No more stuff

Hi all
We aren't working today because there's no more stuff to work on until the next load arrives from Sala Homes. Due tomorrow, we hope it will keep us busy for a while. This load will contain the ceilings, roof and claddings, I believe.
There's a low forming in the Coral Sea which could become a cyclone and rain like it did earlier in February. If it starts before we have the roof on, there will be major dramas which we don't even want to contemplate. If it all goes beautifully we will have a roof by Sunday ish and Jay tells me the building industry celebrate this milestone with beer. Actually we celebrate a few milestones with beer, like Friday.
Good news is that drilling through those enormous beams is pretty easy - the drill bit follows the ply and will even drill a warped hole through the warped beams which made Greyman happy. I problemsolved the lack of a 650mm long drill bit by visiting a nearby welder who happily welded some reo to make ours longer. He didn't want paying but we'll probably shoot something cold his way come Friday as he sure put a smile on Graeme's face. We had drinks yesterday with Al at his home which is charming. He has easy access to refreshments and lots of shady trees for Dee. A perfect arrangement.
Damon from Sala Homes was a bit taken aback when I told him I'd do this project again if we found the money and the land for it. We have had a few hiccups and I guess he thought I'd be a bit sour on the idea but freight and engineering logistics aside, Graeme and I agree this has been quicker than either of us expected. We have spent more time worrying about how to do tricky or new things than actually doing them.
And on to the weekend. We and the Bryants all bunked in together near the racecourse and Bash has started work on a song which involves the rhythmic clip clop of racehorses walking to trackwork and the muffled sound of someone speaking gibberish as they stumble into the room next door at 4.30am. It was great to see Bash and the kids and I miss 'em all again now. Am already plotting my return trip with Ali on the internet to get me cheap flights.
Today I read a book by Lily Brett, called What God Wants. I like her insight and the way she stings you sometimes. She writes with the perspective of having grown up as the child of holocaust survivors, but is bloody funny along with it.

Have been to City Cabinets. Gary took one look at my wheelchair friendly house and said don't be too fussy about the kitchen being friendly to quadraplegics - he can't peel the vegetables to put in the accessible saucepans or side opening oven... As he is quadraplegic I went with his opinion. We are having drawers, a beech look laminate on doors and a dark scratch resistant benchtop. Now to buy the appliance package.

As I walked into the bus depot from the rail station, there on the floor was a young girl who was obviously en route to her home from some sort of cattle work up north. She had all her stuff scattered around her and was sorting it out so her mother wouldn't know how feral her life had been for the last little while. I hope our girls grow up with the same healthy respect for my opinion although I could think of better places for them to do their packing than the Roma Street Transit centre floor. I had to admire her spirit though, she obviously hadn't wanted to waste a single moment of her time up wherever she was and just allowed enough time to keep herself in the will.

I love travelling - you know the suspended reality of it? On my way back from Transit centre to airport, the taxi driver had to answer many questions about her life - she has a daughter who suffers from a rare disorder called something like Bater's syndrome or something. It affects internal organs and she would stop breathing as a young child and the mother couldn't do so much as shower alone as there was noone to watch the child. One day the elderly next door neighbour gave them a puppy she was unable to take proper care of and shortly after that Mrs Taxi driver noticed the puppy would come racing up to her and carry on until she followed, inevitably the daughter had stopped breathing and the dog would paw at her and push with her nose until the girl woke up. She is now about 15 and the dog died not long ago. This behavior continued for years and they remained good friends till it died. I stopped the self pity after realising something like saying goodbye to my daughters is not as earth shatteringly sad and fraught as this poor woman's early mothering years have been. I feel lucky to have seen my girls and that their health is good.

Yah yah yah. I clearly don't have enought to do.

It didn't rain today.

Hi all. The drowned rat has dried out today. I am oiling 462 l/m of decking on four sides, hmm wonder how much actual square metres that is.
I went to Masaki yesterday for more of his hot sticks torture which I credit for my back holding up to this fairly demanding work. We got heaps done today finished the wall bracing - we are halfway through screwing the decking on (bought 2000 screws, need 1000 more) sheesh, everyone is getting very sick of drills. Ben's coming tomorrow and he's been warned to bring his drill.
Al, Ronnie the welder, and I are having a contest where you turn up the radio (sorry Ned and Dulce) and guess the name of the singer when a song comes on. We have argued over which station we should be listening to but settled for Sea FM. Lots of Bob Seger and Snow plough or whatever they are called. 'what if I just lay here?' tragic little song.
I am seeing a bit of life here at Slade Point. We have had quite a few people come to the gate and ask where we got the house/s from. I'm happy to talk to them but not mad keen on paying builders to answer their questions about exactly how you build them. Not sure Graeme is wild about the interruptions either. We have asked Sala Homes for a sign with their contact details on it which will help. It is quite touching that the locals are interested enough to ask though, so we always talk to them. Today it was a nice man from around Ocean Ave - the posh end of town. He would like to ship one over in a container and build it in Tonga.

Yesterday it was a man with very shiny shoes (which made Dee suspicious straight away. She's our site supervisor and keeps the cat next door on her roof, looks out for uninvited visitors and such.) who wanted to know if he could build a house out somewhere in the bush. He is a publisher and gave us a card but we did think he might be from the tax office or Mackay City Council on account of his shoes.
Trevor has the runs, poor bugga. He ate a seafood pizza which he had in the fridge! He got sick the night before after having a piece but thought it was one particular prawn, so gave it another try last night. So he's been sitting about groaning but still went off to work.
I'd better get off now. Am starving as usual.
Hey, I hope someone is reading this twaddle. You are welcome to comment if you can figure out how to...

