More pine lining, insulation, trees and plaster board

Yet again about 3 weeks or so since the last update. Hopefully all the people on in the Northern hemisphere have had some well deserved summer holiday in the meantime and therefore not missed us too much.

Anyway, we have been working since last time and have manage to complete a bit more of our house. First of all we have now finished doing the pine lining. We have actually also had a change of minds in respect of some of our ceilings since last time, and decided to also install pine lining in the kitchen and in our main bedroom. Two main reasons for this: 1) the plasterboards needed for these areas would have been very long and therefore difficult to install, and also not square at all. 2) As the kitchen area is part of an open living space together with the dining and living area, we thought it might be best to have the same ceiling in the whole area.

As such, the finished result (well, not including some small strips of wood to cover gaps) looks like this:

Looking from the living room, into the kitchen area.

Looking from the dining area into the kitchen

Main bedroom

We have also now installed all the insulation in all the rooms. The method used for this was explained in the last update, so we will just add a couple of pictures here:

Hallway outside bedrooms 2 and 3

Man hole in located in the office

Roof area above the insulation. As can be seen this is not enough space to store things.

The next big job we have been doing over the last week or two is planting trees. As many of you will know, we have a long boarder to the west (approximately 500 meters) which is also the location of Rushy Lagoon. Unfortunately we have a lot of strong winds from the north west and west during spring time, so we have to establish a massive wind break along the lagoon. The area was ripped/mounded earlier in the year, something that made the planting easier, and as such it took us 3 days to finalise planting of around 650 trees.

However, before planting the trees, we had to install the irrigation system. A good friend called Mike - who has also previously helped us with putting the roofing on the house - is an irrigation expert and he designed the system for us to ensure that we get equal amounts of water to all the trees. Overall, we have installed about 2700 meters of irrigation pipe, 650 drippers, valves, t-splitters and elbows + a pump. It took Geir two days to roll out all the pipe and install all the equipment, including building a little house for the irrigation pump. We won't include lots more information about the irrigation system here and now, but if anyone is particularly interested, you could always send us an email. Needless to say, we are very happy with the design as we now do not have to do any manual watering and we can use our recycled water from our waste water treatment system.

We might come back later with a more detailed description of the trees we have planted this time around, but for the moment, here are just some pictures of where they have been planted:

Along the lagoon to the west of the house - this is the BIG windbreak, with about 450 trees.

Similar to the last picture, just looking a bit more south.

Another 3 lines of trees between the ones planted along the lagoon, and the orchard.

Trees and bushes planted along the eastern fence line and the drive way up to the house. These trees will not grow as tall as other, thus not giving a big shade problem in the future (we hope).

Finally, on the building front, we have now started the work with plaster boards. We received them yesterday and have now started cutting them up in correct sizes for the various walls. We'll start putting the ceiling sheets up on Saturday and Sunday and will then get help from one of Jodie's colleagues who have been doing plaster boarding before. We will also hire a plaster board lifter which should make it easier to get the boards up to the ceiling - rather then us just lifting them up. We tried this in our little cabin and found that it is not a very nice job to do without proper equipment. And for 45 dollar for the weekend, it should most certainly be worth hiring the lifter.

Plaster board delivery, part 1

Plaster board delivery, part 2

So, the next entry will hopefully include some pictures of us putting up plaster boards in the ceiling and possibly also some on the walls. This will change the look of the house quite drastically, but at least then we will really start seeing how it will be !!

And finally, a couple of weeks ago we found an add in the news paper for a cooker. In our plans we have always wanted to have nice big cooker and the main idea was to get one that is 900mm wide. This would normally have either 5 or 6 burners, with an oven below. We were then planning to build a cupboard next to the cooker in the kitchen in order to use the wall space which is about 1600mm wide.

Having talked to the guy on the phone we found out that the cooker he had for sale was 1200mm wide and we quickly went out into the house to measure it up. We decided that it should fit and therefore went to see it later in the day. After some hard thinking and a bit of bargaining we decided to buy it and we are now proud owners of a Waldorf cooker. This is a commercial brand and the top is all made out of cast iron. It is basically a restaurant cooker and probably bigger than we will ever need, but as we got it for a decent price, we decided it was worth getting. It probably would cost about 4 times what we paid for it new, and it cost us quite a bit less than we had in the budget for a new one, so we are both very happy.

And, we will now most certainly have plenty of cooking space for when family and friends come to visit in the future. And what does it look like? Well, here it is:

As can be seen, it is all stainless steel, except for the top which is cast iron.

OK, that will be it for today. Will hopefully be back within a couple of weeks with lots of pictures of plaster boards all installed !!!

Cheers for now !

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