First room lined

The en-suite from the outside

Laurence has finished the lining on the first room - our en-suite!  So ceilings and walls - they're all there.  And he's put in the cavity slider for the door, so we can now walk in and be in a complete room.  The en-suite is lined with villa board, not MDF, so we haven't had to do any pre-painting there.  Now we need to organise a stopper to come in and get moving with that so that Regan can start the water-proofing and then the tiling.  Yippee!  The en-suite faces due east, so we'll be bathed in beautiful morning light when we get ready for work.

Laurence has also been working on the villa board lining in the main bathroom.  He's got two of the four walls done now.  The frame for the bath will go in one of these days - again so that Regan can get cracking on the tiling.

View from en-suite

We've been working hard this week-end too.  Well, we tried on Saturday but it didn't really happen.  So we worked hard on Sunday.  We've been carrying on with our work on the acoustic ceiling panels - we've managed to put the black material on the back of some of them.  That means that we've got six panels completed - enough for Laurence to be able to put into the lounge ceiling.  There are six going into the lounge, but the sixth one has had to be recut as the position of the fireplace moved slightly from the original plans that we gave them.

Plywood wall in library

Laurence has also put a big plywood panel down the inside of the portion of the storage wall that will have the bookshelves in it (ie. the bit that will be in the library).  That has taken away the sightline from the bathroom and laundry through to the harbour, and is making the hallway feel more like a hallway now.  In the photo, you can see a blue steel beam at the bottom.  That will end up going above the plywood as there is a big triangular piece of glass going up in that gap.

This week's evening labour

Before (with the hot water cylinder)

As I said previously, the acoustic ceiling panels have arrived after having been cut out.  It's our job to paint them.  So we've been down after work to attend to that.  We have to sand each groove on every panel (I think there are 16).  Then we need to move it across the garage to the "painting zone".

This exercise has given Regan the perfect excuse to buy some kind of pressurised spray painter thingie.  It was $170 per day to hire, but we could buy a cheap one for $300!  Then we (ie. Regan) have to spray paint each panel. 

Once we've managed that, we need to cut out a piece of black material and somehow glue it to the back of the panel.  So together the grooves and material should work to absorb the noise.

Our hot water cylinder has also arrived - 300 litres of goodness.

During

Ceiling panels

Bracing and ceiling in dining room

This week, Laurence has been putting up the ceiling battens, lining the ceilings with the ceiling batts and then putting up some of the ceiling gib.  He's perhaps 1/3 of the way through.  For me, the ceilings have made the room smaller again (at least initially) despite the fact that the ceilings are ridiculously high - three metres in some places!  I think that once I get used to them, the rooms will expand out and get bigger again.

The Architect has also now had to spend some working out the layout of the acoustic panels.  They've been sent off to be machined.  I understand that it is all done by computer.  We are having acoustic panels in the lounge and dining room, as otherwise the glass and concrete combination means that HFD could be far too noisy (like an annoying restaurant).

The fire, wrapped & stored in the garage

A little bit more bracing has gone up now too, so we have bracing in the dining room, bedroom 3, a couple of panels on the stairwell, in the laundry, in the dressing room and in the master bedroom.  This means that I can't see all the way through the house now, so I do have to keep reminding myself that I won't always be able to stand in the bathroom and see the sea!  As bedroom 2 is between the dressing room and the laundry (and its ceiling has been done), it is starting to feel a bit more like a real room.

The plumber/roofer (I still don't understand why they are a combined trade in New Zealand) has been in this week and has put in the chimney flue in the lounge for our little Studio fire.  It sits about 3/4 of the way into the room, off on the right.  Eventually it will form part of the room divider, separating the lounge and library.  For the next few years, it'll just hang out in the middle of the room.  Regan reckons that we'll be able to boil a kettle on top of it!

HFC?

Trinny in her new favourite sleeping spot

So the dog gets a lot of air time, but there's actually also a cat who will live in HFD one day. 

Regan is secretly hoping that she will either get lost in the move or will not like HFD and will leave (the fact that the cat door has not been installed has been noted).  But I think she'll stay, if only because she knows that it will annoy him.

Currently her favourite sleeping spot is on top of the carpet samples.  And it must be said that the new Eco Strand carpet samples are not showing the pet hair!

The (future) stairwell light

 Our current abode (Elderbeary Barn aka The Barn) is overflowing with assorted HFD paraphenalia.  The garage is packed with kitchen appliances (no car of ours has ever lived there.  Except for the Escort, but it doesn't go, so it doesn't count).  There's a tv in the spare bedroom.  Brochures cover the lounge.  I had a small meltdown over the light fittings littering the hall recently.  Regan sweetly moved them to the garage (no idea where to).  The only one that has survived is the future stairwell light, which survived the Christchurch earthquake (where it lived at the time) and is now being stored by hanging impotently from a spare cable in The Barn living area.  It's my piece of Italian lust.

We've gone over all kiwi and bought a David Trubridge (http://www.davidtrubridge.com/lighting-set/) for the dining area.  They come in flat pack!  And they come in black!