1 January 2012

The beginning of a new year!! Happy new year to you all!!

This last week had a lot of Saturdays, light duty in other words. What we managed was to start repairing the street side (western side) weatherboards. When we bought the place, there was a gap of 25 mm between two weatherboards. I assumed it was due to nails rusted away and the board sagging. I started work there and soon realised we had a total mishmash of boards. Some original 220 mm, some replacement 200 mm, and that explains it. In the olden days, the weatherboard on the sides were often narrower than on the front. I sanded part of the wall down in preparation of painting and replaced a few boards. That part is good now. Next job will be to build a scaffold to reach the gable.

We also started looking at cleaning the living room floors. That has lots of polish and stain on it. After playing around with various solvents and sanders, we came upon Lacquer thinners, It removes the marks. Problem was, part is white now, and part brown. Further investigation showed that the nice brown patina is actually dirt. Handy Andy does the trick. We have about one sq m of clean floor now. The next was finishes. I have always loved oil rather than varnish. Raw linseed oil is too greasy, Danish Oil could work, but is expensive. Ben suggested South African Woodoc. Not available here, but we fond a similar product and ordered a sample. It is an oil with wax mixed in. Waiting for delivery now.

25 December 2011

It is Christmas day!! What a wonderful time of the year. To remind us of what He has done for us!!!

My brother Ben came for a visit. He arrived on Sunday 18th, and will be here for a full month. What a joy. He has been drawn in to help. (Working holiday, see) Before he came we had a list of things to do. We succeeded in completing some of it, but then we moved the goalposts, we want to do it before Christmas. Well, we managed most of it. Small tasks like getting rid of rubbish in the section, mowing grass, clearing the last workshop stuff out of the house, install a missing part of the weatherboard, etc, etc.

This last week Ben did the rebuild of the front deck. I sat down on the timber to hold it in place, and he nailed or bolted it down. I can't understand why he was so tired at night, I felt OK. We managed to rebuild the existing part of the deck and install the main outer joist for the part that has disappeared. The idea is to install a new top beam on the old verandah posts, and then to reinstall the old curved roofing sheets, just to get the verandah up again. The deck itself will come at a later stage.

I must take care not to load too much work on Ben, he might run away. Fingers crossed.

11 December 2011

We missed a week. The week was busy, but not "Jackson House" related.

Last week I went to Hamilton on two occasions. Coming back on the Thursday, I back ended a car in front of me. My fault. Our trusty old Mitsi was still driveable, but it turned out, beyond economic repair. Hopefully
the insurance will pay out in this coming week. So I spent time fixing the Toyota Corsa I bought more than a year ago. In the meantime we are using our daughter, Mieke's car. I also developed a flu and had to visit the Doctor. Much better now, but work time lost.

Developments on the house? We finally removed the last of my junk that has been stored in the third bedroom, and set it up as a bedroom. My brother Ben will be visiting us from the 18th, and we need another room for Anneke and Matt (our other daughter). We don't know how much work will get done , we'll see.

Our lawnmower finally packed up, now the grass is getting out of control. The sheep cannot beat it. Wish I had the money for a Ride On.

We also got hold of some fibreglass roofing sheet, to replace the verandah roof by the living room. Not done yet.

27 November 2011

Not much to report this week. We worked on the outside where the verandah roof is supposed to be. Used some paint given to us, actually mixed two cans and now have 15l of green paint. After the gable was painted, Elna decided she actually likes the colour. Will see. I Also started sanding the verandah posts down, with the belt sander. The Rimu timber is in a remarkably good condition. The bottom ends are somewhat rotten, but i will splice it together with a short replacement piece. Thursday was rainy, and I started working on the electrics inside. Remember the old rubber insulated wires? They have been replaced now, and cabling for TV into the other bedroom done. Now the grandkids can watch their cartoon TV while the other people have a quiet chat. We also did a external light by the back door, and a hand bell we bought when we got the house.

20 November 2011

We finished the gibbing in the living room. It makes a big difference. It feels like a room now, and the draughts will be much less. But, and there is always a but, I have not done the gib stopping (polyfilla) or any of the painting yet. I was too eager to start work outside.

We did get a relpy from NZHPT  (Historical people) about our request to demolish the second bathroom and install large French doors. They have no problem with that, provided we do not dig any trenches for the sewer lines for the new bathroom. I told them that the new pipes will be suspended from the floor joists. All approved, but first things first.

Next on the agenda is securing the outside. We got the scaffolding pipes from the neighbour, but it is 6 m lengths and very awkward to handle. In the end I removed it all and put a sheet of ply over the bay window roof. It works. Yesterday I got up there and started scraping at the old paint. No luck. It is too hard. Then I got my baby angle grinder with a sanding disc. Perfect. I can grind through the flaking paint until I get to good timber. I removed about 80% of the old paint. It will need smoothing out, but for that I will use the belt sander. It will now give us a solid base to start painting on. We were given two cans of wall paint, in any odd colour. That will be good enough for a base coat. Once we have the western and southern walls done, and if we have the money, we will start painting the final colour. First of all, our big priority is to make it secure and rebuild the verandah.

13 November 2011

We have finished the work on the walls, and also spent a lot of time repairing the sliding sash window. It turned out that the window frames are in a sad state, and will eventually need to be remade. In the meantime, we want to move on and ignore the problem. Next week we will install the last of the gib on the opposite wall.

I am getting impatient to start work on the outside walls. We have managed to borrow some scaffolding pipes from our neighbour. We also found clamps and fittings when we moved in here. Hopefully we will be able to build some decent scaffolds. We plan to clean the weatherboards, fill holes and apply a base coat of paint. It will not be the final colour, but having done that, we will be in a position to reinstate the verandah at least partially.

The grass is growing, and we had to move the sheep. They are not very happy, but they need to earn their keep. We had started a veggie patch, but the lambs got in there and mad a clean sweep of all our seedlings. Now we will have to put up a proper fence before we can try veggies again.

7 November 2011

Missed Sunday again!! Sorry.

Last week was a short one. On Monday I had to go to Hamilton, no work done. Friday I had a runny tummy, no work done. 

We did however achieve some during the week. We removed the fire surround on the Northern wall, next to where we have been working, and covered the air gaps and put insulation there as well. We discovered some very interesting history. The fireplace is back to back, but it seems that, originally, we had an external fireplace there. A kitchen has been added at a later stage and the fireplace was extended. We even discovered weatherboard with original lime paint. The picture was taken with the camera held in the cavity. We started relining as before, using recycled boards.

Today, Monday was chosen to mow the grass on the sidewalk (it is not a lawn) After the grass was cut, I proceeded to clear the ivy growing on our Rimu tree by the entrance. Hopefully the ivy in the tree will die now. We will still have to kill the roots.

The house in the background still looks terrible, but at least we know that we are making progress. Once the inside lining is completed where we are working now, we plan to remove the verandah roof on the outside and repair the weatherboards on the outside. Only after that we will start working on the verandah on the main entrance side. That is, provided we do not decide to do something completely different.