This is my Church

We have been kind of stuck in Brisbane for the past month – what with buying the new house, moving and cleaning up.

I feel kind of antsy, unhappy and out of sorts. It has been quite a while since I have been up on the farm, and I tend to feel like this when that happens.

You know how the Australian Aboriginal people saying that the land owns them.....well that is how it is. I have been part of that land for as long as I remember. It helped feed and clothe me. It taught me many lessons, not the least of which was be prepared and always have a book. It is the place where we can go and just.....be.

No traffic, no people, no distractions from all the noise in your head. The place where you have to sit with your anxiety and concerns and work through them, instead of trying to out run them or outwit them with distractions.

I never want to leave on a Sunday afternoon to come back to my other life. I look forward to the day when I don't have to. When I have the internet connection that I choose to have on or off, so I can continue to learn and participate in the wider world community, to turn it off to participate in my real life community, to grow things, to take it slower, to do justice to the land. To be part of it, truly part of it.

To leave it better than I found it. To leave it for the Super Nephew who has it running through his veins already.

I leave feeling recharged, powerful, smart. Like there is a piece of me that needs to be there in order to function properly.

So this is my church – this is where I come to heal my hurts – grateful thanks to Faithless

The Queen of the One Room Shack

When my Dad was still around, he built a little shack on the farm(which is now on my sisters farm). He did eventually get an inside flushing loo, but the water is heated using a rigged up gas burner and an old beer keg. There is only one light, and two power points, one of which the ceiling light is plugged into. The whole size of the shack is 3 metres ish x 6 meters, including the bathroom, an a HUGE built in wardrobe.

Needless to say, it wasn't my style. I couldn't figure out why he didn't just spend the money and build a big house, you know with a real water heater, and a fire to keep you warm, and a real kitchen with an oven and and and.

Then he bought a property in the Northern Territory, that didn't have any house what so ever. Just an old caravan with a lean-to.

And then he went to Tasmania, and fell in love with the place. I joked with him that maybe he should buy a place down there – and he said that he had given it some serious consideration, and had seen a place outside Burnie that had a bush shack on it.

Then he started calling himself the King of the One Room Shacks.

The FB and I have been spending about 3 out of 4 weekends up on the farm, staying in Dads original one room shack. Now granted I have given it a bit of a make over, and my sister and brother in law added an IKEA loft bed, so it is much improved on version 1 but still the size stays the same.

 

And you know what......it is all the space you need.

 

When we designed the shedhouse, we wanted to make it a bit bigger, so we could have people to come and stay, but still the dimensions are not huge. I am sure you have read about down sizing, only keeping the things you need etc etc, but I think it is the opposite. I think small space make you think about what you REALLY value, rather than the practicality of necessity.

Like, instead of having a better homes and gardens show house kind of thing, instead of a practical fold down table with extra hidden storage, you have your grandmothers old table, because it is precious to you. And instead of getting everything on a kindle you have books. Or double duty glasses, usable for both spirits and wine, you have wineglasses your Dad gave you, a picture of your first calf instead of the 'challenging' work from a new artist. Things like that make any space, no matter how small, into a home.

It turns out we are working on being the King and Queen of the one room shacks ourselves.

We just bought and moved into a one bedroom apartment in Brisbane. And you know what? It is laid out in pretty much the exact same way as our shedhouse will be. The internal space is the same square meterage, the kitchen is based on the same idea. I must have had a subconscious picture of what I wanted in a home in Brisbane based on the work we had done on the home on the Farm.

It has been just under a week since we moved into a peid du terre and it is really nice. And easy. And the dog doesn't hate it, so that is good.

 

Out of financial necessity more than anything else, we have had to slow down the build, but hopefully as soon as things settle down, we can get back into it.

 

We are taking the excess furniture up to the farm this weekend, so it will even start to feel more like a house. There will be pictures of both homes to follow.

 

And a party. There will definitely be a party.

I Love it, cause that’s what your hard work gets you

You know how at points in your life you really think that nothing is happening. That you are just spinning your wheels, and that it doesn't matter what you do, you can't move forward. It feels like you are never going to get 'there'.

Late on Saturday afternoon, we put in the first glass panel. That panel really felt like the shedhouse reality was upon us. And let me tell you, you would have been hard pressed to find a happier, prouder girl in the world.

There we were, nestled in the far reaches of the Condamine river gorge, with Mt Grace and Mt Superbus looking down on us, with clear evidence of all the hard work, tears and tantrums (mostly mine), and it looked spectacular.

This song was running through my head, and I was so damn proud of all the work that the FB had put in. Everything that was in front of us, he had researched, purchased and shipped to site. Every piece has his handprint on it. He worked through bad weather, hangovers and study, a new job, more responsibility and the wet. My god the wet.

Beats the pants off any bunch of flowers or sparkly thing I have ever been given.

