Last entry 2007, with a warning of a "strong" picture

Sorry about the long stint without any updates. The main reason for the delay has been the fact that we basically have been rendering the lasts couple of weeks. We have now finished the 3rd coat of render on the inside - a big achievement - but it hasn't changed the look of the place much, so no great need for pictures. We will come back to more pictures once it has been lime washed (more about this later).

But lets start on a gentle note. Some time ago we found a blue tongue lizard in our redbeed. We thought it probably had fallen in by an accident and wasn't able to get out again due to the plastic on the sides of the reedbed. We therefore helped it out and gave it some fresh water to drink. Then about a week ago it was back again, leading us to think that it is actually using our reedbed as a swimming pool on hot days. As such we have now have a couple of planks coming out of the reedbed so that it has something to walk on. We haven't seen it since, meaning that it either has worked with the planks, or that it has moved on somewhere else being annoyed with us taking it out of the water all the time.

Anyway, here is a little picture of it resting on the rocks in the reedbed:

With days getting longer and warmer, the vegetable garden has also been growing wild lately. We have harvested and given away lots of spinach, silver beet and different types of lettuce to friends and colleagues. Additionally our raspberries are coming along well and are tasting really nice. The zucchini (also called courgette or if you are in Norway: squash) is also growing happily and we have now started harvesting. The first one was about 500g. We have also harvested about 1kg of sweet pees from just a couple of bushes. Our winter crop of broccoli is now finished but gave us lots of food and also gave a lot of other people food - it was just too much for the two of us to eat it all.

First zucchini to be harvested.

Back to some building work. In order to install the bathtub in our second bathroom we had to build a frame to hold it up. When looking for a bathtub we noticed that a small mistake has been made when we did the plumbing work. Not sure if we should blame the designer, ourselves or the plumber, as neither of us thought about it before....anyway, the problem is that the drain for the bathtub basically is a the wrong end of the bathtub. As such, we will have to put a drain pipe under the bathtub and thus having to lift the tub a little bit higher than it would normally sit. This is not really a big problem, in that the bathtub has to sit on a mortar bed and the pipe can just be covered in the mortar, but it was a bit annoying as we just could have put the drain in the right spot when we did the plumbing - if either we or anyone else had thought about it.

The framework to hold the bathtub looks like this:

As can be seen from the picture we've had to make a hole in the slab at the left hand side - this is to fit the trap for the bathtub. Where the pipe sticks out of the slab on the right hand side, this will be cut of close to the ground, a 100-40mm flat reducer will be installed, and a pipe will then be run from this drain to the trap on the left hand side. All will then be embedded in mortar which will also support the bathtub underneath. We'll leave all this to the plumber!

Before finalising the 3rd coat rendering we also experimented a bit with colours, both for the inside and the outside of the walls. It is most common to mix and oxide with the last coat of render to get the colour you want on strawbale walls. A disadvantage of this is that you cannot spray water on the walls afterwards to cure the cement render, as this makes the colours run. As such, we decided to test out how it would be to mix either cement or lime with the oxide and water and basically paint it on the walls with a brush. This does seem to work well and the supplier of the oxides said it should not be a problem to apply it this way. It basically becomes a 4th layer of render with a colour. For us, the advantage would be that we can then cure the walls using water and then just apply the colour coat on a nice dry, overcast and still day.

For the inside we were originally going to get a mix of white sand, lime and white cement to get the colour we wanted, but the white fat sand we managed to get gave us quite a grey result, something we were not happy with. After talking to our designer we then experimented a bit with different washes, i.e. a lime wash, a white cement wash, an off white cement wash, a gypsum wash, and a wash combining lime and ferrous sulphate. From this we have concluded that we will be using a simple lime wash for the inside walls, something we are hoping to finish off in January 2008. Pictures will come when it is done.

Some of the sample colours we came up with using two different red oxides, mixed either with grey or white cement, and also ferrous nitrate mixed with grey cement and lime (the two colours on the right). We are looking at using the 3rd red colour from the left for the outside of the house.

Back to animals again - quite a long time we had a possum visiting our house, climbing up on the beam outside our bedroom window. We had not seen the possum for a long time and had a feeling he might have gone to possum heaven after visiting our neighbour. But then the other night we heard some noises outside again. Turns out the possum now has a friend and they came to check out our house.

A bit hard to take pictures when it is really dark outside, but at least you get a bit of an impression of them.

Now finally to the issue that has lead to the warning in the heading above. We are not the only ones in Cremorne building a house a the moment. A couple of friends are building an extension to their house and about 3 weeks ago Geir was heading down to help Andrew do some framing work. When we did the framing for our house, we predrilled all the wood and used the old hammer and nail method to put it all together. Well, Andrew is a bit more advanced than us and he uses a nail gun. By now you probably know where this story goes....

Anyway, I (Geir) basically wanted to include this little story as a warning to people who do not have lots of experience with nail guns - be careful !!!! It was only on the second nail that I managed to have a bit of an accident. It turned out that the nail gun shot twice, one nail that went into the bottom plate and then the stud, a second nail that hit the side of the first nail, then changed direction, went through the bottom plate and into my fingers.

Surprisingly it did not hurt, probably just because it happened so fast, and that I was extremely lucky not to hit any bones. So we had a look at it and decided that it probably would not be a good idea to pull it out, having read so many stories about people injuring themselves badly when pulling things out again. We therefore headed off to the local doctor who gave me some local anaesthetic in preparation for pulling it out. Whilst waiting for it to work, he called the plastics doctors at the hospital to consult with them, and then came back and suggested we continue there to let them have a lock.

So, off we went to the emergency department at the hospital. Since it was a Saturday morning there wasn't much of a queue and I was quickly seen by lots of people who took a great interest it my hand. After an x-ray it was confirmed that now bones were hit, but the plastics surgeon felt that it would be best to cut it out, rather then pull it out, just to ensure that there were no wood splinters or any glue from the nail left in the fingers. Thus I had to have a general anaesthetic and go into surgery. Woke up a while later with my hand all bandaged up, but had to spend the night in hospital due to getting lots of antibiotics fed through a drip to avoid any infections.

Next morning the doctor came to see me, had a look at my fingers and sent me home. Went back to the hospital for a check up 5 days later, and another 5 days thereafter they took the stitches out. This all meant that I could not do the heaviest of work in those days, but at least I was able to do the varnishing of the cupboard doors and at the end of it also start the rendering, using two sets of gloves to ensure I did not get the bandage wet.

So, what did it look like? Where here is the picture with the nail in, and then a picture of my hand as it is now:

Picture courtesy of my wonderful doctor Vani Prasad at the Royal Hobart Hospital

So, just to reiterate - if you are using a nail gun and haven't before - just be careful ! I was very lucky not to get seriously injured and have to say that I prefer the old hammer and nail method. OK, you might get a blue nail by hitting your fingers, but at least it won't go through your fingers!

Well, that will be it for 2007. We will be having a short break from building over the Christmas period, so there won't be an update now until some time in January.

In the meantime, have nice Christmas period and good New Year's celebrations!

Cheers

Geir & Jodie

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