More snaps of the architect's model

I must confess that I haven't glued the house model together yet, so it's in one piece thanks to the wonders of masking tape. But here you are, some photos!

I made models of some furniture. The main bedroom & en-suite cantilever out from the main building slightly

A view of the whole with roofs, planter boxes and front verandah!



This may not look much but is the cause of some angst:







the tall storage unit/bookcase that is the centrepiece of the open-plan living area, with its kitchen-side island unit

So where are we?

Well, we're creeping forwards, albeit slowly.

As regards the sale of the house we're currently living in, I discovered - by reading the local paper, mind you, not because either our landlord or managing agent thought to tell me - that our landlord has slashed the price of this place. Indeed, the advert has the price crossed out and the literate phrase, "Ouch! Make me an offer!" written over it. All of which presumably indicates that the pressure is on him to sell at least one of his properties and he's taking action accordingly. I am sure he would maintain that there's no need for us to panic, but somehow our comfortable belief that as the property was vastly over-priced and therefore wouldn't sell and therefore there was no need to panic is evaporating... Consequently I am about to start ringing round estate agents and making bookings to view properties. I'll go and see what I can this week, while Michael's away, and shortlist some properties (hopefully...) to look at when he gets back next week. It's a total pain in the neck.

Meanwhile, back at the block... We HAVE the DA paperwork for the house but the council planning officer apparently 'didn't notice' that the plans were submitted with a swimming pool clearly marked, hence a number of frantic phone calls which have resulted in Christian having to submit additional paperwork for additional approvals which will result in an additional Construction Certificate and associated additional fees. Ho hum. Quite how one could have 'missed' a large pool clearly marked in both text and plans I'm not sure.

Construction Certificates do seem to me to be a licence to collect money. We paid whopping fees to get the DA, for which the 'average' processing period through this council is allegedly 12 weeks, or so they like to claim. But in fact it's taken over 20 weeks and they managed to miss the pool. But then, of course, one has to get Construction Certificates, which effectively sign off at various benchmarks throughout the construction phase, resulting in an Occupation Certificate if you've ticked all the boxes in the process. We've had to separate out the Construction Certificates for the shed and the house, otherwise the completion of one would be dependent upon the completion of the other, and of course we need the shed to be built first to provide us with storage and the builder with amenities during construction. Separating out the Construction Certificate for the pool will at least mean we can get an Occupation Certificate for the house without needing to complete the pool (which we can't yet afford to build!), so that makes sense, but I do find paying for another one slightly annoying. We're haemmorhaging money and the build hasn't yet started. I'm not exactly surprised, though; after all, I have watched several series of Grand Designs with a certain amount of horror!

We should get the Construction Certificate for the shed through this week, which will enable the shed contractor to employ a concreter to pour the slab. This then needs to dry (about a week to ten days, I think) before the walls and roof can be put on. Then we will have somewhere we can store our stuff - including all the boxes currently in the house plus excess furniture, given that we'll have to up-sticks and move soon.

We won't get the Construction Certificate for the main house through until we've signed a contract with a builder and they've presented copies of their licence and insurance to Council. And we can't get our mortgage finalised with the bank until we've engaged a builder and signed that contract... and we're waiting for Dan Duffy to get back to us with an indication of a price before we can decide what to do. Both he and John Newton are still in the running, but we are slightly worried about John's view of things: he maintains he can't build the house for less than $500,000 which is all very fine but we just don't have that kind of money. We thought initially that he might not be that interested in the job, given that he seems to be in demand locally, but jobs must be drying up at the moment because he phoned us to enquire how we were getting on. However, he's not willing to go through a pricing process for us: he just wants to give us a rough estimate. He has offered to 'supply goods at cost' for the build and negotiate a fixed builders' fee on top, but I have to say that everyone we've mentioned this too has shaken their heads and said it's a con, as we'd have no way of knowing whether the price of the supplies was genuine, the lowest available or heavily marked-up! And I have to say that while it appears to be a generous offer, it isn't as transparent as it seems... Dan, by contrast, is out there pricing everything up and looking around for good suppliers at the best price, and wants to talk to us about the various options and the cost implications thereof. Hmmm. We'll see what happens.

