We have power! Electricity that is! Successfully connected today & well under budget so we are very pleased. it all went smoothly with no hiccups. The trench will remain open while we organise the sewer & water next week, gap & phone lines after that.
The lights in the caravan even work!
The meter box is positioned exactly where it will sit once the house is built so there'll be no moving it at that time (planned to reduce electricains cost). We are pleased to have found an electrician taking Bartercard so that reduces the cash expenditure nicely. He & the plumber are both happy to let Kim do a lot of the preparation work too & have both offered to give advice along the way. So we have had nothing but good experiences with tradesmen so far.
better try & sleep, it's 3.30 am & I've been lying awake worrying about a few parcels I've sent going missing in the post lately. Someone left me negative feedback so I guess I'd better prepare myself for more, ebay buyers seem to not understand that I can't prevent loss in the post, somehow I am to blame. I get so upset by it, not to mention the rude emails. If only people could be nice, it's so hard to take when I am so tired. It is strange that several parcels have vanished so I will have to call the PO on Monday & try & track them down. Until then I'll try to not stress about my feedback & people thinking that I'm a crook?!!
Subscribe To
Posts
All Comments
Saturday 31 March 2007
Friday 30 March 2007
progress!!
I'm just not finding the time to update this as often as I'd like! Work takes up all of my spare time, & then I'm not getting enough work done either. Daylight savings (the end of it) has thrown our sleep routine (what sleep, what routine?) & I am TIRED!! Ivy is waking between 6 & 7 every morning, not that early for a baby I suppose but when I never get to bed before midnight it's too early. Kim's been getting up with her a bit but he's not getting to be early enough either so he's tired too.
Anyway, at least things are finally moving forward at an exciting rate! We have had delays due to lots of rain but the weather has cleared & so has our building site!
We have a large empty expanse of dirt!
It looks strange but somehow it's now easier to imagine a house sitting there
Eddie did a great job with his bobcat & was so fast!
.
It's been an exciting time for Finn with diggers to watch as the shed & house sites were cleared.
We have some good shade trees left across the front of the house.
WE'VE FOUND 4 OF THESE funny looking frogs buried in the ground!! He's about 3 inches long.
RETURNING FROM THE POND ACROSS THE ROAD AFTER RELEASING OUR FROG IN A SAFER PLACE.
The kids have been great spending long periods playing on their own by the caravan in the parking area which has become a nice little playground/eating spot. A bit of cake helps them stay put for a while!
Ivy's enjoying eating the dirt. At least it's clean dirt!
Finn has been as helpful as ever especially with his chainsaw, helping Daddy cut up the last of the big trees to come down!
Job's nearly done, time for a beer.
Ivy in her Ergo hangin out with mum in the truck, heading to the back of the block to unload firewood. Mum is losing weight rapidly, hooray!!!
Bosun enjoying every minute of it too!!
Ivy helping with the saved plants??!!
Anyway, at least things are finally moving forward at an exciting rate! We have had delays due to lots of rain but the weather has cleared & so has our building site!
We have a large empty expanse of dirt!
It looks strange but somehow it's now easier to imagine a house sitting there
Eddie did a great job with his bobcat & was so fast!
.
It's been an exciting time for Finn with diggers to watch as the shed & house sites were cleared.
We have some good shade trees left across the front of the house.
WE'VE FOUND 4 OF THESE funny looking frogs buried in the ground!! He's about 3 inches long.
RETURNING FROM THE POND ACROSS THE ROAD AFTER RELEASING OUR FROG IN A SAFER PLACE.
The kids have been great spending long periods playing on their own by the caravan in the parking area which has become a nice little playground/eating spot. A bit of cake helps them stay put for a while!
Ivy's enjoying eating the dirt. At least it's clean dirt!
Finn has been as helpful as ever especially with his chainsaw, helping Daddy cut up the last of the big trees to come down!
Job's nearly done, time for a beer.
Ivy in her Ergo hangin out with mum in the truck, heading to the back of the block to unload firewood. Mum is losing weight rapidly, hooray!!!
Bosun enjoying every minute of it too!!
Ivy helping with the saved plants??!!
