All hands on Deck

The wind has died down!
Finish painting back gable! Tie rope around chest and onto interior roof support, Climb out gable window, walk along to top of ladder (1 big step) stand on that while paint gable wall, under gable and facing.
Avoid looking down.

Only Dad come up to help today but he bought some new sash window weight panels to replace the missing ones in the kitchen and lounge so he got to install those.

Get back down off the roof and adjust trestle and ladder so it covers the end of the gable, climb back up and repeat - this time its three steps from the window across the (steep) roof to the top of the ladder. Get Dad to hang on end of the rope and pass me the paint tin and paintbrush.
Exterior painting completed
(as much as is possible till the verandah is fixed). Hoo bloody ray.
When it next needs painting its time to sell the house...

The work gang is working on the front deck planking so switch over to assist with that - complete both front (12m x 6m wrap around front and side of house) and back decks (about 2m x 2m).
Peter cutting planking to length (chop saw), Darryl nailing the (mitered) joins, Blair (till lunch), me and Dad adjusting spacing and nailing them all down. Me and Dad did the side deck and back decking with Peter cutting the pieces to length - those bits took about 2-3 hours.
Try out the front deck at afternoon tea time - nice sunny afternoon - think It'll probably do so tell Peter we'll keep it (:-)

I put a test splotch of paint stripper on the lounge door last night and today I notice the paint come off really easily with just the edge of my knife.
Something to get the girls on later perhaps.

Days of wind and sand

Setup and tie ladder to trestle for painting remainder of back gable, Chicken out when climb up and see how much the wind was gusting - takes both hands to hold the window open against the wind gusts.
Hold off for the wind to die down later in the day (it didnt).

Dad and Eb arrived so get Eb painting the toilet window before its installed and Dad fixing window catches in gable window while I paint (interior) scotia for Blair to put up above the gib board.

After that get Dad (and later me) onto fixing the broken sash cord and counterweight in the RHS Lounge sash window.
Open the sash weight panel and find the old weight, remove it.
Take the facing beading out of the window and pull out the window.
Attach some new sash rope and thread it through the pulley and onto the weight. You need about 6 hands for this to hold the window, the weight, get the sash cord threaded and nailed onto the window and the weight attached without either dropping the window or swinging the weight any of which will invariably break the window.

Send Eb around house replacing putty in windows.

Still really windy outside (blowing dust so cant see either) so get all three of us onto the garage - wire brush rust off walls inside and out and then paint with fisholene. Will prime with rust primer after that dries in a week or so.

Bit of a bitsa nothing day since the wind precluded much outside work

Weekend

Stratford A+P show with Brendas lot and Dad and Mary. Looked at the new farm machinery. Dad seems very taken by some little off road 4 wheel drive trucks which He thinks he can fit his sit-on-mower on the back of.

Out to Makahu to catchup with the extended family (a cousins 50th birthday do) - a good catchup and boozeup was had by all. There is certainly a horde of us when we all get together.

My Uncle showed me his installed (retrofitted) solar hot water heating system. He ended up with an active system in the end (extra $600 for pump and controller) since his hot water (header) tank wasnt higher than his placement of the solar panels. Looks like quite a good system - its all low pressure and fits into the existing wetback and hot water cylinder setup. The Panels heat the water directly in parallel with the wetback piping. The controller senses temp diff panels and water cylinder and fires the pump on or off accordingly.
Whole setup cost him a bit over $2000 ( 2 panels + pump + controller + piping + installation) About $1800 for parts and the rest installation, copper tubing (not much as its pretty centralised) and the Grab-and-Snatch Tax.
He gave me the tech and installation manual for some bedtime reading.

Adventures in scaffolding

Spend 2 hours digging in and bracing a trestle in front of the back gable and strapping the big ladder at 3/4 extension to it so can get up the roof to the gable. The boys giving me shit about engineering tickets and time for construction but I'm the one that has to get up the thing and it isnt moving when I climb or swing on it.

Climb the damn thing and paint the end of the gable (15 mins painting). Should have placed it about 2 feet to the left.

