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Sat 24 Aug 2024

Here are some photos of the house interior.

The kitchen is now mostly functional.

We did plan to add doors to all the carcasses but that's a lot of work and at the end of the day they aren't necessary, it's easier to get things out from the shelves without doors and also with everything being open like this there are fewer places for mice and rats to set up shop.

So apart from some wall cladding that's about it as far as kitchen building goes, at least for the major cabinet work. Although I do still have to make a housing for the fridge and freezer, and maybe some more shelving.

The bedroom looks out onto the Zen garden. That huge opening does have doors but apart from during a couple of fierce storms they haven't been closed in over a year, even in winter.

The Zen garden.

We have internal access to the vegetable garden. Still a lot of internal cladding to do but that can wait, my priority is function for now, not form.

Tue 03 Sep 2024

For years now the grey water from the kitchen has just poured out onto the grass a few meters from the house. That's about to change with the addition of an IBC to catch the water.

I start by digging a trench from the old water outlet to the IBC I set in place the other day.

The new pipe is connectewd to the old one and installed to the tank.

I put a peg to mark the corner of the pipe so I can find it if I ever need to access it in the future.

Then run the pipe up the side of, and into, the IBC.

I tend to put things like this underground, it's a lot more work but when done it looks a lot neater.

As this tank will collect all grey water from this side of the house we no longer have to worry about wasting water, for example when running a shower to get it warm before you step in. In the past that would have done my head in because that water was being wasted, now I know it's being captured and used to water the nearby mango and dragon fruit trees.

The house sits on a ridge and water from the outside shower, washing machine etc drain down the other side. I might add another IBC to catch that but there is no garden down there so what would I do with the water? All I can think of is to pump is to somewhere more useful, and that's too much to think about for now.

Sun 08 Sep 2024

Time to start the deck.

These merbau decking planks are pretty true but not perfect and the first board has a slight bow so it needs to be pulled straight. With no others to pull against I rig up something with some scrap wood and clamps.

I do a couple of boards and had planned to join the two parts of the L-shaped deck by just butting one section up against the other at a right angle. But I really think that interleaving the boards in a herring bone format will look a heck of a lot better.

However this will need support for the board ends at a 45-degree angle and that was not allowed for in the design of the bearers.

So I have to inlay a new bearer that's wide enough to allow screwing down the board ends. This means I have to house out some sections of the existing bearers and also add a new bearer to support the end of the 45-degree one.

All done. The middle housing is easy enough as I can run a saw through it a few times and break out the pieces. But the end housing has to be chiselled out.

The new bearer has quite a bow in it so I make a few cuts across it to weaken the timber, then it pulls into line nicely when I screw it down.

In the above photo you can just see the cuts on either side of the screw heads in the middle of the board.

Wed 11 Sep 2024

Some time ago we were offered four casement windows for free. They were pretty ratty but we removed the glass and refurbed the frames, then we reglazed two of them. The other two aren't usable as windows really but I might use them to frame photos one day.

These will be used in the window frame to the right of the cook top, the second frame on the left of the cooktop that I planned to use the third window in will now be something else, not sure what yet though.

Thu 12 Sep 2024

Back to working on the deck.

I'm a bit of a stickler for things looking neat and lining up, so I make a template from a piece of metal to aid in getting all the screws evenly placed.

And for the first time I splashed out and bought a gadget that drills screw holes and countersinks them in one operation, no more swapping bits or needing multiple drills.

I've also bought some spacers to help get the spacing correct between the boards. These little fellows (the X-shaped orange thing in this photo) can be used to set 3, 4, 5 or 6mm spacing. In general I'm using 6mm but with this sort of thng it's more important to look right than actually be right, so many times I used smaller spacing.

Fri 13 Sep 2024

Here is the completed first half of the deck.

And some detail of the herring-bone style mitre join with only one side done.

Tue 17 Sep 2024

Some of our friends just chillin' at the pond's edge.

And some pond detail.

Tue 24 Sep 2024

The deck is mostly finished. Here is a detail photo of the herring-bone section where the two halves meet.

I made life much harder for myself to get this effect but it's well worth it I reckon.

Sat 28 Sep 2024

We start clearing around our friend's house today. This is what is looks like before we start.

Sun 29 Sep 2024

And after we finish.

It's not that obvious how much material we have moved really but this photo might give you some idea.

We dump most of it in the scar left by the digger when we had the driveway done a few months ago and this spot was used as a borrow pit to get the road base material.

Get a load of the lovely flowers on the Zen garden cage.

The food forest trees are growing nicely also.

And finally a photo of one corner of the lounge room which is designed to be a cosey tete-a-tete area.

Note the salt lamp. We have a lot of them around the house and they are never turned off. They are supposed to be good for you, especially when they use incandescant bulbs (not LED) because the old-style bulbs emit near infra-red radiation, the same as a fire does, and this is good for you it seems.

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