fingers crossed we'll be submitted soon and building soonish.

House Episode 5 - WooHoo!

Engineer came over yesterday morning to provide some pre-DA consulting. Can we knock these walls out? Yes. Can we dig this out? Yes. Can we build on that? Yes. So, is there anything in our plans we cannot do? No. And for bonus points, our sub strata looks pretty damn good and should lend itself to having a relatively large chunk of house tacked on to the back of our relatively small house. Then we paid the next installment to the architect and I needed to have a sit down for a while.

House Episode 4 - call an engineer, we're getting closer

I'd not been expecting to hear back from the architect quite so soon and was pleasantly surprised when we got an email on Tuesday saying some prelimnary plans were ready. When would we like to see them, I'm free on Wednesday evening the message went on. Well dur, Wednesday evening of course! Sal damn near wet herself with excitement.

We'd been impressed with the intial sketches, though there were one or two things that needed a tidy up. The new plans have made the changes - more bench space here, a shower there - and altered the original somewhat, but in ways that make the design better than before. Damn she's good. We may even get a double-height space in the stairwell between the two floors - how cool is that - and the phrase "parent's retreat" was used. Nice.

Anyway, cutting to the chase. Love the design, and now we need to get in touch with a structural engineer to make sure it is economically possible for us to proceed. Hoping we don't hear "well yes, you can do that. But it'll cost ya" and we do hear "pft, piece-o-piss."

Watch this space.