Got pics today!!

So, I won't say much. Please make sure you look closely at Catwoman's house - it is fascinating and a grand folly.

But they Just Don't FIT!

Hi all. More sweat and some blood lost today. The second floor is down and we have frames strategically placed around the floor so we can frame up quickly tomorrow. The engineering is further complicated by the fact that the beams which run through the spine of the roof are bigger than the spaces left in the steel frames to hold them. Hmmm. What to do. I think the problem started when our engineer got very very safety conscious and arranged for these huge beams of laminate timber ply. They are nearly 40cm deep and have to be drilled straight up (about 8 cm thick, doesn't leave much leeway for crooked drilling) to hold the rafters with these big bolts the engineer wants. This has to happen approx every 90cm along the length of the building. But the frames don't fit around these huge beams. We have put it into the hands of the frame makers to see what they can come up with.

I will be very pleased to see the beams in place - might even be able to go home and see everyone for a few days. The builder is quite worried about how it will all happen but I guess you get that on the big jobs (to paraphrase Bash)

Hey Kate, I hope you swam well at your swimming carnival. Will call you Saturday night to hear about it.

Hurry hurry.

Frame is going up today on house number one - it rained again last night and delayed putting down the flooring on house 2. Graham is not wildly happy with the framing system as the frames are not marked a-a b-b etc so we can match the ends. However, we have done quite a bit of the jigsaw for today and it really looks like there's a house being built. As it is an entirely new building system, Graham has had some questions but I have overheard him saying to someone that he thought the flooring system was pretty good, apart from the approx 3000 screws/nails we have put in. I even bought a new drill for the exercise and it sure is getting some use.

On the home front, I have learned some interesting things. Sarah is going out on her first leave this weekend, thanks Dave & Jo! Have found the library and met some locals. I have learned things about sniffing paint, disability advocacy as a job, the best place for vegetarian lasagne and of the cat lady who has the most interesting house - it is decorated, entirely from ceiling to floor, with stories of cats and some legends redone with the cat theme in mind. Will post photos soon as I work out how to 'bluetooth' em from my camera. It is truly the most remarkable thing I've seen in home decoration.

Bash, Cam and Tory had a rowdy old time on the verandah yesterday on account of it rained 160 points so he's happy. Don't know about poor old C&T - they were going to harvest some buffell which wouldn't look too promising now. Bash cooked 'em a big fat roast which I'm sorry I missed. I had a stubby of strongbow and a piece of chocolate and went to bed absolutely wrecked.

I'd better go, my 15 minutes came up pretty quickly.

Hey, Jen - I will try to make this as rivetting as possible from here on in.

First Hurdles

Today I cut myself with the stanley knife. Graeme and Al went home early as the steel for sub floor is not all on site. Several phone calls and we think it's on a little truck somewhere between Gladstone and Mackay. Gotta love One Steel.

I have been able to secure a boarding arrangement with T, the neighbourhood helping hand. It's pretty handy, being only a few doors up from the building site. Have learned how to use my new gadget for phone calls (don't snigger, it's not as easy as you might think) and have developed the habit of asking everyone I see about it and they all seem to be able to show me something new. Thanks Paul for working out my PIN number for messagebank. My next big step is to figure out how to use the bluetooth headset. B reckons I'll look like a clown, wandering about talking to myself.

Topic for discussion this morning was tie downs - for cyclones etc. We appear to be over engineered for what what we are building and the builder expects the tie downs alone to take almost a week to complete. I guess the engineer doesn't want to get sued.

The master of our domain informs me during huffing, that he has had another stick go through a tractor tyre which meant a 2 km walk. Poor man, I wish I could split into two and leave one of me home. It's a two person job to take it off and put it onto the vehicle to take home for repair.

I tried to take a photo of the site this morning so I can start one of those time delay sequences and speed up the building process but our resident user of stuff (S) has flattened the batteries.

I am going over to Ned and Dulces (next door) later to show Dulce the joys of eBay. In between cleaning out the shed and putting the end caps on all the joists. Someone once lived in the garden shed and has left carpet and a bed - the carpet is saturated from 20 inches of rain so is pretty rank. That'll be fun.

All that and I've found an internet cafe up the road. A feed and a read, who can ask for more?

Starting Out

So here i sit on a pretty good day. I'm packed and ready to go to Mackay where we will be building two Sala Homes kit homes at Mackay. Only thing is, it won't stop raining there. The schools are open but the buses aren't running so there are some mighty happy kids about.

Dotty and Mr Meatant will contain any disasters on the home front while I am the intrepid adventurer for the first time in a while. We have just put our kids into boarding school which my friend describes as barbaric, between loud sobs. Part of me wishes it didn't have to happen but I am so conditioned to the idea that as long as the girls are happy, then so am I.

I'm not too sure what is interesting to others so this will have to evolve with me. The best thing about this venture so far is that I now have a new gadget (one of those new smart phones) to play with, and I do love gadgets. It is a JasJam and seems to be able to run my life very efficiently if only I can figure out how to use it. I shall consult the helpful people at Whirlpool forums or Aussie 3g should I need assistance.

Home is in the 'bush' with cattle bred for beef, and a small amount of cropping for forage. The recent rain has lifted all our spirits and even the animals have a spring in their collective step.