Day 147 : Working class man

Storm front coming in; view from deck

The "no skills required" job

One of the interesting things about this project is the client/builder relationship.  I think it was always going to be a bit different due to the personal relationship that we have with Bob - after all, I have known him since I was 13 and Stos has been acquainted with him for a number of years.  I've been chatting to Bob about meeting the Tiler to sanity check some of the ideas we have, i.e. will 600 x 600 tiles look silly;  how will the feature tiles work with having recessed shelving in the shower and whether Pete's idea of a 100mm border around the shower grate will cause problems.  On Friday I called him to find out whether he had been able to tee up a meeting for Wednesday and was assured that this is in progress,  The next question was "Are you and Stos looking to do anything over the weekend?", which I interpreted as being a social activity on offer; maybe meeting the new girlfriend.   I said that of course we were.  The reply was a bit different to what I had anticipated; "Good, you can paint the window and doorframes".  Not quite what I had in mind.  To add insult to injury, I was told that "no skill is required".  The next point of discussion was how the placement of the airconditioning unit will interrupt the beautiful lines of the roof.  Bob then said that the solar hot water unit will be on the other side to balance things out.  Thinking that I hadn't been paying attention to some earlier discussion, I asked Stos if he knew we were having a solar hot water system, and somewhat to my relief, this was the first that we had heard of it. So the lesson of the day is that Bob knows best!  Fortunately we are quite happy with this, and I think this is an indication of how well the budget is tracking.

Anyway, today in the wind and the rain, we headed down to the block to paint 19 door and window frames.  As Bob said, it really was just slapping preservative on to the frames, not worrying about the underside of the lower sills.  So we listened to daggy music and primed the frames, feeling very much part of the project.  A couple of visitors dropped by the break up the day; a neighbour of M & N's who takes a great interest in our project and was passing by, and one of Bob's mates who wanted to borrow some equipment (all was OK, Bob just forgot to mention that he'd be calling in).  It was a good day's work; any unskilled work that we can contribute that helps us get back into the house even one day earlier has got to be good.  Hopefully Bob will be putting the frames in tomorrow, with the cladding staring Wednesday or Thursday.  We should be at close to lock up stage in 4 weeks, which makes us very happy.

Progress has also been made on floor tile and with ducted vacuum cleaning selection.  We've also sketched out a plan for wiring, lighting and power points for Sparkie Dave, as electricals is another important step in the next few weeks.  There should be a lot of progress to report for next weekend's update.