The Fantastic Floor

Our recycled timber floorboards have now had their sand and polish, in preparation for our kitchen arriving.  Soon, we can move out of our bedrooms and back into the rest of the house again!

Will these people ever stop going on about their floor, you must be wondering?  Well, the answer is ‘yes’- its restoration is finally complete, the satin polyurethane finish protecting and darkening the wood and bringing out all of it’s notched history and character.  No doubt some of our own character will soon be added (usually in the form of ‘cat cornering’ scratch marks) but it all adds to the general ‘lived on’ appearance.

Colin buffs the initial high gloss varnish, in preparation for the final satin finish.

With everything ready for the kitchen’s arrival, the weekend saw us hard at work on other tasks. Rose concentrated on sealing the walls, ceiling and window of our bathroom – getting everything ready for the fitting of the large glass partition which will bring the completion of our shower that little bit closer.

Only another 200 filled spots to sand...

Meanwhile I worked outside, continuing the interminable task of sanding down the special filler which I’ve concealed the screws in our south wall Titan panel with.  I say interminable because this rather robust substance can only be smoothed away with the very wimpiest of sandpaper grades, to avoid altering the texture of the surrounding panel.  And speaking of wimpy: unforeseen events at the end of the week saw me doing a sixteen hour day, two night shifts in a row, and early starts in between.  As to how this occurred - the story is complicated, and involves carnage including a severed bike padlock, a cell phone killed by a chicken egg and a cycle home into a fierce headwind at 1.30am in the morning.  But let’s leave it there.

The result was that my sleepy performance on the end of the sanding block was well-intentioned, sustained but really rather pathetic.  Rose noted that my best efforts seemed to be directed towards fiddling with my iPod.

Despite this calibre of encouragement, I did a full day’s work in the hot sun and we headed down to the river to cool off afterwards.

Once sanded, the Titan panels will be painted the same dark 'greyfriars' colour
as the exterior woodwork, enabling our house to fade into the scenery
when viewed from the road

Unfortunately, the lack of sleep, sun and sustained tension in my shoulders put me in bed the next morning with a crashing headache – the sacrifices which we’ve made for this house!  Despite this, good progress was made in the afternoon and hopefully it won’t be too long until we can undercoat and paint the panelling, completing the exterior look of the house.

More interesting things will be happening inside, however, when the kitchen arrives tomorrow!

Rose and Monty demonstrate that no matter how busy life gets,
you must always remember to stop and smell the flowers.

All Features Grout and Small

Craftsmen in various different fields are all working hard to finish our home, so there’s practically something different happening in almost every room, simultaneously.

Unseasonal gales hit over the weekend, which saw me clinging to the roof while
temorarily fixing a bucket over our unfinished chimney. The red and green not only
looks very festive, but also stops the loud rattling which wind gusts produce.

Like one of those Guinness book of records domino-tumbling attempts, all kinds of actions are slowly being set in motion from different directions, along different paths. In the bathroom, the shower has been tiled and grouted. 

Pieter and Gerda tile the shower, proving to us that a husband and wife can work together.

These large earthen tiles are the complete opposite of the tiny mosaic squares
which we used in our previous bathroom. All that’s required now is a large glass
partition to separate it from the rest of the bathroom.



Simultaneously, more plumbing and electrical wiring has been put in place,

Our ‘steam-punk meets Wallace and Gromit’ water heating system.
Or possibly it’s the engine room of Captain Nemo’s Nautilus…

while across the hallway, we have sealed all the walls in the kitchen and dining areas.

Our own contribution this week – sealing walls in preparation
for the installation of the kitchen.

The floor sander has now arrived and set to work, beautifying our recycled floorboards.

The matai floorboards are being given a relatively light sand, which levels
and cleans them up without removing too much of their original character.

Then, once this is complete, the kitchen installers can take over.

The end result of all this won’t be a single domino tumbling into a glass jar, but the completion of our Plumbing and running water in our kitchen, laundry and bathroom. As well as the obvious advantages, this means that our house will finally be officially designated a ‘dwelling’.