Move the structure sideways and renail/brace and repeat doing the middle part of the gable, eaves and facings. (80 minutes setup, 40 minutes painting).
Climb into the attic and out the gable window and using the end of the ladder do around the window and all its edges and faces. Put some more nails in the gable facing boards and window faces.

Getting a bit late then so decide to leave the rest for Monday.
Move the trestle and dig, nail and brace in place ready for the final section,

Jamie and Kait working on painting front of house and under verandah/deck area as high as they can reach.

End of work day talking to Peter who thinks its a good idea (aesthetically) to do front deck all the way across front of house - agreed.

Shonagh checking view out bathroom and thinks water tank blocks her sightline so Peter suggests we move it down and around edge of garage a little. This has side effect of making water off garage roof available for water tank as well so that works for me...

One third of the back gable to do!!

Paint High

Jamie and Kait painting window outsides/frames/merlins/...,
Dad and Eb having a day off.
Bob and Peter setting up decking supports ( piles and bearers).
Me work on getting sash windows working since some of the previous days painting has gummed them up.

Work gang brought the big ladder so gird myself and setup ladder,
put ladder support nails in facing boards and paint entire front of
kitchen gable, both sides of peak and equivalent of two coats
- now the front of the house is looking real sharp (modulo the crap
iron of the old verandah).
Only the back gable to go!!!

Big Paint

Dad and Eb, Jamie and Kait all turn up early so have them all painting.
Jamie and Kait doing Front Bay then windows round MBR and lounge.
Eb on Lounge wall below overhang, Dad lying on verandah roofing and painting faces and eaves above verandah iron.
Me on gloop duty - find holes or gaps and fill it/them with gap sealer or white plaster stuff.
Dad paint front bay as high as can get off trestle but need a long ladder which we dont have.
Anyway get back and road side of house mostly finished, Front as high as Jamie+Kait can reach

Paint by horde

Checked house - Jamie had done a nice job finishing the Kitchen-side wall. The work gang have finished gibbing shonaghs craftroom and had started on the bathroom. The piles for the front deck are in, as are the ones for the back porch.

Dad and (Uncle) Eb arrived, Jamie and her sister Kait. Sort them all out with ladders, scrapers, brushes, paint and jobs and off we go. Dad and Eb painting, Jamie and Kait scraping and brushing. I get the task of staying ahead of the painters glooping up gaps and nail holes before they do the painting - pretty much a lost cause.

Switch Jamie and Kait to painting once they finish prepping the walls. Between them all they paint all the back walls (bathroom, Porch and Master Bedroom) and the road-side walls around to the Lounge. Dad and Eb up and down ladders and trestles and the girls doing the front Bay and rest of the walls as high as they can reach. Run out of paint about 2.00 pm which
gives me a chance to catch up on the glooping and them a chance to enjoy prepping the rest of the walls (scrape and brush) - that'll teach them.

Find that all the old retrofitted windows on the back of the house werent weather packed where they fit to the weather board so do that as well (old batts and gap filler).
Cant find the big ladder or light aluminium one so keep occupied helping the painters move the trestles around as well.
Bob and Scott replacing the rotted plate and stud in the toilet and fitting packing for gibbing the bathroom and WC and fitting the off missing floorboard then working on the boards over the verandah. Darryl gibbing the Bathroom and putting the Shower base in.

The septic tank arrived and is ceremoniously placed next to the leachfield. This has been moved below the drive, forward of the garage since the planned position alongside the garage is not accessible by the digger. I notice that Darryl has buried the burn pile and placed a nice pile of dirt on top of it.

A good days work - about 1/3 of the walls left to paint - front gables and the bits around the (to be replaced) front verandah. With some more paint and a big ladder will do other two gables and the front tomorrow and do touchup on the stuff we did today and that should about kill it..

Weekend in Wellingtom

Weekend: Friday-Monday
Trip to Wellington to help Shonaghs sister move house.
Too much driving but got to check out a friends modern, self designed house (corrugated iron roof + cladding, rounded roof, polished concrete floors, good capture of sunlight using a sun hall..) on the way down.. lots of good ideas there for the future.