Thursday 22 March 2007
DIGGER!!!
We've had Eddie the Excavator on the block yesterday so we have no more tree stumps in the building areas & a flattenned parking area that we added gravel to last night. We have moved the caravan to the parking area & set up a good play space for the kids. Eddie will be levelling the building sites (house & shed) today. Will add photos soon. It looks VERY different!
Off to the PO now with a mountain of parcels, trying to keep up with work, very hard! Was on the block until 6.30 last night, then off to Brody's class meeting until 9pm, home to a late dinner & worked til 12.30. Ivy woke at 6am. Tired!!!
Off to the PO now with a mountain of parcels, trying to keep up with work, very hard! Was on the block until 6.30 last night, then off to Brody's class meeting until 9pm, home to a late dinner & worked til 12.30. Ivy woke at 6am. Tired!!!
Wednesday 14 March 2007
MULCHING, CUTTING, LOPPING & STACKING
Since my last post all we have done is cut down trees, lop them up into firewood, load the truck, empty it at the firewood pile at the back of the block (the stacks at the front of the block were taking over our future parking area) & MULCHING!!
Finn's favourite game at the moment is mulching, he starts up his imaginary mulcher, makes all the right sound effects & makes up feel like we're back on the block again with that delightful noise, God bless him ( : Then he proceeds to feed toys & things to his mulcher. That's when he's not playing "brushcutter" or "chain saw".
Anyway, we're making head way & we have a clearing for a house, one for a shed & one for a parking area. We have the excavator/bobcat man (eddie) booked for next Wednesday to grade the parking area flat (the plan is to pave it in old bricks) & remove tree stumps. We'll then move the caravan, trailer & our rapidly expanding collection of toys & bits & pieces into the parking area so we can fall the only remaining tree that needs to come down. the caravan is in the way at the moment, it's a big tree & it will be awful to see it come down but we don't have the choice, it's too close to the house. Once that's down, more lopping up, stacking, mulching & then Eddie will level out the shed & house sites & dig the trench from the road for the power, sewer, gas & phone Kim has started organising all that this week so it's starting feel feel like we're moving toward something real, finally!
Finn's favourite game at the moment is mulching, he starts up his imaginary mulcher, makes all the right sound effects & makes up feel like we're back on the block again with that delightful noise, God bless him ( : Then he proceeds to feed toys & things to his mulcher. That's when he's not playing "brushcutter" or "chain saw".
Anyway, we're making head way & we have a clearing for a house, one for a shed & one for a parking area. We have the excavator/bobcat man (eddie) booked for next Wednesday to grade the parking area flat (the plan is to pave it in old bricks) & remove tree stumps. We'll then move the caravan, trailer & our rapidly expanding collection of toys & bits & pieces into the parking area so we can fall the only remaining tree that needs to come down. the caravan is in the way at the moment, it's a big tree & it will be awful to see it come down but we don't have the choice, it's too close to the house. Once that's down, more lopping up, stacking, mulching & then Eddie will level out the shed & house sites & dig the trench from the road for the power, sewer, gas & phone Kim has started organising all that this week so it's starting feel feel like we're moving toward something real, finally!
Monday 5 March 2007
what a cutie! Ivy at Emma & Davids, yesterday. She loved those stairs!
looking acroos our block to the south, across our neighbour Sid & Natalie's block to Kate & Christians house who are our 2nd neighbours.
Finn having a rest in the truck after a big day stacking fire wood!
the boys!
Looking North into the bush, this is where the house will face so will be our view from my office, kitchen & deck. No neighbours on this side , just a sandy dirt road leading up into the bush.
The first of what I hope will become a large collection of saved native plants for future garden beds.
Our house site. The tree in the foreground with the white ribbon on it is staying, the house will sit a few metres behind it. You can see a black star picket on the rigt hand side of the photo, that's the north west corner of the verandah.
All the trees with ties are staying. Kim's workshop will sit in front of Sid & Natalie's studio, next to our house & will be built in the same materials & in a similar style to the house. I'll scan the plans in in the next few days.
