Little staircase in

I won't even try to deal with the Christchurch earthquake.  I'll just say that thankfully my family is okay, and it appears that all of our friends are okay too.

The new stairs

On a more mundane note, our work has continued.  The little staircase that steps up the lower bedroom level to the upper bedroom level has gone in, so we don't have to balance on a plank anymore.  The stairs are made out of dark plywood, and I think that the Architect plans to have them stained a reddy/brown.

Macrocarpa wall under carport

The builder used up the last of the macrocarpa that we had to hand on the exterior of the building, putting it up under the carport (he had set aside all the better stuff to use inside).  As you can see, we were just a few planks short!  It sounds as though we've managed to source some more macrocarpa now, so hopefully it won't take too long to get that moving again.

The photograph of the exterior macrocarpa wall is taken from the north end of the house - the dining room is immediately above the carport.  The block that the front door stands in is immediately behind the macrocarpa wall that you can see.

Lounge wall

I've also added another photo of the completed lounge wall, which is at the south end of the house, ie. the opposite end of the dining room block, behind the macrocarpa block that you can see.

The scaffolding is down!

Despite it being a long week-end, the scaffolders arrived at around lunchtime on Saturday to take the scaffolding down.  One of them was wearing a black singlet that said "Trust me, I'm a doctor"!  Actually, the German neighbours' builders were working too.

The scaffolding coming down was pretty damn exciting for us, as it means that we can finally see what the house looks like properly.  It's pretty cool to be able to see the whole profile now, and to be able to see that the idea of the car port "floating" (at the left) does work.  In the photo, we've got the master bedroom door open.

Regan outside the master bedroom

During the week, the builder also finished the macrocarpa cladding next to the master bedroom, and all of the glazing has now FINALLY gone in!  As you can see, there is still some building wrap up that needs to be clad over.  All the areas of building wrap that you can see will be clad in plywood (to be stained black).  I understand that the builder will be concentrating on finishing the exterior before moving to the interior.

We brought some beers down for the builders on Friday night, to start the long week-end out on a good note.  The builder's apprentice has got a five month old pug puppy named Daisy!  She is pretty excited about being the site dog.  We asked what our mission was for the week-end, and Laurence said it was to paint the soffits.  So we did.  Well, we managed to prime the area around the master bedroom and got half way through the second coat at the back.  We had a mobile scaffold to work off, which made work easier.  It is threatening to rain today, so we are not going to paint today.

Morning tea in the dining room

I say "we" as I was Allowed (the momentousness of the event justfies the use of the capital letter) to assist in the painting (priming counts as painting).  I also carried out other important jobs, like Passing Things To Regan.  The most frightening bit for me was moving the scaffolding, as I was terrified of letting it swing into the house!  I did spend a fair amount of time sitting on the bank, reading "Dwell" and Providing Regan With Moral Support (another important job).  I limited my attempts to be chief scone maker to driving to the local cafe to retrieve coffees and lunches.

As the weather was gorgeous, we had lots of visitors.  The neighbours even brought over a couple of beers for us!  Regan was most impressed when Alex showed up in the white Porsche that he has done up.  He has now decided that it would look great under the car port (purely for aesthetic purposes only, of course).  I'm trying to persuade him that our white Legnum adequately performs the same function.

Zaha worked hard too

This week-end was the first time that I have spent a whole day at the house, so it was really interesting to see how the sun moved and to play with doors to open up the house, and also to get the air moving without being too breezy.  The house performed fabulously!  The sunny week-end also lead to Regan making the important discovery that the closest beer shop is expensive.  So he now has a cheap beer fridge in his sights.  To keep the builder happy, of course.  When I pointed out that the added bonus was that he would be able to keep it in the garage after we moved in, he almost managed to look as though that was a brilliant idea that had not occurred to him.