Forever House #11

 Saturday 4th May 2013

I was right about that nip in the air. At various times during the night I closed the windows by the bed, then I closed the door. I put on socks and a jacket – and eventually threw a doona over the existing blankets. Finally... sleep. But I got off to a slower start than I’d planned – I’d thought eight but started nine thirty after filling and laying out in the sun three solar showers to get clean by this afternoon. 



Bathroom/laundry walls very close to the roof

I probably had enough dirt to do me today but I decided to spend the first hour or two digging and sifting anyway. I now have enough to do me tomorrow, but again will get up and replenish my materials so that I can keep up my momentum on Monday. By Monday arv I hope to have done three rows of mud around a part of the house I haven’t worked on for a while. I’ve been working around the bathroom kitchen for the longest time.

On reflection that is because they are external walls and I have been working towards lock up, therefore trying to get those walls to the roof. I have reached as high as I can go in that area – the ceiling needs to go up now, and the wiring and plumbing. Then I will mud up to the ceiling – which will be interesting but I’m sure I’ll find a way.

I have to start thinking backwards and getting things done in the right order. Had I been really on to it I would have been mudding conduits into the walls to carry the wiring, and pipes for the plumbing. But I deferred that stuff believing it’ll all work out in the end. I was keeping things simple stupid. I do have a few ideas about the utilities and have run them past various people over time. I seem always to make up my mind about things as they come up in front of me, based on information I collect along the way. Don’t forget I have been doing this house for eight and a half years or more – so I have been collecting lots of bits and pieces of knowledge, ideas, and of course paraphernalia. And fortunately I am married to a very capable power and plumbing assistant.



Part of wall I am working on currently
between the dining room and second bedroom

Now I am mudding from the other end of the house near the front door, around the second bedroom which is also the dining room wall, and then along the wall between the second and main bedrooms. I need to bring these walls up to at least lintel height. Then the ceiling becomes the focus. I estimate I have about seven rows plus a bit to get these walls up. I can do a row per day, that’s seven days mudding left for the time being. I’ll have two more done by the end of this weekend – I calculate another two long weekends should do it. The 17^th to 20^th May is my next opportunity – I just put it in my phone calendar.

Now that I am mudding at a rate or knots, I have to find homes in the walls for the many items I have collected for the purpose.

Car window shelf  before it exploded overnight

For instance I had a car window, a flat sheet of thick glass that had one rounded corner. Today I placed that in the wall where I had earmarked for it. It’s a neat little shelf you pass on the left as you move through the front door and down a stair into the lower living area. Tomorrow I have a part of a manifold I’m told – not sure where I found that – which will be a candle holder in the dining room wall above where the glass cabinet I have been traipsing around with for the last thirty odd years will live when furniture finds its way into the finished Forever House. 

I also have a heap of coloured bottles and they will virtually all go in the wall between the two bedrooms. I am taking them home and getting myself a bottle cutter. I don’t want the necks of the bottles to stick out one side of the wall. The bottles in the bathroom have their necks to the outside, but in this current bottle design both sides of the wall are internal, and I want the glow of light to be apparent from both sides. Once the necks are cut off, I am going to tape two like bottoms together. They have to fit the 250ml thickness of the wall. I have made a design with the number of pairs of bottles. It will have a circle of clear flagon bottles around the circumference, with a coloured bottle between each of those, and then another concentric circle of coloured bottles within that – blue green and amber. There are I think fifty two bottles in all.

I had visits from Dave and Gab, Daphne, Stan, Karen Symons and Molly. My share, I have decided today, is the best location of any share. I'm on the driveway about two and a half kilometres in from the front gate; two-wheel drive at a push. I had a two wheel drive when I bought here. And I think once it is finished it may well become a pop in house. I don't think I've ever had one of those before. 



I'd never met Karen and her daughter Molly before - although they have been share holders since the early 1990's. They know well Tony and Vicky, the people I bought my share from. It was lovely to put a face to a name. Karen said she'd been reading my blog - very cool - and asked if she could hand the link along to Vicky. Of course! I'm hoping all interested Currawinyans past and present (and maybe future) will come to the housewarming on the long weekend in October 2014. I think my next Currawinya project after the Forever House, is to do an oral history of Currawinya - collect recordings and pictures from everyone who wants to share their story of Currawinya.

I finished late and had a lovely warm bucket bath. To complete my wonderful day, I went to Quan’s with failing light to see what I could find in the way of windows for where the arches were supposed to go in the lounge dining room but I’m using the arches in the new dining room at Tuckurimba. I’ve been on a mission for something appropriate to take their place in a thirteen fifty wide hole with no upper height restriction, times two. Well today I think I may have got what I need.  

A set of French doors in a frame with a stoop and all, for the front picture window, and a set of three shorter windows for the window beside the front door. And to top if off I found a lovely, if old and in need of some love, front door. Like the arches, I have had two other doors  previously earmarked for the front door of the Forever House, and both of them have made their way into the Tuckurimba house. So it was fantastic to find a sweet old thing today to grace the front of the mud house.

Everything I got needs significant work. I may take them home once Dave has the measurements, to work on them there on my other available weekends. Add them to the list of jobs I have for the dining room kitchen at Tuckurimba.

I am seeing the Forever House in my minds eye – beyond this structural stage which will soon finish, and into the whitewashing, tiling, mosaics, pathways, gardens, kitchen, bathroom, furnishings – and it feels so good. I love my loo – it is the beginning of the final leg.