Stopped at my cousins (Jackie and Gerard) in Fielding on the way back and shamelessly mined them for ideas, experiences and color schemes for doing up an old villa. If we end up looking half as good as their place we'll be doing pretty well.

Let there be plumbers and paint

Plumbers at house when arrived, then Dad turned up, then Jamie. Helped remove the the old spouting catches from remaining bargeboards (and what a bastard job that is - plastic spouting may be easy to put up but its a right struggle to get it down).
Sent Dad around to paint all the bargeboards ahead of the plumbers putting the spouting back up while I help Bob replace some missing bargeboards and repaint the ones above the wall we did yesterday that now have big unpainted patches on it.
Jamie continuing to paint the other end of that wall.
Bob and Phil putting in piles in front of the house for the deck.

Dad got really motivated and volunteered to paint the Lounge Gable after the bargeboards were done. He did one in a happy few hours dangling on one end of the longest ladder we have - crazy old man, his disregard of heights somehow must have skipped a generation...
Anyway spouting up, Lounge gable and all bargeboards and most soffits painted, kitchen side wall nearly completed - Jamie can finish it off tomorrow.

Shonaghs Brother Jeremy arrive about 5.30 for a look see - Hes down in N.P. for an offshore oil rig course to round out his commercial diving ticket. The main feature of that is a set of simulated helicopter crash-and-ditch-at-sea which hes doing tomorrow.
Out to dinner afterwards with him - nice little bistro in Fitzroy 'Eden'.

Solar devices and paintin

Stop at Home supply place and get a stack of paint brushes rollers and hole filling gloop. Arrive at house to find the Solar Hot Water installers (Gary Benton and two offsiders) there getting ready to put the collectors and hot water tank in and connect it all up.

Sorted out the two panels to go on the roof (about 3.8 square meters total) positioned so as to get maximum insolation and not look too weirdly positioned. The Panels went up on the roof without any problems and got bracketed in place. You can hardly see them against the (dark colored) roof. Most obvious parts are the aluminium brackets so I'll probably paint them some dark color if wedont get used to seeing them shining down at us.

Continued with painting kitchen-side wall till (niece) Jamie and Shonagh turn up. Shonagh bouncing color schemes off Jamie then I got her (Jamie) to help out with painting - she got to do the fiddly bits round the windows - paint going on a lot faster using a roller for the flat faces and a brush for the weatherboard grooves.
Started to drizzle so switch Jamie to stripping paint inside.

Peter tells me we need to get the spouting down so work on that. Of course the spouting is full of shit and old nails and god knows what and of course its got water in it and of course its hanging on for its dear little life so it takes much cursing and levering and twisting to pry it off and when you do it either tries to sweep you off the trestle or drops wet shit on your head or both and in either case sprays black stuff all over my nice cleaned wall...
Finally indulge myself and beat it madly with a crowbar until it all comes off. Manage not to fall off trestle while doing so. Calm down by picking up the pieces of plastic and dropped lead heads and nails and wipe/sweep down the walls again.
Wonder whether I would survive suggesting that Peter take a project management course with emphasis on sequencing operations.

Solar and piping installed and connected up. Electric connections still to be done but talked to Blair and he can do that at any stage.
Gary will have to come out for about half an hour once water and power on to turn everything on and do a smoke(?) test.
Kitchen-side wall about 2/3 finished painting.

Into town to pickup the mother - $450 out and new radiator recore in... Didnt overheat on way home so that looks promising.

New Plymouth for dinner and film that evening; was going to be a film then dinner but the film times here are weird (start a movie at 5.45 and again at 8.15 - who the hell does that work for ??) so missed the earlier showing.
Found a fish restaurant that also does BIG (brown meat) steaks so both me and shonagh ended up happy and well fed.
The film was 'Serenity' which follows on in sequence from the T.V series ('Firefly') - really really great.

