Tales From the Box

Its perfect. Its 90 degrees, its balanced, its the meeting of straight lines at a perfect intersecting point. Its the cornerstone (literally) of most modern construction. The Box is built on it. Its a box…its all about the right angle. Anyway enough of the useless prattle. More gyprock goodies for me. All of the gyprock corners have been done – only the wall/ceiling cornice joints to be done now.

Oh…the windows (which were about the first thing we organized way back in the dim dark ages of September 2006) will be here in three weeks. Yay for the window guys!

For slideshow -click on image

I am a big fan of an ode. The humble ode is something that is oft forgotten in this crazy, need-it-now society. So in my series of odes I pledge one upon the gyprock wall.

I love gyprock. The smooth, soundproof surfaces move me to words of rhyme and well put reason which I both share with you in this renovation season. O I wonder with cander and pace, how i ever existed in a such a testing homely place, that would seek to want to try to embrace, such a fibrous material in such a space. Many years ago the gentlemen who built our abode, were quite mindful of the strength and issue of the load, of the house upon the foundations strong, who when picking the walling were quite clearly wrong. They chose, as their minds or experiences might, have suggested and thought would be alright, the warped dimpled and deformed sight of the substance widely know as Masonite.

As this horrible material was pulled back, it was with joy that i made such a stack, of rubbish that would be left as a shrine, declaring that no longer would Masonite malign, the use and purpose of this new design. It must not warp nor bend but want for the clean look of this modern trend, that only fair gyprock could ever attend. The walls so smooth and ever so straight, that upon each surfaces every artisan could create, a wondrous work or form that would employ, such wonder, such awe, such inspiration and joy. Its nature, however chalky and dull, is remarkably quiet in the calm and lull, of a long day when work has seen you depleted, the energy stores of your legs which thus leave you seated, to admire the sleekness of the wall completed, and its wonder of its square beauty repeated.

BRDAY +51

I feel bad for not noting the half century of the box renovation. We have reached day 51 since work first began and today marked another big day.

With the promise of a cooked lunch featuring both processed meat and chunks of cow, the tradies were in early, hoping to polish off the work for today and perhaps leave a bit earlier than the post 6pm finishes of the last few days.

On the agenda – to complete the cladding, fit the temporary stairs (using the old ones from the front deck), finish the sarking, finish the stud walls upstairs, rip out more of the old masonite interior walling upstairs and cover in the old front door. This was in addition to the delivery of enough Gyprock to sink a battleship, plus the entire house being insulated (celings and walls ).

The lunch was a welcome break however with the frenetic activity around the box – work continued until the sun was low in the sky.

How much stuff you do own? Can you fit it into a box? Can you fit it into a room? A car? Two rooms? Three?

Its an interesting question when you think about how you leave your footprint on the world. Anyway – i have been thinking a little about this over the part few days as we have packed up our entire living area and shifted it into two rooms, that being our bedroom and my study (its mine – jo never uses it thus i am claiming ownership!).

Currently I have sitting next to our computer, our 68cm konka (top brand that) and every kitchen thing we own, as well as all of our dvd’s, towels, electronics and assorted other stuff that is in our living room.

Next to these zipped rooms is emptiness. No kitchen, no lounge or tv (thus no foxtel). Nothing – and for that matter never again will that room that has seen so many good meals, good company and good movies see that again. Its destiny is a much more tranquil one as the main bedroom.

-//note//- i was going to name this post CoDec but i thought that too geeky. I am trying to not default to geekdom at every available opportunity – its mightily difficult though…

click image above for slideshow

Chaos…but in a controlled way. Today saw the most eventful day in the history of this renovation.

Early in the morn, when the air was still crisp and the birds still singing, our three brave tradies entered the house and removed the ceiling of the current living room, kitchen and hallway. What tumbled down from the ceiling cavity was something akin to snow, except that it wasn’t…. it was more like belly button lint. About 10 square metres of it – enough to line the floor a foot thick across the house. Oh and there was two dead rats in the roof – awesome!