Rose contemplates taking the floor-sanding machine for a spin

Rebooting the Home Site

The holiday’s over and just as we begin to feel settled, we’re about to be sent to our rooms again.



It's nice to be here - a slightly happier version of 'American Gothic'.

2012 is two weeks old and activity is slowly beginning to build again. Pieter our tiler is hard at work water-proofing most of our bathroom in preparation for the installation of something called a shower. We have a dim recollection of these devices from before we lived in a box, and are tentatively confident that we’ll get the hang of having our own again in due course.



It's going to be a shower with a view - both ways! (We'll grow something outside)

The floor-sander is booked for next week, but first we need to establish whether our off-grid system can power his mighty machine – apparently even our generator isn’t up to it! Either way, this will mean a return to our first days of house occupation – living, cooking and eating out of our bedrooms while layers of sawdust noisily join the layers of plaster dust on all our interior surfaces.

This floor is about to get a damn good thrashing - but will look all the better for it afterwards.

It will be worth it - not just because we’ll have a beautifully finished matai floor, but also because the kitchen will then be able to be installed. And once this is done and the tiler is finished, our plumber can come back and pull us into the nineteenth century by bringing actual running water into our home!

We truly won’t know ourselves and will no doubt find ourselves standing naked under bags of lukewarm water or drinking from nearby garden hoses until it finally registers in that we won’t need to do this anymore!


If you think this designer kitchen is really something, wait till you see the one we're about to get!
(Thank you Roger, once again your generosity has saved us)






Silent night, solar light

T’was the night before the night before Christmas, and we got sunshine in the darkness.

True to their word our electricians connected our solar power system just
before Christmas – being able to flick a switch and get this result will never get old!

Happy New Year, everyone.  In journalistic terms, it's still the 'silly season' - no serious news until next week, when our Plumber returns and other contractors, including our tiler, pick up tools. 

Until then, here's a section of holiday shots.  Our partially-completed home stood up well to a perpetual round of guests over Christmas, despite our lack of running water.  Everyone got firmly into the 'camping spirit', and naturally a plentiful supply of 'seasonal cheer' lubricates all minor inconveniences.

By the time Iwrite again, we'll hopefully be on our way to enjoying our own shower, inside toilet and sinks - luxuries almost impossible for us to imagine.  A combination of the usual New Year downpour and Roger's generosity has meant that we are well on our way towards filling our water tanks.  We're looking forward to being able to draw on them, now!

The house is bare and undecorated, but definitely habitable.
Even the Christmas tree lights are powered with their own tiny solar panel.

Fortunately, there was plenty of sun over the Christmas break – cloudless skies
and each day hotter than the last. Despite not having plumbed water, we
had ten people for lunch on Boxing day.

Although the temperatures being in the high 20’s, we got plenty of Frisbee practise in

The exhilarating embrace of the Waiohine river is perfect for cooling down in, however.

Despite having ‘moved in’, there’s still plenty to be done.
Here, Rose fixes the catches for our exterior doors.

The Crate Escape

After almost exactly nine months to the day, we are moving out of our Shipping container and into a real house again.

It doesn't look like much now, but this patch of ground marks our home for the past 9 months

With so much to do in the coming week, it feels as if there’s very little time to reflect on what it feels like to no longer be living in our tin box, or indeed rejoice to be finally living in a brand new house which we’ve designed and helped build ourselves.

Our version of marking off days in confinement -
Rose removes the final sheep label from above our bed.

I’d love to report that there was a ribbon cutting ceremony, and we moved into a fully functioning home. But in reality, we are crammed into two bedrooms, one of them set up as a very temporary kitchen/dining room. Our actual kitchen won’t be installed until mid-January, as we made the decision to sand the floors first – and this certainly takes a lot of pressure off the cabinet-makers. Our beautiful gas oven is in place and working perfectly, but what we don’t have is a sink – and we’ve both quickly realised that this humble and overlooked convenience is what truly separates us from the beasts. Being able to turn a tap, fill a basin with water and then pull out a plug afterwards is something I’ll never take for granted again, Plumbing truly was an enormous leap forward in the development of human civilisation.

I unplug our generator from the container for the final time...