Let Painting commence

Drop Mother off at garage to get overheating problem looked at.
Pickup some more filler gloop on way up. Go over wall again filling in more holes and edges, gloop around new window and fixup loose corner boards. Start cleaning Bay window and gable of front of house on Kitchen. Boys finish dining room and start gibbing hall and craft room.

Peter suggest its a good day for painting (sunny but overcast, not too hot) so after lunch find buckets of (plain white) paint and start painting kitchen side of house from bathroom end. Struggle with ladders and trestle till get light aluminium rolling trestle from inside and use that.
Paint from end of house past bathroom window including overhang and weatherboard grooves to next window from ground to bargeboard.

The overhangs take a lot of time as theres lots and lots of angles and faces. The window overhang roofing material is some sort of fiberboard and it sucks up a lot of paint also. The end result is worth it though, The painted area glows in the light and looks really really good.

Tomorrow I'm maybe goanna get Dad and maybe my niece (Jamie) to give me a hand....

Found out the Mother has something bad with its radiator not working, pickup tomorrow.

Gentleman start your Paint Prep

Fri Nov 11:
More old sarking out of house and piled up, cleanup rubbish from MBR for Gibbing to commence there. Spend rest of day wiping down and wiping off kitchen side of house prepping for painting. Wipe down with wet cloth ( water + sugar soap) then wipe down with clean wet cloth.
Slow and tedious cos theres no water on site so had to use coupla 10L pails brought up from Brendas. Did all of bottom of wall and about 1/3 of top.

Down to Lepperton school to pickup Finbar and a mate of his and take back to Brendas. The Mother died on me at end of the road when heading back up to the house. Out of gas (When its in the red zone on the indicator its empty and theres no other warning light... bloody 70's technology).
Walk back to Brendas, take Lawnmower gas back to car, tip it in. Back to House and get Shonagh to take me back down to the Mother. Up to the garage and get car and the lawnmower gas can refilled then finally get back up to the House.
Clean two of the window overhangs and put 4 calf meal sacks of sawdust alongside the drive.

Sat/Sun:
Stay away from house apart from some tours for Sams (Wills wife) parents (Saturday) and Brendas husband (who'd not seen the place yet).
Went to Placemakers and got several hundred dollars of paint scraping tools, wire brushes, hole/gap/space filler gloop, handles, brushes and rust stopper/primer (for the shed) so I'm set for next week.

Mon Nov 14:
Some errands in Stratford in morning so not get to House tillabout 11.00. Boys doing gibbing of Lounge and dining room - going at a great rate. Rooms look immense (and different) when gibbed up.
Spend afternoon using brushes and scrapers on rest of kitchen-side wall and using the gloop to fill in the major holes, gaps and depressions.

Shonagh bought me a cell phone for use while I'm at the house and shes elsewhere so I spent the evening configuring that.
Its the cheapest model available ( Nokoia 1100) but its still bloody expensive for what it is ($130) and the cell phone rates are more than extortionate (49c/minute minimum) which is why texting is so popular here....

Insulation, Demolition and a place for a hot tub

Bubble wrap underneath floor of porch we'd installed yesterday as its a bit close to the ground and that should keep rising water off the chipboard. Bob installed weatherboarding on MBR wall and on back porch under window. Put foil wrap in MBR gaps under the weather boards.
Find lounge bargeboards and soffit planks in ceiling and push out onto roof for future re-installation.
Remove oversize framing in porch filling in old MBR doorway and remove old porch cladding.

Out to pictures that night "Worlds fastest Indian" - a nice feel-good movie made in NZ starring Anthony Hopkins as a speed obsessed Southland codger in the 60's... Found out later that its the most popular film in NZ at the moment (and no rings nor an elf or orc to be seen in any of it)

Thurs Nov10:
Demolish rest of lining in old porchway and WC. Walked around exterior of house removing unused attatchments - lights, down spouting braces, nails, bits of wood, wiring, knobs etc.
Darryl the Digger was digging out dirt piled behind house, levelling the ground and making a Hot Tub alcove/terrace. He piled the dirt up into two mini-mountains (One we'll profile same
as Mt Taranaki, the other as the Southern alps.. (:-)) alongside the hedge.
Looks very good if you like terraces and can see the virtual Hot tub.