Then these plucky men turned their attention to the eastern wall (wall that the kitchen was on). Within an hour this wall was completely gone, and a cooling breeze not to mention a marvellous view was on show for all (inlcuding the neighbours). The old internal cupboard was totally removed and the two windows that will be in this space were both framed up.

Attention was then turned to the area where the stairs will be. Bryan seemed to take particular delight in sawing the hole out. After some messing about the adjoining lower wall (i.e. the back of the downstairs bathroom), the stud wall for our new bedroom was up and our tradies were on their way as the sun was settling into the western horizon.

Windspray – conjures up feelings/emotions of the sea – those days when mother earth seems to sigh, and with it a moist cool breeze wafts over your skin, calming you to sigh along with her…

Well it is 39 degrees here today (well over 100F if you are a from that part of the world) – and we are in a record drought conditions with bushfires burning across 4 states.

But if you were to glance at the lovely cladding that was installed today you would be taken back to the first line of this post. Windspray. Our cladding has indeed arrived and is being installed as i write. Windspray is the colour of the colorbond range of corrugated iron cladding that we are opting for.

The corrugated colorbond is becoming quite an Australian signature – with its use very popular in contemporary Australian architecture. Of course much of this can be attributed to Australian architect Glen Murcutt who is renowned for the use of corrugated iron in his works.

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A change to the box as the lower storey begins to be filled in for the first time. Wall board is up down the bottom outside and upstairs, Bryan is ripping off the fake wall paneling (well its not ‘fake’ because it is in fact wall panneling but it is not very good and pretends to look like weatherboard slats when it is actually some sort of metal which is about as thin a coke can). We went for the insulation which i know sounds odd to those of you in other countries where insulation basically saves you from freezing to death. In this house we have never had any wall insulation – and the roofing insulation is the consistency of chewed cotton wool.

click image for slideshow

Well the holiday hiatus has finished and the downstairs bathroom is whipping along at a frenetic pace. The wallboard has been installed and the next day the tiling began! How is that for efficiency! The fixtures are being installed as we speak – so tomorrow I should be able to bring you some pictures our vanity and toilet (or you could just check out our other bathroom as we have used the exact same scheme – yes – we are lazy designers).

The open ‘area’ which is featured in the slideshow is actually our laundry which is taking shape.

click image for slideshow

After completing a stupendous, stand up job of the upstairs bathroom, George and his minions have started in earnest on the downstairs bathroom. We liked the design of the upstairs bathroom so much that we thought – why complicate things – so we have gone for the same tile/basin/fixtures combination. The space we allocated for the downstairs bathroom was the downstairs laundry – the only part of the original house that is downstairs (three downstairs in a sentence – yay for me). The size of the space we were working initially was roughly that of our current bathroom – given that we are losing about 1.5 square metres due to the staircase cutting through the old laundry.

However we had some issues – we had to incorporate some sort of laundry into the design. We had planned to have it an all in one – washing machine/dry in the bathroom. But George persuaded us that a separate laundry with a tub (we has planned for no tub). So we have a rather interesting mosaic of walls up at the moment with will form our bathroom.

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Like most other males, I love my technology. I have a relationship with my computer which i cannot describe. My Ipod has transformed my music listening. I can’t imagine life without my HDV camera and “my” digital SLR is an extension to my body (ask anyone).

I also love to cook.

Food that is… I love to cook food. So to combine these two activities would be tremendous. I have envisaged a nice (not massive) LCD screen opposite my cooking area – slickly mounted on the wall opposite. However I have ran into a small problem – one of the drawbacks to the wonderful age of digital TV is accursed set top box. Though its a necessity – in our situation, a big ugly box next to our TV won’t do. I have looked at LCD which feature integrated tuners, but they are all built for very large TV’s, not the size that we need/want for our kitchen area.

We also have the added fun of having to rewire our telephones. However Telstra charges $300 for a visit and won’t make do with the current setup (i.e. Telstra worker who was out here a few months ago said that they will have install connection boxes and some such just to begin with).

We have a local guy coming into to give us some handy hints. Someone told me once – when Google can’t solve it – it is beneficial to call a professional.

Yeah – google is pretty impressive….