Superstar!

I picked up darling husband from the airport yesterday morning and together with dearest daughter (who has been so stressed out with all of our moving around that she was granted an exceptional day off school by her teacher in order to spend some time with daddy) we went for a drive up to the block. And this is what we saw when we got there!






Do you see the similarities with the model I built from the plans last year?




















It's fantastic to see the building clad in Zincalume and with the windows in place...














The silver cladding is really funky!





The bank of gel batteries in the shed that will store our solar power until we need to use it












One of two ground mounted solar arrays that will track the sun


Here's the other one with darling husband next to it, to give a sense of scale!








Things seem a lot more 'real' now the physical structures are going up, and we are really excited. It's all made a lot more pertinent given our current renting situation. For those that haven't been following my DoubleElephant blog, the sorry tale in brief is that after weathering weeks of uncertainty and disruption owing to fractured water pipes in the lovely house we're renting (including having to move out to emergency accommodation for two weeks and then back in again), our landlady has told us we can't continue our contract beyond the beginning of January... It's been highly stressful and I am currently investigating our options, in the sense of whether we have any recourse to a tenancy tribunal with regard to the fact that we haven't had full or peaceful enjoyment of the property during our rental contract.

That's another story, I guess, but what has been exercising our minds is what the *&^% we do now that we can't stay in the rented house? At this point I'd like you to put your hands together for wonderful Warren, our builder. Despite all the shenanigans with our mortgage he's been solidly behind us and is, in fact, suggesting that he can complete the studio building before Christmas so that we could move in there for a few months until the main house is finished. What a star!

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

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.