So there you go. I have three main tasks - in addition to my own work! - while Michael's away: nag Council about getting the Construction Certificate for the shed into my sticky little mitts; pursue Dan about his pricing exercise; and finding us somewhere else to live in the meantime. Lucky me!

Extreme weather

After a week or so of unusually inclement weather things are returning to normal. but last Tuesday we had a HUGE hail storm, as witness these photos:







Normally the scene should have shown bright spring sunshine, not hail stones bigger than a large egg...



Some were the size of my fist, but the storm had stopped by the time I ventured out and it was melting!

Little boxes on the hillside

At home I've continued to enjoy myself with making a model of our new house, from the architect's plans. It's been tricky in places! Mainly, I think, because the plans have been printed and reprinted on different printers, with the result that not all the sheets are to exactly the same scale. Although technically the plans are 1:100 at A3 size, variations in printing mean that they're not all the same, which has made resolving the design of the roof particularly difficult. Luckily I'm enjoying the challenge and here are some working photos from this morning.

Anna Fisher was very helpful, telling me that usually architects' models are made from foam core and mount board, which saved me the hardship of trying to cut thicker greyboard and paint it white.




The house, without internal walls, obviously







This is the bedroom end



Looking into the studio - office building

There's a garden storage room on one end; I made models of the larger furniture!


I have to say that making the models is fascinating: not in an Airfix-ated kind of way, but because making the models and seeing how the spaces fit together gives me a huge insight into how the building is going to 'work' for us. Already I'm conscious of how much bigger the studio/office building is compared to the house's main living areas! I want to finish the models soon, partly so that Michael and I have a chance to think carefully about the way the spaces work, and partly so that our builder and our architect can use them.

Water, water

Water does seem to play a big part in our life at Wakelands Road, particularly when there isn't any. You'll recall us running out of water late last year when we didn't understand how the bore/tank/hose/tank/pump system worked, and the belly-laughs we had trying to convince our managing agent that the noise of water in our bedroom betokened the hot water system gaily pumping our drinking water out into the paddock...

A week or so ago the "water feature" that diverts half of the pool cleaning pump away from cleaning the pool ceased to flow because the motor went and the motor had to be replaced as the water went green and furry.

Yesterday we tried to turn on said new pump and nothing happened: no water flowed through the water feature and into the swimming pool, but we don't think the motor has failed (although we're not sure what the problem is, exactly).

Today's moment of amusement came when Michael tried to turn on the pump leading from the bore up to the above-ground holding tank, thinking that he'd pump up a tankful of water and use it to help fill the swimming pool which has been gradually going down through evaporation as we've had quite a dry winter. Well nothing happened. Or more accurately, the pump sprang into action as soon as the power was switched on but nothing came out of the ground.

Does this mean that there's no more water in the bore? I guess it could be the case, after all I don't suppose we're the only household around here using the bore - it would be quite odd if a geological feature like that was reserved exclusively for this house. Or does it mean that co-incidentally the water pumps are failing almost simultaneously?

Whatever the answer, our problems are compounded by the fact that it's a bank holiday and our managing agency is closed, and as it's the school holidays our landlord is away. Of course, this house is also on the market, and our landlord is going to be thrilled to bits that things are breaking down at a point when he's trying to sell the place because he doesn't have any money, so I daresay we won't be popular when he finds out!

