March 2020

We continued with the internal framework of the house, using the steel pieces which were pre-cut, pre-drilled and numbered so easy enough to place in the right order according to the plans, and screw together. The bedrooms have built-in wardrobes with their own steel framing.

And the sides...

Then we stood the frames up and screwed them in place, may have required some banging with a rubber mallets and a few select words to get them to sit right!

Other exciting things that happened this month was that I got a part-time job, and that COVID hit. Not that COVID restrictions actually affected us much as we live like hermits by choice as much as we can anyway.

April 2020 - Our little house looking lush in the rainy season. You can see the plywood on the left of the house and on the verandah, ready for the next step.

Which was the laying of a thin (7mm) plywood floor over the top of the yellow-tongue floor, with a blue underfloor layer which you can see in the back far right. We had help from family with this, so thanks so much to Ben for all your hard work! Again!

The photo below shows some of the tricky cuts of the plywood floor to fit around some of the steel framing.

Here is Josh using a tape measure to ensure he is screwing down into the right places, missing the screws from the previous layer of yellow-tongue.

Then I had a go at levelling some of the joins between the sheets of plywood, as there was the occasional height gap of a few mm. I tried using the Ryobi battery-powered planer but it didn't work too well as it just chipped pieces off the top layer of the plywood. More effective was the Ryobi battery-powered sander, so I managed to make it flat enough to remove any trip hazards.

Then we were busy during the cooler months of the years collecting wood to keep warm in our wood stove in the shed, so nothing much happened until

October 2020 - we had the delivery of our stainless steel water tank arranged, and made a tank stand ready for it. First we made a perfect circle the right size marked out with rocks (never a shortage of rocks on this property!)

Then inside the rock circle we added a layer of metal mesh lined with shadecloth...

Designed to be strong enough yet thin enough to hold the gravel in place, with the benefit of being able to drain rainwater.

And had a delivery of gravel poured into it - here's Josh guiding the truck sluice around the circle to get a more even spread.

In the end it was more gravel than we needed (which is good) so we shovelled off the excess and have it ready to use for other projects.

The frustrating thing with gravel is that it is about $50 worth in itself but then you have to pay a few hundred dollars for delivery - definitely can't fit it into the back of a hatchback! All worth it in the end.