After that Peter stood in the digger bucket and commanded movement up/down/left/right to get up to Lounge gable to remove the old gable bracing added on for the house move. They then replaced the old bargeboard and soffit planks above the MBR/Lounge corner.
I helped Shonagh place the sawdust we collected on the weekend around the driverway rocks (we'll need some more).
(My Sister) Christine, John and their daughter Kait came by for John to see the house for the first time.. Think he was a bit underwhelmed at what the place was like at the moment (:-)

Houston, We have a Pantry and a back Porch

Spend morning clearing rubbish and dust out of attic/ceiling. I filled 6-7 calf feed bags with wood, sawdust and the ceiling dirt of the last 100 years.
The work guys continued to Gib the kitchen and Pete found his chainsaw again and cut out the outside wall hole for the kitchen window. Nice view down the valley.

Jamie (the Joiner) came back with the Pantry (a Malteca box) that they slotted into the old fireplace space and framed in the front of, and hung the old back hall door on - very very nice.

Helped Bob frame up the porch area (nail gun again) and cutting(easy) and fitting chipboard floor (very very difficult) - we shaved the end of the board three times and pounded it with big hammers to get it to fit into the gap by the old lintel. Eventually worked out that some old framing was oversize and pushing our size calculations off).

Pete brought by and old back door and frame withside window he had and our karma reversed - it fitted right into the porch gap without any problems. Tack it into place and call it a day.

Shonagh had been talking to the Solar heating supplier in Wellington and got reccomendations for a simpler/cheaper setup for Taranaki conditions which we decided to go with.

Rubbish, WindowHoles and the tao of DoorFrames.

Move boards and sarking out of house and pile up under house. Clean paint off window placed in ensuite then wander round inside windows scraping loose paint off then do same to outside of house as high as can reach.

Work gang continued to Gib kitchen. Peter got his chainsaw out and cut out the inner sarking where the kitchen window will go then framed up the lintel and studs for it while Jamie( the Joiner) took the window away to make a window frame for it.

Bob showed me how to take door frames out (we're goanna make them swing the opposite way off the hall so they open against the room walls). This involves using a saber saw to cut the nails and a little bit of pushing on the door frame (rather than a coupla crowbars, a bit of care and a large amount of time which was the way I'd been doing it). Then he showed me how to put them back in (the other way around) which was some black magic with blocks, packing, levels and careful nailing so as to not split the wood.

Solar Heating system guy over with a set of quotes for 4 systems.
All looking good if a mite more expensive than hoped.

I'm a lumberjack and I'm O.K.

Fri-Sat and Sunday.
Ostensible reason for going home for the weekend was to turn some of my cousin Wills logs into lumber for panelling and shelving using my Uncles portable sawmill.

First disassemble and move portable saw mill from where Don and Will had it, down to the pile of logs below Dons house and setup for milling. Start with Lawson cypress (lawsoniana) logs which we make into 100mmx 17mm panelling, Turn 2 logs into about 35 planks.

Will pushes mill blade and I clear rubbish and stack milled timber to dry, move the planks/panels, lay fillets and keep the rubbish cuts clear of the mill.
This wood has a really strong scent when cut or milled - hope it keeps
it when the lumber is dried.
Collect some old calf meal bags and fill them with sawdust for shonagh then took jeep up to fill and pickup a woolpack of sawdust she'd quarter filled at original mill site.
We will use that on dirt around rocks lining driveway embarkment to keep grass from growing till get into house and some ground cover and herbs started.

Sat :
Will takes tractor and I take truck down to sheep yards to pickup first set of Lusitanica logs pulled from river last January. Also load up (a big) Deodar log that used to be at end of yards.
We get 4 logs on truck and 2 on trailer (pulled by the tractor).
Big load, didnt get the truck out of second gear all the way back up to mill site (about a mile).
Cut 125x25mm planking for shelves from those and a couple of thicker (50mm) beams.
The beams were mostly due to a spot of daydreaming by Will when he was setting the cut width.

