Hanging Fifteen!

I took a late start to work one day during the last week and Tom and I got to work hanging as many poles as we could in the holes that he had dug under the house.

Unfortunately there were still a few poles that were too long for the holes, so Tom sawed off the ends (the guy that sold us the steel very kindly lent us his saw).

And then we loaded them into the ute and I took them over to the workshop for the bottom plate to be rewelded at the new length.

Allie helped by throwing her ball for us (ignore the check shorts, they were acting as a cleaning rag).

We hung the remaining poles, fifteen in total.

Tom chose an interesting spot to get some shade while answering his phone (don't worry, he's not doing anything strange). Allie kept him company.

Things got a little precarious at times.

Then came the tricky part - getting the tops of each of the poles hanging exactly level with each other, so when the house was dropped onto them it would sit completely level. The structural engineer that designed the foundations for us very kindly leant us his 'dumpy level'.

We hung a giant level from the top of each pole to make sure that the same measurement was level on each pole.

123.5 was the magic number!

This was a very time consuming and frustrating process that we repeated for each of the fifteen poles.

And finally we were done. In truth, the task carried over to the next day, and we only actually got it finished about a minute after the concrete truck arrived on Saturday.

Wonder of wonders, we were so close to actually having workable foundations for the house again! Stay tuned for the concrete pouring!

Broke Again

We have SO much to catch up on! Compared to last week, progress this week has progressed like the proverbial freight train. And to be honest, I've kind of been putting off completing this post, because even I'm sick of my constant whingeing about machinery. Because... guess what?

The digger broke again.

That is, our replacement digger that was supposed to not be a lemon like the last one. The same one that was leaking hydraulic fluid and then wouldn't start last weekend (because we put the wrong fuel in it, granted).

Earlier in the week, after fixing the machine on our quiet Sunday, Tom was digging our remaining few holes.

To make the holes a bit deeper, he added an extension bar.

He was on the second last one (of those that aren't blocked by the stacks that are currently holding up the house), and the 'power head' of the hole borer snapped off.

That's right. The steel snapped. There's really nothing more to be said, is there?

Needless to say, that was all the hole digging Tom got done that day, and now that part is being repaired. Considering the macine is on loan to us, I think we're pushing our luck insisting that they repair it in the hope of getting it back to dig the other holes with, so we're not 100% certain when we'll be able to finish the holes.

Fortunately we had enough done to be able to support most of the house, so we could then move on to hanging the rest of the poles in preparation for concreting.

Our Improvements

In the eighteen months or so that we lived at our second house (Next House), we did surprisingly little to actually make the house itself our own. I'm going to propose the excuse that we spent almost all of our time landscaping as a pretty good reason for this. And obviously with a brand new home there's generally no requirement to replace anything. That said, from the time we moved in to the time we moved out, apart from some window coverings, we didn't really make our mark on the inside of the house at all.

To give us some credit though, there were two little projects that we undertook to make the house more liveable (not that it wasn't liveable before!). Here's a sneak peak. I'll post more details about them soon.

 

Our Curvy Garden

The final piece in the puzzle that was our landscaping at our second house (Next House) was creating Our Curvy Garden. This is what I have christened the little area next to our driveway that I insisted on making larger by having a curvy driveway (see here).

Step 1: Concreting. Tom got to work concreting the little area at the bottom of the driveway where we planned to store our rubbish bins (after installing a drain).

We remembered just in time that we wanted to extend our sprinkler system across from the other side of the front yard, so we ran it through the black drain at the bottom of the driveway, and that's the pipe curled up on the concrete there.

Those steel poles sticking out of the concrete were part of my grand plan to eventually have a Chinese Star Jasmine vine growing around that little concreted area to completely disguise the rubbish bins. To help this process along, we drilled some holes in the posts at carefully spaced intervals (also being careful to paint the holes with some rust-proof paint), then we ran some wire through the holes so we had some horizontal rungs (for want of a better word) that the vine could grow over and climb up.

Step 2: More concreting. Building a baby retaining wall out of leftover concrete blocks to follow the curve of the driveway, to allow the garden to be fairly level instead of falling at the same rate of the driveway. The added advantage of doing this? Partially covering up the rubbish bins. You'll note that we left a bit of space between the driveway and the wall, because we decided that the driveway needed a little bit of extra width so we didn't crash into the wall reversing out every day.

Step 3: More digging. Like we hadn't had enough already.

Allie kept an eye on proceedings, as always.

The process of digging away all of the bad dirt from this area was especially awful, because it had been our main dumping ground for all sorts of not-good-for-plants items like broken bricks and the like up until this point.