Our caravan sitting on the house site, we aquired this from Freecycle & it's been great to have somewhere to sit & eat out of the sun/rain & to put the kids down for sleeps. Yes it's old but serves us well! One day I might even give it a wash!
Kim & Finn's colllection of chainsaws.
about half our collection of firewood, & still lots to go!
Finn helping Daddy, we don't know what we'd do without him! (Don't worry, he's never this close when the chainsaw's really going!).
The boy in action.
Chelsea & her friend Merade fire twirling on Ivy's birthday, we had a party on the block & the kids had their friends over.
Me & my baby girl on her birthday. Isn't she gorgeous!!??
Friday 2 March 2007
photos coming soon
This is fun, I could waste a lot of time doing this!
Our building site is starting to look like a building site, big cleared areas surrounded by trees! I'll be adding some photos tonight.
Our building site is starting to look like a building site, big cleared areas surrounded by trees! I'll be adding some photos tonight.
The Beginning
2 FEB 07
Well here I go with my 1st post to my 1st blog! I have been planning this for a while but haven't made the time to do it. At least I've started before the house has begun, as that's the whole idea behind this, to keep a log of our house building project here in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, 2 hours drive West of Sydney, NSW, Australia.
We purchased our half acre (2200 square metre) block of bush land in May 2006, put a building application in to council some months later (nothing happens quickly when you have 2 children under 2!) & received our approved BA in late January 2007. So this month we have begun clearing the house site, shed site & parking space. It is a lot of hard work & we have had lots of chainsaw trouble (the joy of doing everythingon a tight budget) but we're getting there. I keep busy carting & stacking firewood (usually with 1 year old Ivy on my back) while Kim keeps on falling & cutting trees. We already have about 3 years worth of firewood stacked! Finn, now 2.5 years, is absolutely loving it. He has his toy chainsaws that make realistic noises , one even has a chain that moves, so he is giving daddy lots of help. He is also great at carting firewood, he would have carted 100 pieces over the last couple of weeks! Yesterday he was on the "block" for about 6 hours, skipped his afternoon nap, & just did not stop. He got to the point of falling over every few minutes he was so tired & nearly got a stick in his eye at one point but still didn't want to go home! In the end I had to insist with the promise of jumping on the bed with Brody (13 yr old big brother) to entice him into the car. With his help we'll have our house built in no time lol!
Our goal is to build our 4 bedroom house to completion for $60 000. That incudes everything from bank fees for the mortgage to all sevice connection & all materials, tradesmen (plumber & electrician), etc. "Your dreaming!" I hear you say? We'll see ( :
Well here I go with my 1st post to my 1st blog! I have been planning this for a while but haven't made the time to do it. At least I've started before the house has begun, as that's the whole idea behind this, to keep a log of our house building project here in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, 2 hours drive West of Sydney, NSW, Australia.
We purchased our half acre (2200 square metre) block of bush land in May 2006, put a building application in to council some months later (nothing happens quickly when you have 2 children under 2!) & received our approved BA in late January 2007. So this month we have begun clearing the house site, shed site & parking space. It is a lot of hard work & we have had lots of chainsaw trouble (the joy of doing everythingon a tight budget) but we're getting there. I keep busy carting & stacking firewood (usually with 1 year old Ivy on my back) while Kim keeps on falling & cutting trees. We already have about 3 years worth of firewood stacked! Finn, now 2.5 years, is absolutely loving it. He has his toy chainsaws that make realistic noises , one even has a chain that moves, so he is giving daddy lots of help. He is also great at carting firewood, he would have carted 100 pieces over the last couple of weeks! Yesterday he was on the "block" for about 6 hours, skipped his afternoon nap, & just did not stop. He got to the point of falling over every few minutes he was so tired & nearly got a stick in his eye at one point but still didn't want to go home! In the end I had to insist with the promise of jumping on the bed with Brody (13 yr old big brother) to entice him into the car. With his help we'll have our house built in no time lol!
Our goal is to build our 4 bedroom house to completion for $60 000. That incudes everything from bank fees for the mortgage to all sevice connection & all materials, tradesmen (plumber & electrician), etc. "Your dreaming!" I hear you say? We'll see ( :
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
how many visitors have I had?
clustrmap
