Scott, the big excavator operator (owner) scored these big rocks for us...the size of them is best judged by the small exavator behind. The idea was that we'd use them instead of a block retaining wall up on the top level, which neither Daile or I really felt comfortable with, but which budget was forcing. These rocks ended up being a little bit cheaper as Scott had to remove them from his next job, a swish place up town that was putting a swimming pool in (next to the garage for the Ferrari!)
The main retaining wall backfilled, creating the deck at the back of the house... not as big as we'd have liked, but should be enough.
One of the concreters, left his handbrake off, or not on enough and his ute with trailer rolled down the hill ! This tree took the brunt of his mistake. Poor thing. I hope it gets through it.
This was the day the chippies arrived to start the frame...
...and the council finally put in the water meter...
End of first week of framing...
...and we took one of the chairs that had been stored in our tin shed, back the house, the other one being there already. These are being re-upholstered for us courtesy of Wayne and Dette as a house warming gift. Matilda stripped the varnish off the legs, and I made some new cushions because the upholsterers use foam for cushions which we didn't want.
Upper level begun....
...and the boards
The girls checking out the downstairs, Phoebe in her 1940 Russian peasant garb. (Actually the dress is one that I made for her after the one I made for Molly.
Tild thought it would be a good idea to put washing up liquid in the dishwasher when we ran out of the right stuff....
Upstairs frame....
At this point, work had to stop for a while because there was so much rain, and the slope in the mud was quite treacherous for the contractors....
Everything got thoroughly soaked... and as you'll see later, the result was that we got the dreaded mould. We are always fighting mould here.
Roof trusses on....
The view from the spare room....
Some of the parts for the stairs...
I got injured loading MDF onto the ute for the kitchen cabinets...
Then, we found we had mould in the house that we're living in, and this was in the caravan.
Tild took everything out of the van and we sprayed it with a new product that we've found. It killed the mould completely (we think).
The spray guns were a bargain from Aldi....
...and then the roof went on.
We were able to deal with the mould on the frame of the new house with this new stuff...
This is the worst bit...but we treated the whole house with our Aldi guns.
Back at the ranch...Tild has made friends with a whole family of 5 Kookaburras.