 

Not only that, but for a reason we couldn't understand, we kept coming across random bits of heshen-y, felt-y sort of material and rocks upon rocks upon rocks. We couldn't figure it out until we remembered this:

Where we were digging what was to become my beautiful curvy garden, had been our old driveway (since buried under mounds of yukky dirt). So the builders had obviously not only dumped a whole bunch of rocks there to make the driveway easier to use, but first laid down a piece of material that then had to be torn away bit by bit as we tried to dig up the dirt and rocks. Not fun. I wish I had more pictures.

But as usual, with a bit of determination we got there, and could move onto the next stage.

Step 4: Putting nice dirt and plants in!

We also made sure we put a bit of drainge behind the retaining wall so it doesn't have water problems later.

My nicely laid out plants.

The view from the front.

Step 5: The Letterbox. Later, we finally upgraded the letterbox from the temporary one we bought from a demolition yard for $10 (since Tom destroyed the original letterbox when we were demolishing Our First House), and forked out the dough for a sparkly new one. Here it is just after being concreted in, with our hastily scavenged supports to prevent it from slipping while the concrete set.

Step 6: Finishing the wall. Later again (it's a bit shameful how long the wall sat there unfinished), we painted the wall in the same render paint that we painted the back Slow Retaining Wall in, and capped the top with all our leftover driveway pavers that had been sitting around, cut to follow the curve of the wall. And in line with the way these things always seemed to work out, we had JUST enough pavers to completely cover the wall, with only one leftover. You can actually see them all lined up on top of the El Cheapo Retaining Wall in one of the earlier photos if you scroll up.
 

And here it is from the front again. Please ignore the stray waterbottle. It's protecting the top of a star picket that still needs to be hammered completely into the ground (it's holding that purple sleeper along the front in place).

And that completes the landscaping of our Next House! Click here to see the entire house in its finished state.
 

Keep Calm and Carry On

Over the last few months (since we bought our latest house), I've become a voracious researcher of all things decorating. I'm absolutely addicted to houzz.com (as is evident by the fact that I've put a link to it down on the right), and the list of design-related blogs that I'm following is growing almost daily. All of this Internet research has been incredibly helpful in expanding my decorating horizons, giving me ideas that I would never have thought to implement before, and helping me refine my idea of what makes a house look extra special instead of like a cookie-cutter builder display home.

The one problem is, with all of these fantastic ideas floating around in my head, I have nowhere to actually put them into action yet! We're progressing only very slowly towards being ready to start thinking about pretty stuff for our Third House, so while the picture in my head of how fantastic it's going to look when we're done gets more and more concrete, it seems further and further away!

So, I've decided to give myself a little outlet for all of this pent-up decorating frustration and discuss my plans here! After all, what are blogs for? Plus it gives me (and you) a break from the neverending dirty ugly stuff like digging holes and knocking down walls.

So what's on my mind today? One of the little decorating images that keeps cropping up here and there in my travels through Houzz.com is this print:

eclectic kitchen design by media and blogs A Few Things From My Life

I actually nad no idea about the origins of this particular phrase. Upon further research, I discovered that it actually has an important historical context, and isn't just some quirky little slogan coined by someone in someone's marketing department (well, other than the British Government's of course). I then figured I would have to apologise for showing my age by having no idea about it, until I read this on Wikipedia:

"Keep Calm and Carry On was a poster produced by the British government in 1939 during the beginning of World War II, intended to raise the morale of the British public under the threat of impending invasion. It was little known and never used. The poster was rediscovered in 2000 and has been re-issued by a number of private sector companies, and used as the decorative theme for a range of other products."

And now it seems to be everywhere!

From prints in all colours of the rainbow...

eclectic home office design by san francisco media and blogs SFGIRLBYBAY

eclectic dining room design by san francisco interior designer Kerrie L. Kelly

eclectic entry design by other metros media and blogs Toc Toc Toc... Entrez!

...to all sorts of other merchandise.

Rugs...

entry design by toronto interior designer Lucid Interior Design Inc.

Diaries...

Coin holders...

Not to mention the many many alternative wordings...

Some cute...

traditional bedroom design by media and blogs My Sweet Savannah

Others a little more edgy (I decided to leave the coarse ones out to protect your innocent...eyes)...

Even the cushions are getting in on the action.

So, inevitably I decided that I wanted one. I figured I would probably stick with the traditional route, and perhaps later down the track adapt the design myself into something useful like this elsewhere in the house:

eclectic bathroom design by other metros media and blogs Michelle Hinckley

That was made by blogger and DIY-er Michelle Hinckley of the blog Three Men and a Lady as a cute reminder to her sons in the bathroom.

So! Even though I don't have a wall to hang it on yet, I couldn't resist doing a bit of searching online for competitively priced options. I eventually settled on this one from Blue Dog Posters.

And I'm thinking it will go somewhere in the kichen to match all of my red appliances. Here they all are in the kitchen at our second house:

It's only fairly small, so it won't be too dramatic a statement, and it was only $15!

So we have our first piece of new artwork for the house. Now if only the kitchen itself would hurry up!

Love,

Bec