Peter and Natasha

Written by Peter, on 13-03-2009

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Since Tuesday we've been going back and forth trying to work out some clever kind of solution to our post height issue, ie get the house under the maximum height as stated by our covenant and maintain the minimum ceiling height. Again, I couldn't make it work with the information I had so it's gone over to the draftsman and Brian to work out and they're working on a solution as I write.

That has kept several things we could be doing on hold until that solution is established. One issue has been that our beautiful feature posts which we started to cut to size - before I saw that our numbers didn't work - now are too short. Well one of them is still tall enough but Arthur without Martha (see blog from 23/02/09 "The house is dictating to me")? I don't think we could do it. Brian, ever a solutions man, made us a generous offer we didn't refuse. So we travelled up to Brian's house, over an hour and a half away, and picked out one felled tree with two trunks. Two posts! Perfect. We loaded them on to a hired car trailer, and the old ute had it's work cut out for it. No worries!

Thursday. I looked at what I can do to keep things moving, and as I mentioned in the last blog it's stump bracing. Ivan arrived again yesterday and as it was raining in the morning, a minor miracle in itself, we set off for the land in the afternoon via Bacchus Marsh Building Supplies. It's always a pleasure to talk with those guys, and they sure can talk! But the quality of advice I get from them is really good so although the visits can sometimes, OK always, take a while, it's worthwhile.

So we reached the land, offloaded the very very heavy posts and cut up the bracing.  Then we fitted the bracing to any stump over 900mm in height with a temporary nail.

Friday. Bolting the bracing on properly. We managed to bend our industrial drill bit quite badly when it got caught in the bird netting we use to suspend our insulation. That wrapped around the bit and bent it about 15 degrees! Incredible and unexpected. We straightened it a bit then carried on.

With the bracing finished finally we went to work on our posts, pulling off the bark and having a look at what we had. What we had was termites! We didn't want them crawling around under the house so we hitched the posts on to the ute and dragged them 20 metres away from the house. Go ute! I'm saving our backs wherever possible. So dealing with the posts will have to wait for another day. Terrific. Great looking posts. Termites hadn't really eaten a thing and now they're on their way out, as separated from their nest they can't breed. Thank goodness we don't all need to breed with the Queen to continue our species. No offence Queen Elizabeth II!

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Posted by brenda, on 13-03-2009, 1. brenda Viewing the bush scene with the two new logs after felling brings back so many memories of times in Cooktown in 1974 acheiving the same chore, and spending time removing the bark hard to believe the same ritual is happening in 2009 with my daughter and son-in-law, looking forward to seeing the end results (which I never did in Cooktown)   » Report this comment to administrator » Reply to this comment... » See all 1 replie(s) Posted by Sue Mills, on 13-03-2009, 2. Posts I'm just wondering what sort of timber your new posts are and whether they will need to be treated? I have memories of the water tank at Galatea which was on a stand held up by felled pine tree logs collapsing spectacularly when we were house swapping with the Hunter family. We were in Rotorua and they were at Galatea. Wouldn't like the same thing to happen with your logs, although they will be internal rather than external.   » Report this comment to administrator » Reply to this comment... » See all 1 replie(s)