Progress Report #1: the house

OK, OK, I know... I haven't been very good at posting things recently! It's been a combination of being too busy elsewhere, poor internet connection and general laziness and I do apologize. To make up for it, here is a digest of recent photographs of the house, shortly to be followed by another post about what's been happening in the 'grounds'.

















I thought you'd like to see a different view of the house, taken from the new earthworks above the studio. See the following post for details about all the excavation work. Soon (we hope!) the bare soil will be covered with grass and then shrubs (once we've worked out how to prevent the wallabies from eating any mass plantings). The tree ferns are beautiful and they are staying right where they are!
















I do love this view of the house, nestled into the landscape. Some elements of that landscape look a bit raw at the moment, but that will change...





















Inside the house the floor has been laid. This has had its frustrations, not least because the contractor deliberately bought the wrong grade of timber which, as it is milled specifically for each job, meant we couldn't return it.





















We requested 'Feature Grade' which is the lowest quality, because it comes with all the knots and marks and colouration that we feel gives the wood some character. It was hard enough getting the guy to buy stringy bark for us (which we wanted because we like the look of it and it's locally grown) so we were furious when we found out he'd gone for 'Standard Grade'. His view was that we didn't really know what we wanted and that he didn't want to work with Feature Grade wood because he didn't want to fill all the holes! He simply couldn't comprehend that we didn't want him to fill the damned things, we wanted a floor with lumps and bumps in it!






















This is the resulting flooring (complete with pencil marks), and it's OK. It is less bland than Premium Grade timber would have been, but also less lovely than Feature Grade... Our next battle is set to be about what treatment to put on it! The contractor likes polyurethane and we have specified a natural oil. His response was "I'll use OIL-BASED polyurethane", so as you can see, we have a problem - but I have told Warren that if the wrong product is used it will be sanded off at his own cost and the correct treatment will be applied!





















This is a view towards the front door (which will also be oil-finished, just so you know!), with the planter in the foreground, having just been core-filled prior to being rendered.





















A bath with a view!