October 2023 continued

          More walls needed to have their screw holes filled, sanded down, and then the primer coat of paint applied around the edges with a brush and also over the bumpiest bits ready for the first coat with the paint roller. Below you can see the various stages of progress.

Josh was working on the solar set up. He bought a large metal box and set it up under the house, and put the inverter etc in it.

Lots of fancy pretty coloured wires and switches. It is all designed to meet Australian safety standards.

This is the inverter set up inside the house, you can see the blue box attached to the wall and some associated plugs and wires. On the ground are the batteries which we had set up on a rolling stand.

Lots of special tools and equipment that Josh used for the solar installation.

Josh also bought a large metal box to move the batteries into, and this was placed under the verandah.

Here is a close up of all the wires that join the batteries into one system.

I'm not very good at explaining all this electricity stuff as I only understand some of it,

Below you can see the larger blue box, which is the inverter, has been taken from out of the house and put into the big metal box under the house.

The door on this box closes up to keep everything safe.

Josh cut a hole in the box for cooling air flow and installed metal mesh to keep the creatures out.

Next installment - I see some wooden doors and I want to paint them black!

 October 2023

      The kitchen sink had the S-bend installed. Since it is a 2-bowl sink, we had to buy a special extension set to make the S-bend fit properly. The sink is not installed onto the cupboard in the photo, we still needed to get a bench top for that. On the left of the photo you can see the downpipe for the sink, obviously not lined up yet!

     I set up a temporary drain pipe under the floor for the sink to drain through, as we didn't want to water just pooling under the house when we did get it all lined up and taps turned on.

     Meanwhile Josh made a frame to put the bath tub into.

          Here is the frame with the bath sitting in it.

 This is the bath frame in the bathroom. In this photo the bath is sitting up on the frame sideways just to keep it out of the way temporarily. At the other end you can see the hole in the floor when the drain goes through.

Then the bathroom needed waterproofing. This is special stuff which is kind of thick and goopy, and makes a thick layer which stops water going onto the wooden floor and walls. It is somewhat flexible, and this saves the floor, walls (and also floor frames if wooden) from rotting in case of water leakage from the basin, shower, laundry or washing machine. Waterproofing is required to meet building codes, and so we had to do this and then get it inspected by the council. Since our floor and walls are made of marine plywood, we had to make sure that we had the right type of waterproofing. We also had to make sure it was the right type of waterproofing for the sheet vinyl flooring which was going on top of the waterproofing layer. It was very difficult to get any decent info about any of this, as it is unusual for people to build with plywood or sheet vinyl. Normally people use cement board and finish with tiles. We didn't want tiles as they are not waterproof, due to the grout not being waterproof. As we all know, the grout around tiles goes disgusting after just a few years. Yuck, no thanks. Also I don't like tiles because they are so hard, not very nice since I have sensitive feet.

Here is the primer which got the marine plywood ready for the waterproofing,

Here is the waterproofing container, and also the waterproofing tape which goes around the joins between the floor and the wall. The waterproofing had to go up the walls a certain distance, and behind the shower, basin, laundry and washing machine to a certain height.

In the below photos you can see Josh applying the waterproofing, note the breathing mask as this stuff certainly had a strong smell.

Now you can see the finished bathroom, very high up the walls behind the shower/bath area.

Josh was very thorough and did several layers just to be sure. We had the council inspection on Halloween and passed with flying colours. Next inspection should be for the final Occupation Certificate.

Next blog installment - more painting of walls.

 2023 September.

     We finished painting the kitchen so it was time to start installing kitchen stuff. Here you can see the gas stove sitting near where its final position will be.

We went to Bunnings and bought some kitchen cupboards. The Kaboodle kitchens seemed to be the cheapest and easiest option.

The cupboard itself is Step 1, then you need to buy doors, hinges, handles, kickboards and all the other bibs and bobs to finish it off. The below photo shows the panels ready to be screwed together. They supply the screws, the feet and the instructions. This is the 400mm base cabinet.

Here is the assembled cupboard.

Below you can see the box, panels and finished product of the 900mm base cabinet.

Next was the 600mm drawers, they were a bit trickier.

There were the panels for the sides, the bottoms, the top and then also for each of the 3 drawers.

The drawers still need runners, and also fronts on the drawers. Bunnings didn't have the hinges we wanted, the drawer runners we wanted, or the door fronts that we wanted, so we had to special order them in. Apparently (according to the online reviews) the Kaboodle Hettiche were much better quality than the regular Kaboodle, even though they were at least $10 more each. Our local Bunnings doesn't have much stock in store, so it was at least a 6 week wait. 

We had decided on Licorice Twist for the door colour, but it seemed that Kaboodle had discontinued it. Instead we decided to get Raw Board doors and paint them ourselves. That meant the doors were only $30 each instead of $80 each. These 3 cupboards needed 3 doors and 3 drawer fronts so we were saving a lot of money. It meant that we had to spend money on paint but it still worked out cheaper, and we got to choose whatever colour we wanted.

Below you can see the kitchen cupboards in almost their final positions. The cupboard on the right hand side needs to move to the left but the pipe in the floor is blocking it for now.

Here you can see the sink sitting on its cupboard.

It's a double bowl sink, so needs special drainage plumbing to join everything up.

In October 2023 we work towards getting the plumbing sorted out and all the cupbaords properly in place with a benchtop on top too!

 More Painting
     We chose the colour Twill which is a kind of light grey with hints of blue or purple depending on the light.

Here you can see the difference with the white undercoat - the darker sections are the Twill cut-ins at the edges and where the sheets of plywood join. The top part hasn't been done in this photo yet as it requires going up a ladder.

Here you can see Twill is the top colour on this colour card from Bunnings.

Here's the kitchen.

These are the rollers I was using, they give a great finish.

Here you can see the difference between the traditional large roller and the little one. The large one is too difficult for me to press against the wall but the little one is so easy to use, I love it!

More painted walls. I was doing a section of wall at a time, each coat took a few hours for each section and then a couple of hours between coats. This meant that it took a few days at least to do each section. It took extra time before and after each session of putting up the painting sheets, mixing the paint for at least 5 minutes and then cleaning the paint off the roller and tray afterwards. The clean up was the worst part of the job.

One coat of primer and two coats of twill.

Next step, kitchen cupboards.

 Back in November 2021 the support bars were attached to the house floor frame, and in June 2023 I noticed they were looking a bit rusty, so I set to work to try and keep them in good condition for the future.

I got my hands on a few likely looking products, mostly second hand partly used products. This one is like an acid, very runny.

The metal turns a dramatic black when it converts the rust. It left a funny mark when it dribbled on the galvanised floor supports, probably not good.

This one is like a paint.

It's a pretty grey colour.

And then I got this primer.

And then I got this top coat that is exactly the same colour as our Colorbond trim.

It looks fantastic finally finished!

I think there's still a few waiting for me to get the final coat on, one day when I'm not busy doing other things...