Swimming Pool

As you can see we have had a really busy week at 42 Sixth Ave! On Thursday, we started digging the pool. In the 2 days they have pretty much finished the digging and will place the steel on Tuesday and on next Thursday they will gunite. The gunite then has to cure for 10 days and with the rains on the way we will have to see when we can marbalite. We have tried to place the pool as close to the patio as possible. This will hopefully allow pool action and shade seekers to still socialise easily. I have watched the sun over the last few weeks and we seem to get sun on the pool for most of the day. The soil that has been removed from the pool will be spread around the garden to level out the fall of the land as best as possible. We have opted for smallish pool - 5x3m and 1050-1700 depth.
To summarise the rest of the action - rinolite, plaster and ceiling work continues at a slowish but steady pace. The stone work has made no progress and this has caused plenty aggravation. Electrical work continues and security ires etc all in place. The screeds are looking good and we all set for the painting to start next week. The doors are due to be installed on Thursday and Friday and we should then have a property that more resembles a house. The end is in sight....

The Wine Cellar

One of the things Chris has been "obsessed" about is his wine cellar. As you know, some months back, we dug out +2m underneath bedroom 3. The only problem was that we never settled on an entrance/access point. Many ideas have been thrashed out over the months but with completion time creeping closer, action had to be taken. An important factor to consider is that at this particular part of the house we have 3 levels.

1. The wine cellar under ground

2. Bedroom 3 at ground level

3. Main bedroom upstairs

Foundations and retaining walls are not to be tampered with or we may have an "all fall down"

There is light at the end of this tunnel though - we have decided to access the cellar from the patio outside bedroom 2&3. There will be a trap-door in the corner of the patio with some stairs leading into the 3x3m room. We have built shelving and a bench in-situ and before the stairs went in we had to put Chris' old desk inside. (Our home PC is now on the dining room table). Thembe - who works for Errol - and his team finished the stairs and cast the patio slab on Thursday. We now need to source the trap-door and alls well that ends well.

Simply Screed

One of the things we have always had our hearts set on is "tinted screeds". This has however proven to be a rather complicated process. A few Sundays ago we spent a few hours testing out different oxides as well as different application techniques. I was not convinced with the out come nor the colours, so during the week phoned around to try find out what the correct technique is. Greg and Mel also tried to help by explaining the technique they had used. I tried to explain to the "men" and my words fell on deaf ears. Naturally, this sent me back to the drawing board. I was starting to get desperate so I phoned around to get prices (labour & material) per m2 and was shocked to hear quotes ranging from R180 - R260 per m2.... I can get good Italian tiles for that. I also know that the labour only subies charge around R25 m2 and materials come to no more than R30 m2. I like to think I am not a fool and I am not prepared to be taken for a ride with such astronomical profit margins. Martin the plasterer has the technique but we had to get the colour right. All the oxides just didn't seem to suit the house. We wanted to try get a grey/white marbled effect and tried to find a white oxide - NO LUCK! I then had a brainwave - what about a mix of white & grey cement. In theory this would give that marbled effect. So off to the hardware to buy a bag of white cement - yes, you do get white cement, however it costs more than 3 times the price of standard grey cement. Anyways, I bit the bullet and loaded the 50kg bag into my car. The urgency was that on Thursday the cabling for the under screed heating was being laid and the screeding had to be done super fast to prevent damage to the cables. Martin got stuck-in and we are both very happy with the result. His rate is a far cry from the person who wanted to charge me R260 m2. Now we need to let it cure and seal it with a polyeurathane finish.

Before and Now

With the carport gone I am now able to get back into the north west corner of our property and show you what we have managed to "grow" in the 6 months since we started. There is still a huge pile of rubble in front of the garage which will all be carted away by end of Wednesday. The last column on the patio has to still be cladded but this will only be done once the gutter box, down pipe and solar heating pipes are in position. Thank goodness the cladding will cover all of that as they are not the most attractive features on the front facade of the house. We are still on track for starting painting internally and on the roof next Wednesday. Garden wise, our short term intention is to clear the mess, level the land and lay the grass just before we move-in. In time we will build up a garden that will hopefully be low maintenance.

My Sanity !!!

As we all know, renovating/building is generally a stressful task to undertake. Having heard many stories from many friends, Chris & I realise how fortunate we have been during our renovations. To date we have only fired the first project manager and this was only one week into the job. This doesn't mean that we haven't come close to firing others. Using labour only sub contractors is trying at the best of times and they tend to want to do the easy work first and pretend to not understand what you mean when you want the more challenging tasks completed. I must admit that on Monday last week was the first day that it all got too much for me and I had my first good drizz. This was when Errol stepped in again and lived up to his other nickname "Wilde Builder". There was a fair amount of shouting and many unhappy faces, but it seems to have had the desired effect. Of course there has always been the question of my sanity but one thing is certain and that is without Errol it is almost guaranteed that I would be in Tara and the keys chucked away!

