Skin

I like cladding - it's kinda the skin of a building, the bit you see most often & also the part which will see the most weather action. We ummed & aahed a lot about cladding, talked about various options - aesthetics, durability, cost, ease of installation - but in the end went for macrocarpa mostly because it smells so good :-) (Much irony in this decision, considering that we - especially I - smell so bad at the moment due to long dusty sweaty days doing building stuff).

We also like re-using things we already have, or at least getting things locally. So being able to whizz over to Bromley & pick up our cladding from a small garden furniture making factory there was real nice.

Choices choices choices - we then had to decide what, if anything, to put on the macro cladding. We learnt a good lesson here - whatever anyone tells you about stain, it is not a natural colour. We bought the most "natural" stain we could find, hoping to see the grain of the timber, but in the end got a light chocolate brown as a finish. Despite the initial surprise, we like it more & more - the hut has been transformed from a giant liquorice allsort to more of a caramel toffee.

So now we begin to head indoors where we can really get into some recycling - floorboards from the old house (which will go on both floor & ceiling), & also our old roof sarking which will go on the walls. Sanding sanding sanding...

Nice straight lines on the south side

SilliNess

Rampant silliness

Trickiness around the big windows

Installing the mezzanine rafters - love recycling those rimu beams

The final touches on puttying the East bay window - thanks again to James, Dave, Derek & Lucia for helping lift the glass into place

Praise be the angle grinder - makes short work of tidying up the floorboards

Painting the underside of the floorboards, which will form the mezzanine floor

Fernie delivers more essential yumyums for the workers, Nessi looking VERY excitied

Artists rendition of the hut - by Jule (6) & Anne-Marie (5) 

Our very own pot of gold

It's window time

To give a small area a sense of spaciousness you tend to need a few windows - either that or no roof (ie a fence) or do without a few walls (ie a picnic shelter). We have a good selection of windows - 3 new (well 2nd hand new, from Brown Sparrow recycling - love that name) & 3 recycled from our old house. The big ticket items are our recycled bay windows, each of which weighs a tonne - it took four of us to lift the small one, & six blokes couldn't lift the big one!

It's also been a neighbourhood effort to find storage for the bay windows - the small one ended up in Anna's barn (along with the frame of the big one, plus a stack of rimu joinery), & the glass for the big one went into Femke's garage (snuggled up between our mattress, washing machine & old desk). So great to get all this wonderful salvaged material out again & meld it into a new space.

Here's a few pics to be going on with - more to come soon :-)

South side window + cavity battens

East side, with repainted bay window

Nessi striding keenly along the NW frontier, cavity batten in hand

Cavity batten getting the chop

A composite roof

How many households does it take to provide spare corrugated iron for a small roof? Quite a few it seems in York St...thus far we have 5 contributors towards our wee hut roof:

Our own leftovers from the brick cottage, most of which we shortsightedly hocked off to the local scrap metal dealers

12 sheets of most excellent iron from Esther & Tony's house in Redcliffs, soon destined for demo

A couple of sheets from Adrian, Michelle & Fern at no 29 - courtesy of their own re-roofing project

A stunning ridge cap from Bruce & Trish at no 7

And last but not least a load of metal guttering from no 21 - the house that most of us in the street have been wanting to demo for at least 10 years! I've had my eye on the guttering for some time since news percolated out that the house was due for demo, but did nothing about it. On Friday morning digger & crew arrived so I ran down there & quickly negotiated 45mins of time to extract as much guttering as possible, in exchange for a box of beer. In the end we had 2 hours to do the task - huge thanks to the new owners Bronwyn & John.

Check out that shiny new barge flashing

Scavenged guttering from no 21

Garden studio takes shape

Slowly but surely a small hut has sprung up in our garden - yeh! And what fun it's been - what an amazing learning experience. Having never built anything before, each step of the way has involved lots of research, funny conversations ("so what exactly is a dwang?"), you tube videos, and best of all  trial and error (my favourite).

As of today 15 Jan, we mostly have the roof completed, and are moving onto installing the windows next, followed by the external cladding. Much to look forward to :-)

Here's a few pics of what we've been up to over the last month.

Original concept design

Developed design - state of the art architectural prowess from Nessi

Piles ready for concrete - yeh!

First pile - with sand stolen from Lucia's back yard

All piles concreted in - phew

Post xmas picnic - Mr Grey carries out another site inspection

YUM!

Concrete is so much fun

zzzzzzzzz

Ready to put a hut on top

Nessi measuring up

First wall going up - support from all the neighbours & friends has been awesome

South wall almost in place - double thumbs up from Adrian

East wall coming up

East wall in place

Bruce makes sure we're doing it properly

West wall sliding into place

Heeeaaavvvvvvve

North wall going up

There it is...Nessi runs for cover

Final check

Wow it kinda works

View from York St

A few days later - all wrapped up. Looks like a giant licorice allsort :-)

Ridge beam going in

Yukky bora stuff getting painted on the rafters. Nice to re-use some of our rimu timber from the old cottage

Mr Grey makes another site inspection. Nessi's bribes of "cat temptations" & milk are working well

Swiss import Lizzie maintains law & order on site, & makes a fine job of the window wrapping.

Plywood going on the rafters

Barge boards on - a tricky business getting those angles just so...don't look too closely :-)

A change of direction

Life is a funny thing - just when things seem certain, it all changes. We've spent the last few months crunching the numbers on the new house, & have concluded it doesn't really add up to a good value project. Too little house for too much money. So after weighing up our options we're now planning to build a tiny house (on a trailer - in the bottom garden), complemented by a "garden studio" on the top terrace. All of which requires no building consent, no engineers, no architect...just us & a very steep learning curve!

So, were underway again - 1st step is the "garden studio" - ie a 10m2 hut - which is an important stepping stone to the tiny house, as we know absolutely nothing about building :-)

Check out the action shots below, & a wee video clip here

Proud as punch after digging 6 holes

15 holes ready for piles

Mr Grey inspecting the building site

Re using your concrete paths

Well we seem to have almost done it - cleared the site of all hard fill that is. The jackhammer was just the bees knees, & actually quite good fun - once you heave the beast into position it's not too strenuous at all. After breaking up all the back area outside our old kitchen & back patio, we decided we should at least have a go at recycling our concrete paths. A quick peruse of the world wide web confirmed our suspicions - there are lots of good ideas out there for up-cycling one's concrete ie it need not be biffed into a skip.

Slabs of concrete ready for re-use, just the small matter of shifting them for us to do... 

A delightfully messy scene at 3 York

Meanwhile out on the street its all action too as they replace all the wastewater pipes in the street

The sting in the tale...

Just when we thought we were about to polish off the demolition, 2 skips booked & bodies prepared for lugging all the remaining hard fill, we discovered...yet more concrete. Turns out that several areas out the back of our old kitchen were not just cute brick spirals on earth - in between lies a sturdy crust of cement. Sigh.

On the upside it looks like we might be able to borrow a jackhammer of some sort for the final cleanup - sounds exciting, if a little j-j-j-judddddddddering :-)

An almost tip-top full skip - plenty more where that came from

Lurking underneath that sandy stuff is yet more concrete