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Fittings, skimming and tiling
This is a bit of a backdated post coz painting is currently in full swing as the mad panic towards moving in day builds (28 November) – painting, glazing, burglar bars, carpeting, alarm system, armed response, electric gate, geysers, patio, gutters, internet, dstv, generator and inverter and then we done 🙂 So… quite a bit…
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Roofing at last!
After a long and pretty stressful weekend of budget recalculation, quotation from third party contractors and supporting research, we negotiated with the current contractor on the price of the additional works (being the construction of trusses which was an unknown before the old roofing structure was exposed) Pretty frustrating being bent over a barrel – even…
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Two weeks building
After almost two weeks of building (one day shy) the progress is solid. Not much rain delay fortunately. Expecting trusses and roof sheets to go on this week if we can get the timber on site! The over enthusiastic contractor jumped the gun on our veranda which is going to leave it tatty for the…
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Window frames and doors
We had to trim the French door height by 300mm to get it to fit under the roof which (for various reasons) is quite a bit lower than expected 😛 The contractor also rethought his decision to build 115mm walls and risk building inspection failure, so doubled the thickness. All good 🙂
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Building progress
Having had a little bit of a hiccup regarding wall thickness last week, Patrick assures us that the building inspectors will find 4.5″ walls sufficient for the roof in place. It seemed that the bricklayers weren’t quite aware that there were to be windows either. Clarified with Patrick this morning accompanied by more detailed measurements and 3D…
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Let the demolition begin
Demolition of the old water tank stands starts today and digging of trenches for new foundations. Challenge: Given there is no municipal water, with power cuts comes no water, and the power has been extremely bad – the builders will need around 1000L of water per day. Solution: At the end of each day, run generator to…
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Raw materials starting to arrive
A true Zim style tipper arrived with the first load of raw materials at 8.30 am today with stern instructions (there was probably pleading in there too) not to damage the brand new electric gate 🙂
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Two weeks plumbing
After two weekends of some SERIOUS graft on the water system with Bobby, “Skinny” Pete (a.k.a. la Pistola) – 85 meters of PVC pipe, 106 joins, 42 meters of thread tape and 18 beers later… I present to you, our new water supply system 🙂 P.S. We are indebted to the executives, directors, managers, staff, shareholders, ladies and…
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Agreement of Sale Documents Submitted
Having been notified that rates clearance has been done, and following a valuation acceptance from the revenue authority, we’ve finally had the revised agreement of sale documents submitted 🙂 Our lawyer says it will be 3 – 4 weeks before the title deeds are registered. Woohoo!
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In the beginning…
A collection of photos taken to document the starting point of our chopping, ripping, digging, relaying, repaving, resurfacing and repainting of the new house
The story of our home