The egg carton

A diversion from house building arose with the imminent arrival of 3 wynadotte hens. These classy chicks deserved the best! So, we combined a quad bike shipping crate, the screen door from our old house (these are surprisingly easy to cut down), left over flashing and guttering from the current build and a few sheets of zincalume to produce - the "egg carton".

This was great practice for the Carapark rebuild and the chickens are very happy.

The Egg Carton

Pandemic powered progress

Some of our friends have asked how we've been travelling during the lock-down.  To be honest, the impact has been pretty minimal. In fact, with Church now online (you can binge here - if you're curious I gave the message on April 19, starting around 11 minutes in) and Bible study via Zoom, we've had more time to work at home.

The latest milestone is the completion of our bedroom window.  The design brief required panels across the bottom that would prompt us to be thankful. After some reflective and fun family discussions we decided on the following, from left to right:

1. The gospel (here's a summary)
2. Our love for each other (ie, Jeanette and I) 
3. Family (it's a stylized tree)
4. Friends (it's a ... oh, you can guess)
5. Our life's journey
6. Our home
7. Time to rest
8. God's creation
9. Our hope in Heaven

The other COVID19 related success is the installation of our en-suite window.  After 11 casement windows this is my first venture into a single hung sash configuration.  We had fun picking through our glass stash finding left overs from previous projects.

And finally, COVID19 is responsible for the guest room door.  The cedar door came from Jeanette's, Dad's childhood home (circa 1928). One hundred years later it was missing some bits - which are now, of course, lead light.

Guest room from outside

Guest room door from inside

I'm pleased there aren't many windows to go, only:

• 8 fixed panels,
• 5 sash windows, and
• 2 casement windows.

Cypress weatherboards

My Dad owned a sawmill in Grenfell NSW when I was growing up. He milled only one species of timber – native cypress pine, Callitris Hugelii,  as had his father, and his father and his father. I have nice memories of when Dad would arrive home from the mill around 5:30pm with a bunch of floor board off cuts under one arm and his esky size “portable” 240 volt calculator under the other. The off cuts weren't just firewood, on them were the scribbled phone orders he'd taken during the day.Even now, when I smell cypress sawdust (or sump oil for that matter), I picture Dad walking through the back door. 

Mum & Dad, 2002,  at Mum's OAM presentation -
probably one of Dad's proudest hours.

So when it came to cladding our timber framed walls how could we possibly choose anything other than cypress weatherboards? And what a nostalgic time it has been. A local mill, North Eden Timber, had what we needed and the quality was brilliant. If you need specialist timber on the South Coast they're certainly worth a call. (No, it's not a paid announcement.)

One of the niggling things with cypress is that it doesn't like being nailed near its end (who does?). It splits (actually, just holding a nail near the timber will make it split). To make the job more fun (really?) we chose to scribe the end of the boards so they matched the bricks' profile.


After some experimentation we decided to pre-drill each board and screw it onto the studs using square head, stainless steel screws. The result? No splitting (but many, many, many hours of drilling and screwing. But did I mention, no splitting?)

We are so pleased with the journey and ultimate result we're going to use cypress weatherboards on another wall. 

Watch this space.

Hidden Secrets

In preparation for the next stage of our building project we've been religiously rereading the Timbercrete building manual. As a result, it occurred to me that there are a few things that the casual observer may not realise are hidden inside a well built "TC" wall.  Here's just three:

DPC

Source: Timbercrete building manual

The Timbercrete manual recommends the use of galvanised flashing over a termite deterring coating. This structure, called a damp proof course (DPC), forms the base on which the bricks are laid.

Source: Timbercrete building manual

Threaded rod

Each wall incorporates vertical threaded rods that help hold down the roof. (Note to self: holding a roof up is not usually as big a challenge as holding it down.) Each rod is a couple of metres long with a hook at the bottom so it won't pull out of the brickwork. We will have about 20 of these rods.

Hoop iron

Source: Timbercrete building manual

The bricks on every second course (or row) have a steel strap joining them together. For our 1,100 brick project we will need 300 metres of strap and about 1,400 screws to attach it.

We're off again...

Well, it's been a busy couple of months. Just before Christmas the Bega Valley Shire Council approved our application to add two ground level bedrooms and a kitchen to our home. Since then we've been sourcing timber, lead and glass for the windows and doing the ground work for the slab.  In fact, all going well, we pour the slab on Feb 11.

Carapark window

Windows.  It didn't initially occur to me, but it's over 12 years since I made the windows for the existing house. Consequently, I've had to revisit my notes to remind myself of just what's involved.  For some practice, I rebuilt the port hole window for our Carapark van in leadlight.

Not dog proof

Bugs.  After enduring the last bug season we decided that we needed fly screens on at least a couple of the downstairs openings.  But instead of building screen doors we decided to try chains.  We ordered the cheapest ones we could find on eBay and, to our surprise, they work pretty well at keeping the bugs out. But as you can see, they are a total fail when it comes to keeping the dog in. 

Bomb site. As I write this the house paddock looks like a bombsite. We have excavated the footings for the new rooms, setup the formwork and roughed in the plumbing. The knock on effect is dust, clay, excavator tracks and "stuff" everywhere. As Napoleon said (though there are some other bidders for the title) "On ne fuit pas d'omette sans casser des oeufs".

Bomb site