All the commotion got the guys got going and by Saturday the majority of the plaster work was done and the only other brick work is the wine cellar entrance as well as the wall between the garden & garage. This wall can only be built once the pool has been dug.

So as it stands for now this is the short term programme:
plastering to be completed by Wednesday
rinolite to start on Wednesday
prep for roof painting started today
pool digging starts Thursday/Friday
underscreed heating to be laid on Thursday
floors to be screeded on Friday onwards
internal painting starts next Wednesday
all doors/windows to be completely installed by next Friday
kitchen cabinets start 28th

This leaves us with a month till expected completion date!

Operation Clean-up

This past week, Errol truly did live up to his nicknames. For the past few weeks we have 2 of Errol's guys helping us keep the site relatively tidy but as I explained some posts back, rubble never stops multilpying. Last tuesday and wednesday we had Jorum cart 15 loads of rubble (approx 45m3) away and this was still not the end of it. Knowing we had not got to the bottom of the rubble/mess,Errol oganised a team of 7 men for saturday & sunday = Operation clean-up. The guys spent the entire day on saturday and sunday piling the rubble in the driveway for the "final" rubble removal due to take place this wednesday. While the guys were cleaning on saturday they told me Errol's one nickname is "Mr Clean"

As you can see, cleaning rubble is truly exhausting.... On thursday Errol & I popped across the road for lunch and when we came back we found Richard & Victor catching a nap in the sun during their lunch break.

The reason for all this tidy up is that by thursday the intention is to have all the rubble producing work complete. We really want to feel like we in the final stage (with about 6 weeks to expected completion date) and the pool guys are also due to start digging our pool They will put the soil removed for the pool around the garden for easy spreading. If we still have a mountain of rubble lying around we can't start the pool..... At one stage even Chris got stuck in helping.

To show our appreciation for the hard-work to date, we bought the guys - cleaners/plaster/electrician/ceiling - some rolls and meat and they had a little braai on site before leaving on saturday afternoon. As you can see in the background of the braai, with carport gone, we finally have a real sense of our space. I mention this because while setting out the pool last thursday I was worried we were losing too much garden with the pool, but I now see we actually still have a nice sized garden for any future baby Atkinson's to run around.

Action Action Action

Being on site today was like being in a bussling metropolis. For a change the was a lot of action with garages in (already a week ago), stone cladding progressing, demolitions, brick work, ceiling grid installtion, window installations and roofing still continuing. Shew what a day! All at the start of August with the winds and rain as well. We now have 8 weeks till completion and Errol is sure we will make it! Things are going to get hectic but I will try keep you posted! Spare some good vibes and send them over yonder please.

More Demolitions

Just when I thought we had just about finished all the demolition work something else has cropped up. While removing the old plaster from the wall separating the games room courtyard from the servants quarters courtyard we found the wall to be very unstable. Just by leaning on it slightly it was moving..... not a good idea to ignore esp as it was to be made higher. So last week I took the hammer in hand and started the bashing. As you can imagine this had the guys in fits of laughter and Errol got it all on a video clip. The good thing is this has allowed us to move the wall over a little and shield the door accessing the back courtyard from obvious view. At the same time they have started working on the games room by breaking out the opening for the stacking door and bricking in old windows and the divide between the games room and the servants quarters. All this brick work is due to be completed by Friday. At the same time the roof over that area is being extended. There was originally a slab over the SQ, but, it leaked terribly and left all different levels. This way we have the same level/pitch/angle and finish throughout. The roof (which is a full month behind schedule) is also due to be complete by the weekend.

Contentious..... No More

One of the most debated over sections to the house has been the patio area. Clive first suggested an aluminum louvre system. At first I was all for this idea and Chris was dead against it. But as time went on, with more debate, I decided that I was anti and Chris became keen. So ... more time, more debate and it became an area we were both avoiding. Researching the louvre system I learnt that no sofa would be able to stay out there permanantly as they are only 95% waterproof. I wanted a "proper" undercover patio with nice sof furniture. The guys were more concerned we would loose too much light and esp warmth in winter. Naturally you would then suggest a skylight option. Not a chance there either - I was keen and Chris NOT! I tried to explain the windows/skylight that Brett & Lara have in their kitchen but merely using "skylight" in the explanation killed my suggestion. So, what to do........? Thank goodness for Brian's birthday and our trip to London, Chris got to see first hand what I meant and was eventually persuaded. With this option, we can close the blinds in the window to shade the entire patio/open the window to let trapped heat out/let in warmth & light during the winter months. However, our next hurdle was to find the product locally. This is where I need to thank "google", within a few searches we had located the Velux supplier in Cape Town who put us in contact with a Joburg agent. After a bit of to & fro & haggling all is well that ends well and the Velux skylight windows are in the process of being installed. As you can see this has turned into a mamoth task. The windows need a min 15 degree pitch. This has meant building special boxing with flashing etc. In the end, though, we have the working patio we both wanted.