In the meantime, we fill a dishwashing bowl with the water which Roger still graciously supplies to us, and at least have a tap installed in a length of house thanks to Mich our Plumber. More good news is that he will be returning in mid January – much earlier than we expected.

We’re aching to truly move in, but our builder, electricians and plasters will be working up until the last minute before Christmas, so for now we remain in our bedroom limbo – less moved in than feeling as if we are infesting our own home.

... and our patented cat ramp is taken down.

But the fortitude which got us through the last nine months will see us through this week, and the feeling when we can finally start living in the other rooms of our beautiful house will be a festive one indeed. Christmas is almost here, and with it comes a chance to relax and enjoy some peace and goodwill.

After a hard days carrying and cleaning, it's as if we'd never been here.

Our first meal in our new, umm... guest bedroom.

 There is possibly another couple of months work to be done on our home, and although the crate has been taken away, this blog will continue until our home is completely finished – after a short Christmas break.

And so - all the very best for a safe and happy Christmas to everyone who has kindly looked-in on our adventure this year – see you in the prosperous New Year!

Rose and Al

Snoopy and the Red Baron, photographed above our new home.

Array of sunshine

We’ve got the power!  Or will, once these beautiful panels are connected to our batteries.

Eight is enough - or we hope so, anyway.

 It’s been a funny sort of time at Little Bush.  On the one hand it’s almost Christmas and the happy traditions and expectation involved make this my favourite time of the year.

It’s a time for catching up with friends and sharing seasonal cheer, and congratulating each other on getting to the end of another trying year intact.  As well as the enormous project which this blog chronicles, we have both survived yet another major restructure at work, so there is plenty to celebrate.  At the time of writing we are due to move in tomorrow, so excitement is high.

The other hand offers all those things we knew would happen, but preferred not to think about: Hidden costs, overspends, a rise in bank interest rates and Christmas holidays preventing certain important services from being installed before our move.  These seem to have all surfaced at once, threatening to put a dent in Snoopy’s festive propeller.

I say we’d preferred not to think about these gremlins, but they are hardly unexpected, probably inevitable, in fact. And thanks for another vet bill because some other cat has handed your bottom to you yet again, Ed! 

It might just be that despite never falling out of love with our temporary home, we are tired of living in a box, showering under a tree and never having quite enough light to find anything easily.  As we’ve frequently written: it’s not so bad, but nine months is a long time.  A week of cloud and rain hasn’t really helped, although now we have good reason to alter our attitude to precipitation – one of our water tanks is almost a third full – surely a record for December!

It seems unbelievable to write these words, but the shipping container is going back to whence it came in two days time.  Royal Wolf generously allowed us to extend our tenancy so that we could move out this weekend, and soon there will only be a large rectangular patch on the ground where our crate outdoors once stood.

In the meantime, here are some pictures of our photovoltaic panels being installed.  These eight ‘power panes’ will provide us with all of our electricity in years to come (I admit I couldn’t help but smirk when the Huntly power station had it’s small issue recently) and the goods news is that apparently we will be all connected before Christmas.  The sun will be powering our Christmas tree lights and playing my Christmas CDs –it really is the season to be jolly!

Not Christmas wrapped, but still very exciting to open

The aluminium tracks supporting the panels are set at 40 degrees
for maximum solar gain throughout the year.

The panels will be connected to our batteries next week - then bring on the sun!
(it is coming, apparently)

Waste away

Our biopod is now installed, quietly awaiting it’s population of worms, and something for them to be getting on with.

For the second time in as many weeks, large trucks and a digger sink a huge tank into the ground on our property.  This time it was allegedly Wairarapa’s first Biolytix biopod, a system which uses worms and micro-organisms to organically convert waste water and sewage into garden irrigation water.

It’s negligible use of power made it the best possible choice for our off-grid situation, but the moment of truth will come when it’s connected to our electricity supply (when we have one) and we start using it.

The Pod is buried, cemented in place and connected to our plumbing. 
The wiring for the pump will be connected later.

The digger then excavates the tracks for the feedlines...

...which will irrigate the soil below ground with the clean, processed water
from the Biopod.  Sounds good, doesn't it?