Ceilings and walls

Well, after months of waiting, and a so called "friend" letting us down, we finally managed to get a couple of gyprockers from Goulburn to come and gyprock the internal walls and the ceilings and boy does it make a difference - the bloody house is HUGE inside!! The entrance way is spectacular and needs to be seen to be believed. So far, all the ceilings are done and most of the internal walls. James has also put in the insulation on the external walls, in between scratching, scratching, scratching from the fibres. What a crappy job that is but he persevered and it's all in now. We're now waiting for them to come back and finish the job which should hopefully be the end of this week or next week. After that it will be my turn to start on the painting.

James is coming home

After eight years, James is coming home full time! He has finally been posted to Queanbeyan Fire Station. He was supposed to start there on 16 September, but they're sending him on a course to be rescue qualified and that will be about three weeks back in Sydney. But then he'll be home full time. He'll still be doing shift work, ie two days, two nights and four days off, but at least he'll be home in between times.

On the house front, we passed our framing inspection the other week. We've been working on getting the tin on the stable roof which we should have finished this week. We still need to render the outside so that the stable complex looks the same as the house and the garage but we'll work on getting into the house first.

Then it's back to working in the house again. The gyprock should be turning up this month so then we can start sheeting the internal walls and put in a ceiling.

We're decorating

We decided to do some decorating and paint everything white yesterday.

Okay, so no not really. The big man upstairs decided to do that for us. It snowed most of the day on Sunday and this is what it looked like.

Back to the stables!

Not much has happened on the house since the render went on. We’ve been working on getting the stable roof finished so that we can have our framing inspection of all three buildings done by the council. The council is coming out on Tuesday to do this inspection.
The weather hasn’t been that great for working on the roof though. We think it actually snowed on Sunday night fortnight ago but it just wasn’t settling. It was certainly cold enough so it should’ve been snowing. Sunday morning we were sure that the fog had actually rolled to inside the shed - or maybe it was just our blurry eyes from spending that Saturday night at the pub watching Australia beat New Zealand in the Bledisloe Cup! Pity the game last weekend was such a wipe out!!
It did actually snow last Friday what a way to welcome the first day of the last month of winter. Tracey came home to find that Chad had jumped the fence and was in the machinery shed eating all the grain! After putting him back in the paddock and walking back to the shed, the temperature just suddenly plummeted. It then hailed, then rained and then snowed. As you can see from the photos, this time it did actually settle! It was gone the next morning though but it was still pretty at the time.
We now have the solar hot water system which is an evacuated tube system - using solar tubes instead of solar panels. James has put the brackets for it up on the roof, however, the rest of the system won’t be installed until all the pipes are connected. And speaking of which, we’ve pressure tested the plumbing lines and so far everything liquid’ish is staying IN the pipes which is a good thing!
We’re currently getting quotes on the gyprock for the walls and ceiling INSIDE the house which is very exciting. Once we’ve finished the stable roof, we’ll move back onto the house and start doing the wet areas (ie, the bathroom, ensuite and laundry) as our next and second last inspection is the wet area inspection. After that, is the final inspection once it’s all finished - which is exciting because that means we’ll be finished!
So, still not in the house yet as we had planned but we’re certain we’ll be in by Christmas - this Christmas that is! Definitely! For sure! Absolutely! That’s right!

Lock up!

We are finally at lock up! It's only taken us two and a half years but we are now officially at lock-up. The renderers finished the house last week. The garage only has a final coat to go on two sides and then it is finished too.

James has been working on running the electrical cables and roughing in the plumbing. The electrician and plumber will then check and connect it all up. After that, there will be a council inspection and then we will be able to start gyprocking the bedroom, ensuite and walk-in robe. Once that's done - we'll move in!! We're hoping that this will happen around about mid-July so we can spend the winter in a nice warm room. As much as living in a shed is better than living in the caravan, it is pretty hard to heat so it will be really nice to move into a room that is warm for winter.

On the horsie front, we rode Smudge for the first time in 2 years 8 months on the weekend and WOW!! He was so good and it was just like he'd been ridden only yesterday. We'll start him off slowly now and work on getting him fit over winter to see how his shoulder stands up to the work. Here's hoping he'll be right to show next season. We also rode Chad on the weekend and he was such a good boy too. He hasn't been worked in about two months and again, he was very cruisy and was like he'd been ridden yesterday.

Walls!

Just a quick update to show you that we do have walls - on the northern and eastern sides of the house. It's been fairly windy so it has been a challenge for James and our good friend and neighbour, Shane, to put the walls on the frame because they're so light. It's starting to look like a real house now!

The Berlin Wall came down, CatarenaAcre's walls go up!

Yes, the walls arrived yesterday and we just can't describe in words how excited we were just waiting for them to arrive.

And then they arrived...

We were expecting the panels to be on some sort of board, with some sort of mesh and maybe some sort of frame around each panel but they are literally just slabs of plain ol' polystyrene. Yep, like what the vege boxes or the old-style eskies are made out of. We keep saying we're going to be living in an esky and it's true!! All we wanted to do was go poke, poke, poke.

The thingamebobs to actually fit the panels to the frame haven't arrived yet, that'll be tomorrow, and then there's nothing to stop us putting them up. There's only 40 panels as most of our north and south walls are windows and doors so we're imagining it's not going to take all that long.

The outside of the walls will have a cement render on them and as this part of the building project is really important to get right, we're going to get a renderer to do it for us. The quotes are coming in and thank goodness they're not as expensive as we had anticipated. Whoever we pick will do the house, garage and the stables all at the same time.

It's looking good to be to lock up by winter THIS YEAR :)