Plaster of Progress

MORE progress... We went up there on Sunday morning, once I'd collected dearest husband from the airport, and to our astonishment we found two utes up there, with one person fixing cladding panels on the rear wall of the office/studio where we'd had to move a window, and another inside doing the waterproof membrane in the bathroom! Talk about dedication to the cause; fantastic!

























Inside the office/studio the walls have now been plastered. I think the different colours indicate joins between panels and the location of the P50 (?) shadow moulding around the doors and windows. I don't like architraves or cornicing (except in historic buildings) which is why we're having the P50 moulding instead around the doors and windows and a "square set" finish around the tops of the walls. In here we're also having a skirting board as a sort of test run because I hate the damned things... the problem is a) it's cheaper to have a skirting board because it means that the plastering around the bottom of each wall doesn't have to be so accurate and b) a skirting board protects a potentially delicate lower edge to the wall from things like over-enthusiastic vacuuming. I don't care as much about the office/studio as I will care about the interior of the main house so we're trying it out, with the proviso that if I really object to it, we could instead put a piece of hardwood around the bottom of the walls with a P50 shadow moulding above it, which would mean a flush finish and a shadow line but no protruding skirting board. Why not do this in the office/studio? Because it costs a lot more!





















The main house now has a roof which changes how it feels standing inside at the moment. You get a real sense of the internal dimensions of the rooms now, and it's just great. In the photo you can see the stacks of foam that will form the rear walls of the house: it's self-insulated, if you see what I mean, and so thermally efficient and reasonably priced. The foam pieces are glued together and then covered with a special external render (and we haven't chosen the colour yet). Against the frame you can just see the windows which have also arrived. While the main effort is definitely in getting the office/studio finished there is also a push to get the exterior of the house finished before Christmas. None of the internal partitioning or plastering will be done, but hopefully the walls, cladding, windows and front door will go in so that it is at 'lock up' stage by Christmas.

One of the advantages of working like this is that we'll be able to trial some things in the office/studio before committing ourselves in the main house. For example we have just chosen some floor and wall tiles for the office/studio bathroom, as well as the tapware and bathroom fittings. If we like them we'll use them throughout the main house as well. I'm also about to choose the paint colour for my studio and we'll have the chance to live with it and see it in different lights before using it anywhere else.

What else? Well finally, after doing a lot of jumping up and down last week, it seems as if we are making some progress with the mortgage. Put it this way, mentioning the word ombudsman seems to have had an effect! Suddenly we have letters and extra forms to be filled in and promises of immediate action. Fingers crossed that money could appear in people's bank accounts by the end of this week... meanwhile we've stumped up some more of our own cash to get things going with the sewerage people, and the first actual solar panels have gone up on the roof of the shed. It's very exciting!