Day 5

It was a very busy day yesterday so between staying behind at work for N's farewell drinks (sob!) and dashing out last night for a delicious dinner at Cafe Bedda (very tasty ricotta gnocchi al forno), there was no time to update the blog anyway. I spoke with Bob the Builder and he is ready to start doing clean up of the block in readiness for the slabs to be laid on Monday, provided that the demolition equipment is gone. Must call the demolition company to find out what is going on as the machine was supposed to have been removed. The temporary fence went up as planned and from the street we can see where the mark out is for the garage slab.

For something different, I've posted a picture of the cake I made for the workplace birthday and also the making of the ganache for the top. The latter is made up of cream, malted milk powder and melted chocolate. So wicked and I love the colour contrast between the caramel of the malted milk powder and the lushness of the dark chocolate. The cake went down a treat - max impact for min effort.

Day 3

As blogging is new to me, I thought I'd wait a couple of days before trying import some pictures. Maybe I need to do a tutorial on importing and arranging photos because getting them to line up has been a chore. More to learn. Going from left to right above is the house as it looked on Tuesday morning, Tuesday night and today with the block all cleaned up. The demolition piece is now finished and Bob the Builder has been over for a look and it sounds like the slabs for the garage and the lower level will be going in next week. Things are moving! The other exciting thing is that I had my first almost real game of squash since rupturing my ACL one year and three days ago. I won the first game, then the third out of the five. Not bad. I had a bit of pain in the front of the joint, so eased off a bit, however still worked up a sweat. Off now to finish a cake for a workplace birthday - malted milk chocolate cake from the excellent cookbook "Chocolate" published by the Age.

Day 1 - lemon tree is safe

I have been trying to work out what has been Day 1 of this project. Was it when we decided that we wanted to work with Bob the Builder and create a new house rather than go down the rennovation path? Was it when we decided that the cost was acceptable, the plans were complete, the building permit granted or when we signed the contract? However, I nominate today when the old house was knocked down and things really started. It was a very strange feeling, walking down our street, knowing that the house that we have lived in for eight years would be gone. Not sad - we have no real emotional attachment to the house - but it is a very odd sensation to see a pile of rubble and twisted metal that was a solid and habitable house this morning. But the first thing was to make sure that the lemon tree was still standing - Stos had told me that it was and I was assured that the demolition team knew that there would be consequences if it was harmed, but I had to see it myself. And it is there - lush, green and loaded with unripe lemons. Now it has to survive the next nine months of building.