Sun: Not start at mill till after lunch. Take up another truck and trailer load of logs (more deodar + lusitanica). Cut planks from these but will probably need more panelling eventually. Done about 4.00 so have a couple beers to celebrate.

Overall turned 12 logs into about 3 cubic meters of stacked lumber planks and panelling (pile 1m square and about 3 m long) and another cubic meter of offcuts and partial planks and a coupla cubic meters of slash and rubbish (and a big pile of nice smelling sawdust).

Framing, gibbing, nail guns and screw machines

Nail down Scotts chipboard plate in kitchen and remove nails from sarking out of pantry.
Help Bob take out the laundry window - It was slow and difficult coming out then popped out of the wall and landed on him, fortunately he deflected it and only skinned a knuckle.
Carry window round to outside wall of kitchen where it'll go back in
Remove rest of laundry room wall so theres no doubt about it being pulled out.

Peter and Darryl remove MBR french doors, frame in gap and cover temporarily with corrugated iron to keep wind out
They then frame up ensuite wall and wardrobe while me and Bob start laying whole Gib sheets (3.8m long) on wall areas where no fitting/cutting round plugs etc is needed.
We broke the first sheet getting it onto wall then worked out system using the ladder and a 100x50mm stud to support the sheets while lifting.
Put up sheets in about a third each of office, kitchen and guest room.

The worst part of gibbing is getting the sheets positioned; once up they use a screw machine that you just point and press and it drives the screws out of a plastic strip into the Gib board and onto the wall.

Out to Makahu that evening.

Lost yer bottle??

Put plastic bottles into office wall, 7 bags of bottles to fill 3 studs and
above and below windows. Back to Brendas to get more bottles,
3 more sacks fill last stud width.
Would need 5-6 more wool packs of bottles to do entire house.

Frame fireplace gaps in Lounge/MBR (chop saw + 100x50mm + nail gun) dwangs/noggins.
Cut chipboard fm ceiling to fit/shape then force into place and nail down
Check out Peters house w/sho on way home - v nice joinery...

Some insulation, some destruction

Tuesday Nov 1
Take a load of cleaned plastic bottles to work. Spend morning finishing off some odds and ends of insulation in the bathroom. A truckload of Gib board ("sheetrock")turned up about 11.00 so helped unload that. Its all 3.8m lengths which is an exact fit for the wall stud but its a sod to handle, heavy and fragile. Its bundled in pairs of sheets which helps the fragility some but not the weight..
Started pulling the toilet apart and found I was unable to stop. Theres something immensely satisfying about tearing things apart. Disconnected and removed the toilet fittings. Placed the throne out in the middle of the back paddock for some later contemplative moments.
Tore out the lino and hardboard cover on the floor and tookoff the chipboard lining on the back wall. Opened out the fingerboard tongue+groove lining and found the bottom plate was cheese - I could poke my finger into it up to the first knuckle (admittedly I have short fingers). The end stud is about half gone from long term water damage. Easy enough to fix according to Pete but just as well I checked.
Removed about 20 liters of dead bees and bees nest from the toilet wall.
Took all the removed garbage out to the fire pile.
I cut off enough Retroshield to insulate the toilet when its fixed and used the last of the roll filling in pieces in the Master Bedroom.
Put my load (4 sacks) of plastic bottles in 2 stud widths in the office/study room- only 5 more to go. Estimate I would need about 5 times the amount of bottles to do all the walls of the house so probably just as well I'm not doing that..
Tacked up some foil wrap offcuts in case dont get enough bottles in before the room is gibbed. Pete reckons we'll be able to start the gib laying tomorrow and maybe frame off the ensuite
area as well. Decided that we can probably put a false ceiling above the linen cupboard for storage accessible from the laundry for a bit of added storage space....
Theres a nice view from the lounge through the dining room windows out to the sea in the distance.. Peter reckons he should have added an extra 10K to the house price for that feature (:-)