I nearly loose my cool

24.3.2012
BUILDING NEWS

We have just lived through another hectic week. The plumbers have been setting up the reed beds and run off drains. The telephone line has been fixed and Stevo has finished all the woodwork. It sounds great put like this, but I found the reality almost too much. When the plumbers announced that the dam over flow was in the wrong place for their work and had to be changed I felt as if I was going through the roof. Basically the dam has not moved an inch and to decide that it was wrong at this late stage was not what I wanted to hear.

Luckily Edd managed to keep his cool. Frank, who knows about dams said it was OK to change the over flow and the reed beds were dug with out too much fuss. I just went out until it was all resolved so there was no chance I could behave inappropriately! Stevo’s linen press is fantastic. The wood doors are perfectly lined up and open like a dream. We have even a build in space for the ironing board. What a relief. I have had to cope with an ironing board wedged next to the shower in the donga porch for three years.

Richard has returned and is grouting the vanity room walls. Once again the lime plaster is making a terrible mess but I did manage to seal the floor before he started and we have carefully covered up Edd’s woodwork. I am very impressed with the vanity benches Edd has made and it would be a shame to damage them.

The decision over how to do the wet room is still pending. A remarkable team of two plasterers have said they will do it with a special morroccan plaster that sounds amazing. It is an expensive and labour intensive process but the alternative is rendering and then using some type of mosaic tiles, this is also expensive. Edd and I have taken time to look at different methods so as a result we will have to live in a house without a shower at first.

The telephone line turned out to have a faulty lightening box but it works now that is fixed. This is the first of the services to become operational. The main thing we need now is for the electricians to come back and complete their work. I have been scrubbing and sealing floors when I can get access to them. I still have walls to bag but everyone else is working where I need to be to do that.

Edd had an exciting day on Friday when he had to take the plumber’s truck up the mountain at Castella to fetch big stones for the reed beds. He describes the experience as being fairly challenging and he has learnt how to descend goat tracks on mountains with a heavily laden vehicle. We also drove to Dandenong on Friday and exchanges parts of the flue kit for the stove that were wrong. It was a long day.

OTHER NEWS

We are back into goat mating season and are kept awake, all night, by lovesick goats . I take them all to visit the young buck, Banjo, who is a gentle boy and very willing to do his job but the goats lust after a real man, and try hard to get to their father, Monty, who is in the opposite direction. It does not make for peaceful living.

Today we took two goats to the Autumn Fest at Healesville as part of the demonstrations. Ester and Telstra had not been off the property before or been tethered but they behaved very well and let everyone pet them. There were a lot of people with dogs and they were wary of them if they got too close but other wise they were fairly relaxed. I took Ollie and Morren over to give Bo a rest. She has been up at night with Sylkie who has a stomach bug. I do not think she did much relaxing. When I got the boys home she was painting the hall doors.