Painting has started

The painted bathroom

It has been a busy first week back!  Regan has managed to completely paint the bathroom (including the ceiling).  Only half of that room gets paint - the other half is tiled.  He also has the laundry and the main dining room wall ready for their final top coat.

He's using a combination of spraying for the primer and rolling for the top coats.  He has purchased a very fetching pair of white painter's overalls.  We had a minor crisis as we wondered whether the chosen shade of white was perhaps a little too cream...  We got over it.

He's been working on site this week with both the builders and the gib stopper, which has been a little different for all concerned.  They all seem to have survived, and Regan got them all a feed of fish & chips at lunchtime on Friday from the local  caf.  It was so much better than the fish & chips shop version!  Beautiful thick pieces of blue cod... I even managed to go all Martha Stewart and delivered muffins to site on Tuesday.

Bedroom 2, lined (alcove for wardrobe)

The builders have been busy installing the MDF wall linings and have made a lot of progress.  Notably, they have completed the wall linings in Bedroom 2.

The builder has been manufacturing the doors at home.  Once they're ready, The Painter has to prime each one before it can be hung.  And hanging them is definitely a two-man job!  They've hung the doors in Bedroom 3 and in the Master Bedroom.  All of our internal doors except for the bathroom and laundry are sliding doors. They are pretty awesome doors - they're HUGE!  I've included Zaha in the door photos to give some sense of the scale.

 In Bedroom 3, the door is basically the same size as the wall.  In the Master Bedroom, our door is 3.2 metres high.  It is also the same size as the small piece of wall that it lies next to.  When you close that door, it feels like you've put in another wall and blocked yourself off from the rest of the house.

Door in Bedroom 3

My sister and her husband came to visit us after getting back from living in North Carolina.  Poor Mike soon found himself painting and helping Regan to cover the floors with a thin layer of cardboard to help protect them.

I was in charge of fetching the cardboard.  It took two trips as I discovered that it only came in rolls that were 75 metres long, and that turns out to be fairly massive in diameter.  That meant that I had to turn around and go all the way home to change cars...

The gib stopper has also been working hard and now everything is covered in a fine layer of white dust.  It also turns out that Frank likes to eat the discarded bits of stopping.  And also the pink batts (which is a little more serious).

Door in Master Bedroom

Gib stopping and doors

Dressing room, stopped

I've been a bit lax with the updating!  I keep forgetting the camera, and then I've got Sunday night things to attend to...  So here is a retrospective report.

By last week-end, the gib-stopper had come in and started to do the stopping in the bathrooms, laundry and dressing room.  And also the ceilings, I think.

Dining room with MDF up

The Builder did some more work on putting up MDF board.  He lined the TV cavity in the lounge, and also the stairwell.  Excitingly, he did finish the MDF in the dining room.  As those panels will not be stopped, you will still be able to see those lines between the panels after it is painted.

Bathroom tiles (bigger than they look here!)

Some tiles from the bathroom also found their way into the house, so we threw them into the shower in the main bathroom to get an idea of what they will look like.  It's still a bit difficult to tell!

The builder has also been working off-site, manufacturing the doors.  They are all huge, and the only two internal doors that are hinged are the bathroom and laundry doors (and they're also taller than normal).  The builder had already hung one, so Regan had to take it down so he could prime it.  That was when he discovered that it weighed about 80 kg.  Much cursing ensued.

So he primed both doors and has made sure that he gets to prime the others before the builder puts them up!

Checking the lounge door (stairwell is left)

I can report that the carpet did go in today, as scheduled.  Photos to follow!  The Builder is back on board on 7 January, so that's not too long to wait.

First MDF Panel

MDF in dining room

Things have been moving!  The first piece of MDF is now up.  As I said, on those areas where there is gib bracing, the MDF goes over the bracing.  That's what's happening in the dining room.  In other areas, it will go straight over the pink batts.

It has a rebate at the edge so that the next piece will lap over it with a small negative detail.  The joins between the pieces of MDF won't be stopped, so you will be able to see clearly that the wall is made up of separate panels.  And the MDF will also be in line with the white soffit so that it will look like one continuous wall, interrupted only by the window.

The builder has also been putting in more batts in ceilings (in the master bedroom and Bedroom 3), putting up more ceiling panels (master bedroom) and putting batts in walls (Bedroom 2).  He is concentrating on getting himself into a position where he has done as much as he can before the carpet is laid in the bedrooms (they are the only rooms to have carpet).  The carpet is being laid on 22 December!

Staircase

As we are using MDF panels, the carpet actually needs to be laid before the MDF panels are affixed to the walls.  This means that the carpet will slot in under the walls with a negative detail (ie. a space) between the carpet and walls, and we won't have any skirting boards.  So what happens when we want to paint the carpet?  Good point.  Apparently we'll just have to deal with the ignominy of having skirting boards at that stage because the MDF panels will get mutilated if we have to replace the carpet.

The builder has also put the bracing and ceiling lining into the top part of the staircase.  It's a bit difficult to see on the photograph, but it is taken from one end of the stairwell (where there will be a balustrade), across the void towards the entrance area.  There is a temporary framing balustrade across the void.

Main bathroom

The main bathroom and laundry are both completely lined with villaboard now.  In the photograph, you can see the shower base and the ladder is where the bath will go;  you will be able to lie in the bath and look out the door.  The idea with the door is that anyone who lives in the house and happens to work in the garage/workroom and get covered in grease from cars will be able to walk around the outside of the house, straight into the shower and hose themselves off so that they will leave only clean footprints in the house.  Hypothetically, of course.

We may or may not get a stopper in tomorrow to do the stopping of the bathroom and laundry.  It depends on our costs debate...

We have also been working.  Ray and Regan did some more work on the wiring over the week-end.  The HD cable for the TV in the lounge is now in.  Whew!  Regan also did some more staining of the back wall of the house.  He's added another coat and then stained another panel.  That leaves just one more to do.  But we ran out of stain.

Another plywood panel on the back wall done

We've also now met the newest neighbours.  They just started excavating this week.  They've got the section in front of us, so we were pretty nervous that they were going to put up some three-storey monstrosity and obliterate our views.  But it is all looking good!  And they seem lovely.  It turns out I'd met one of them before, which was funny.

The sunset tonight was also amazingly pink and gorgeous...