2008

The best little helper in the whole world was due in seven weeks and the house still wasn't finished... I say still because it felt as though we'd been struck by inertia after all of the momentum we'd had prior to xmas. We just pottered: started painting, oiling timber, cleaning up any scrap and doing trips to the tip. Al's knee was still crook and without him the last of the building jobs couldn't happen...

The house was still changing every day, albeit not as dramatically as it had been.

But all was not lost!

Dad was on holidays. And his best mate growing up was my favourite plumbing uncle. The plumbing uncle actually grew up next door to my mum, became good mates with my dad, then ended up being my uncle by marrying my dad's sister... Dumbalk and Fish Creek: small towns.

Anyway, the favourite plumbing uncle never took much convincing when dad called. So I got dad to call to see it if he'd like to come over on the day after boxing day. I knew it was a big ask, but he's family... He did! And the two of them put the cladding up on the outside walls. A house! My kingdom for a house! I really truly had a house!

I was a little peeved because I had always envisaged that the house would be clad in that simplest and most evocative of housing materials - corrugated iron. But! God love the South Gippsland Shire Council planning department (because, to paraphrase Gough, no one else will)... In their infinite wisdom the planners decided that I couldn't use corrugated iron. Why? Because it's reflective! Yes, that's right ladies and gentlemen! I couldn't use corrugated iron on my house because it may reflect the lights from a passing car. Even though it's barely visible from any road. Their comeback? It may blind a pilot... Truly! I kid you not... Bitter? Still? Me...? You jest... But there are sheds on every hill around here made from corrugated iron. Yes, they're ok. Why? Because they're covered by a different building code... Sigh...

I gave in. I chose the colourbond colour closest to unpainted corrugated iron. But I'm still sorry. I wanted the house to age, rust, develop a patina and in doing so become a more natural part of the landscape... Alas.

While the favourite plumbing uncle (I should acronymise him to FPU, but it's a bit late in the story for that...) and dad hung the sheets of iron (and dad managed to cut his hand quite badly) I painted. Sorry for the crotch shots but these photos show dry it had become outside and how much it still resembled a paddock.

NB: To give my dad and the FPU working music I made a few mix CDs. I put together stuff from their era: Kinks, Easybeats, Rolling Stones, Elvis, Roy Orbison, Gene Pitney, Beatles, Loved Ones, etc. When they'd finished for the day the FPU said "the Beatles had some OK songs, didn't they?  I've never really listened to them before - they were for girls and noofs..." Truly! I'd never realised the Elvis and The Stones vs The Beatles and The Monkees divide had run so deep... Even in Dumbalk.

Twas the night before xmas...

And everything ground to a halt... The cafe was flat out. Alan hurt his knee and couldn't work. It was xmas. It was very frustrating to be - is this an idiom or a proverb? - so close, but yet so far...

Most of the tiles were up. The kitchen benches were almost done - made from the rafter offcuts that I mentioned earlier and promised would turn up again. The bath surrounds were built - from recycled karri. The bathroom shelves were made from old theatre steps from a demolished theatre in North Melbourne - I wish I knew exactly where, but I don't... If you look closely you can see the treads at the front of each shelf.

I know that after only four months I should've been rapt to have made such momentous progress, but I was just wish wish wishing that it could just be finished... Alan had lost motivation and had taken to leaving himself cryptic self-help messages around the house...

Almost in...

Three months

Hard to believe that to achieve all of that only took three months. From the earthworks to tyvek. From a paddock to a (if desperate) habitable shelter. And that three months included a fortnight in Ubud for the Writers' Festival. And running the cafe. I honestly have no idea how it all happened...

Disappointingly I seem to have stopped taking photos for three weeks between late November and a week before xmas 2007.

I wish I had a photo of the old lining boards I got from Tim when they were piled in the carport. I wish I had a photo of them in situ in his yard. He and I spent an hour pulling them out from beneath cobwebbed piles of building detritus, measuring, accepting or rejecting. I know that when you see the photos below that the colours and arrangement will seem completely random, but I had an idea in my head... And some of the colours Tim had didn't match that idea. Some of the boards were beyond re-claiming, others were just too nice...

I brought the lucky ones back to the hill and brushed them down with a wire brush before sanding then fairly roughly to bring out not just the colour, but also the texture. The result is enduringly my favourite part of the house: a feature wall, a sculpture, a rainbow, an opal. Sometimes I stand, mesmerised, wondering at the sights and smells and sounds that those boards would've absorbed since they were felled and milled...

Not so romantic or interesting was the preparation of the bathroom for tiling. The bath/shower and basin surrounds, and laundry sink splashback were all lined with villa board ready for Nick the tiler.

The bifold doors were intended to give this room an outdoor bathroom feeling. To maintain that we chose sandstone-look tiles. As with every aspect of the finishing it was a matter of doing it and hoping the result matched the vision in my head...

The other thing that was going into the bathroom was a basin I'd asked my friend Zak Chalmers to make for me. He and his wife Tanya very generously made this a housewarming gift.

Have a look at Zak's website. You'll see similarities between his studio/gallery and my house. The same architect worked on them both, but it's not just that... It was one very cold night in late 2006 when I was sitting with Zak during one of his long firings and drinking beer and chatting that I told him of my plans for the house on the hill. He said, just do it. I said I have no money. He said, we built the studio for less than $40,000. Just do it. So I just did it.

Tyvek

One afternoon I closed the cafe early and paid my brother, Lauren and Mel to come out to the hill. Their job? To attach to tyvek to the outside of the house and stuff insulation into the frames inside. Dad was there too. The five of us cut and hammered the tyvek until we'd enclosed the whole house, making it weatherproof. Between that and the insulation the house felt warm and protected and private.

For the first time, too, the windows and doors were the only portals to the outside. The view was framed, access limited. It was one of those perception-shifting moments.

Internal plumbing

No, not my intestines! It was time for my favourite plumbing uncle to return. Bath delivered, gas piping needed to be fitted, sinks plumbed, etc...

The kitchen sink I swapped for a slab of Grand Ridge beers. The hot water service is a Quantum heat pump. It was starting to feel like a real house!