Talking about selling the house, one of the selling agents brought around an American family on Saturday to look at things, but they didn't get as far as looking in the office where Michael, Ella and I were holed up because as they said to Jim, they really loved the scenery but would bulldoze the house! They also commented that for the money they'd expect everything to be spick-and-span. I don't envy the agents, really. The house is on the market with two companies, one of which is the agency through whom we rent it, and both agents had the tricky task of telling our landlord that they think he's put it on the market for too much money. Jim said our landlord clearly thinks they don't know how much he paid for it, but of course they have access to previous sales figures through the Land Registry. So they know that he's asking $100,000 more than he paid for it two years ago, and the problem is that the market here is stagnant and the house has been quietly deteriorating. Our landlord has put in a new kitchen, but it's nothing flash and hasn't been properly finished so it would have cost him $8,000 at most and certainly doesn't justify the hike in price.

Anyone buying this place would have to spend money on the spa (which is cracking and will need to be replaced), the swimming pool (a 25 year old concrete pool with deteriorating grout and half a cleaning system which has broken below-ground pipes), the pool area (rotten timbers and uneven tiling), the gutters (almost all of them need serious attention), the roof (decidedly dodgy and leaking), the bathrooms (all of which need renovation) and the windows (all of which have corroding aluminium frames). All up you'd probably have to spend the best part of $100,000! And for the same money around here you could buy a 4 or 5 bed new build home on less land but with a new pool and ocean views...

Who knows what will happen. My money is on our landlord reducing the price of the house he lives in and managing to sell it, and thus booting us out of here so that he can move back in. I'll cope well enough with that as long as it happens after Christmas! I just don't want to up sticks and move again now. If we can get our building going and put the shed up, and if I can see progress and we have to move the other side of Christmas then I might be more sanguine about the idea of living in a caravan on-site, or moving into the shed for a while. We could just say stuff it and set about finding a new home for 6 - 9 months right now, but I don't have the energy and we've got enough other changes on the cards, not least getting our daughter through the process of starting at a new school.

Monday morning, 6am

I couldn't sleep last night, probably not helped by our darling daughter's incursion into our bedroom after she'd had a nightmare. Usually I can nod back off again without a problem, but not today, so after fidgetting for an hour I decided to leave Michael in peace and sneak off to the office to catch up on a few things! As I write there is that lovely early-morning cool in the air, with the scent of wisteria wafting in from outside and a band of marauding wood ducks advancing across the paddock. Lovely. I can also hear, from the sound of the hot water tank which is in the office, that Patrick is up and about and having a shower, ready for work. He's going to be a bit surprised to see me up!

Anyway, never mind all that. I was going to refer to a few websites I've found recently that contain things I'd love to have for the house but can't afford...

It seems, looking at what I've been looking at recently, that I have a bit of a love affair with paper, particularly in sculptural form. I stumbled across the somewhat improbably named FlexibleLove website a while ago, after I saw pictures of their expandable cardboard seating in a design magazine. I just love the incongruity - and what you might call sustainability - of using cardboard for seating. Sadly, however, the cheap nature of the materials is rarely reflected in the price...

Farm Design's furniture uses similar materials in some of its furniture, but while I love Giles Miller's Pool Rocker I'm not going to pay GBP750 for it... If I'm that keen, I'll have to use all the boxes from moving house, cut them up and work out something for myself! The thing is, though, I'm perhaps being a little unfair about the cost of design and of the work that goes into making something. No matter what the end result is made from, someone has spent considerable time and effort designing and making it, and the high unit costs for the production model reflect that, as I know from making my own work. So the truth is that I would pay the money (if I had it), but sadly can't afford the item.

I clearly do love cardboard, for another website that caught my eye was Bloxes.com. I could see myself making something from these just because they're so ingenious. I'd say Andrew Wilson and Aza Raskin have had a lot of fun with them, judging by some of the photos on the website... Just great for kids, I reckon, viz. the giraffe!

Perhaps my favourite website for corrugated paper furniture and products is Molo. They make honeycomb paper structures that act as seating, partitions, lamps and dividers, and the overall effect is beautiful. They're based in Vancouver and if I had the money I really would buy some of their products. So there.