Plastering Finished and Making Arrangements to Move onto Property.

This is our new arrangement: The shipping container for us to move ALL our gear into this week. And the caravan on the right which we will call home for the next 2 months (no more I hope!).
Nettie starting to move things from our old house into the container.
The plasterers finished off the walls and cornices today. We will start fixing out (thats architraves, door jambs, doors etc) and the balcony balustrades tomorrow!!
The living room...
We've bought a few bits of furniture from the Central Coast Tender Centre, which is like a gigantic garage sale where you bid on items like in a silent auction. They have some great second hand stuff and we also bought these timber slabs from there this week. These slabs will be used in the house and laundry. The narrow ones are Camphor Laurel (which is an invasive, undesirable, introduced tree) and the laundry bench will be made with the silky oak slab (we like silky oak because we already have some antique furniture which is made from them) from a private local property.

The new 10m x 12m carport has been ordered and it will house a mezzanine on which the power system (inverter, batteries etc) will be located. The carport is going to be next to the shed/stable... but more on that later.

An update from Nettie

You'll be pleased to know Sooj is recovering well but he still has a nasty shiner! I on the other hand have had to take the past two days off work as I'm sick again with a nasty cold.

We have bought a caravan (complete with toilet, shower, oven/stove, microwave, fridge and freezer!) which we'll be living in on-site once we move out of our home at Berkeley Vale (by the 28th August...not long to go). This is going to be interesting but we can just pretend we are camping and I think we'll be fine.

The plasterers are doing their bit this week; they started last Friday and should be finished by Thursday. Then we can start the fit-out (or Bernie the builder can) and think about starting some painting...yes we have decided to do it ourselves, since I'm working part-time and we have the time to do it as the main constraint on moving in to the house is the power, which will take a while to complete. I've been looking into some paint options, including the various biopaints (non-toxic plant-based paints). I think we will probably end up using the new semi-enviro-friendly (ie, compared to regular paints that are available) Dulux paints (EnvirO2 and Aquanamel) rather than biopaints due to the big difference in price-tag. The new Dulux paints are low-VOC (volatile organic compounds that will contribute to air-pollution in the home), have reduced solvent emissions and are 100% greenhouse gas abated through the AGO greenhouse friendly programme. The Aquanamel is more enviro-friendly than regular enamel paint as it is water-based rather than oil(petrochemical)-based. Anyway, I'm still looking into paint options so might even change my mind on this one.

We are looking at about 8-9weeks before our remote-area solar power system will be ready. The panels (I think around 60 or so) will be placed on the roof or our carport (which is yet to be built) and the plan is to put the large battery system on a mezzanine in the carport (so will be well above the required flood zone level). The other essential which seems to be taking forever to sort-out, is the waste water treatment system (Biolytix) which hopefully will be in before the power. We just need to prepare the treated water dispersal area by clearing some scrub and levelling it with good quality soil (this is an area of 690m2 by the way, which is quite massive). Anyway, the dispersal area is going to be the site for many fruit trees (which should thrive with the high nutrient water) so at least the site will be semi-prepared for planting.

We have hired a 20ft shipping container to store everything from our house, on-site, until our new home is ready. I'm not looking forward to the whole moving process but it will be nice to be able to say goodbye to our old house and not have to worry about looking after it anymore.

Until next time,

Nettie

Gutter guards

I finished installing the steel gutter guard on the house today. When it came to gutter guards there were quite a few options but since we are in a fire threat area, the choices were narrowed pretty much to steel or aluminium products. There are a couple of different brands out there. We got the gutta-arma which is a BP Colourbond steel product which is basically a sheet of metal which is perforated then stretched to produce the grid-like openings. This system is supposed to be better than the aluminum mesh... but who really knows? Any guttering system on this colourbaond verandah roof (which is actually quite flat) would collect leaves and will need a regular blow-vac.

Shopping around I found a good metal mesh-type gutter guard called Guttershield (John 0412415581) , from as little as $11.90 p/m supplied only and approx double that installed, up to the Gutta-arma which was originally quoted to me by The Leaf-Man for about $31 p/m installed and supply only at ~$23 p/m. However, I also found a wholesale building supplier on the net which was selling the same Gutta-arma for $16.58p/m (Gutta-Arma 96345509)! So, when I quizzed The Leaf-Man about this, he sold me the colour-matched Gutta-arma for $17 incl. GST delivered....hmmmm

Installation is pretty damn easy (but uncomfortable!!!) and the saving of $13.50 p/m was well worth the effort (for ~80 metres of guttering, thats $1080.00)! The actual installation took me about 8 hours (thats about 5~6 minutes per 1.2 metre sheet) but cleaning the gutters took about 6 hours (Annette did about 4 of those). It went through about 1100 little hex screws (which were spplied) and 6.5 tubes of clear gutter silicone tubes (about $7.50 each).