Thank you my love.


(On Sunday the FB finished off the flashing and we put in the remaining panels, he also cleaned up the site, so official lock up stage is here. Now onto the trades and internals)


(If you are wondering what I did in this time, do you see the banana lounge in the bottom RH corner of the second to last photo? That's what I did)

Everything will be alright tomorrow

As you may know, I was hoping to get to lock up stage on the shed by the end of April. But of course, life is what happens when you are busy making other plans, so that didn't happen.


What did happen was it rained, and it was cold and we bought a new flat in Brisbane, so time and money were not really on our side.


But this weekend just gone, we got closer to it. There was of course trials and tribulations along the way, some of course of my own making.
I have slight dyslexia, which doesn't make me the best building site assistant. And in my drive *cough impatience* to get the sliding doors in faster, my impairment appeared.

So we finally go the doors on site, and the FB spent what I consider an inordinate amount of time levelling, measuring, chocking, tilting and foofing around (that last one is a technical term), and all I wanted to bloody do was to get the side walls on.

Because the sliding doors are not as big as the space, there is about 80 cm either side that needed to be sheeted in. This required some customisation of the sheeting material – that being notches cut into them to compensate for the 'ribs' of the shed, that on a normal build, would have been inside the shed, but on this one, form part of the verandah. The part of the verandah that holds it up. So - important stuff.

Whilst the FB was foofing, I thought I would help him out by doing the notching. And before the notching, the measuring. Did I mention my dyslexia?

Generally when I measure things I am pretty specific about doing so, measuring twice, three times, writing it down, checking again etc, because it is important to recognise your weaknesses.
This time that did not happen. I was kind of in the way, so the FB was a bit, well cranky, and I was also a bit cranky. So he yelled out the numbers, and I pretended like I knew what they were.
Then I measured it out on the tin, and then cut out the notches with the tin snips. This takes a REALLY long time, but I was determined that I could do it myself. *spoiler this does not end well* After I notched them, then I washed them down to remove all the grass and foot prints. In order to do this I had to cart water from the creek, to the wheel barrow, and rub the sheet with a broom. When that was completed, I blithely picked up the sheet to install it.

So it turns out that 82 cm and 28 cm are different measurements. Which may not have been so bad except for the fact that it was the specially cut sheet with the correct angle at the top to install it on the end of the shed.

The FB kindly pointed this out, I downed tools and commenced the 2km cry/walk back to the shack. Luckily my mum was there to give me a cuddle and a lift part of the way home.
What was the lesson I learned?

1. Don't rush, or be rushed
2. Recognise your strengths and weaknesses, and ALWAYS compensate for them
3. Even when you are a grown up, sometimes a cuddle from your mum is the best thing.

Some pics of the FB's hardwork, completed even though I can't measure.

The bracing that on top of the sliding door frame

The whole floor is in

The tracks!

 

I once had blinds and now I see

Even though the windows have arrived and are on site, there is quite a bit of work to do before they go in.
We need to finish off the floor, and do some work on the deck etc, so I though we could put up the cafe blinds before that.
We bought the cafe blinds from Bunnings quite a while ago - and while they were not cheap, they were alot more affordable than customised blinds – which we do have every intention of getting, when the budget allows.


Now I know that there is a nice easy link here to how to put the blinds up. But we were on site, with no phone reception and no internet conncetion. Well, no power even. So we had to rely on the instructions that came with the blinds. That are written in engrish.
And here are the pictures:

Don't ask me - I'm a dog

Oh my ticky tacky blinds....

If in doubt, use a clamp

Optimal Zipper operation..... check!

Easier the second time though

But at the end of the day, they are up, and really really effective.

Life in Pictures

The windows have arrived!  The fact that they were not wrapped correctly, or that the bloke who delivered them couldn't find the shop in a one horse town is beside the point. They are really here.


For this installment I have decided that it will be a 'picture book' style.


So here goes:

Florrie on the road again

Inside finally!!

To the window, to the wall

The sliding glass doors are ordered!

Arriving this week - and we should have a weather proof shed by this time next week.

Yay!

Trigger Deck Technology

Our deck represents  a large proportion of the total floor area of our shedhouse.

It will have a nice shelter over the top, and we plan to spend quite a bit of time on the deck because – really, what is the point of having a bush shack, if you are always in the shack and never in the bush?

And on this deck there will be drinks and love and fights, and singing and dancing, and smiles and smiles and smiles....

Andbecause it will be such a feature in our lives,  we wanted to make it a feature in our house.

 

One of the things with the farm is that it has been reclaimed from forest.  Which really means all the bloody trees are relentlessly marching down the hill, and reclaiming their stake.

One of the biggest pains in the neck is a tree called Hickory or Black Wattle.

It is a fast growing emergent species – which means it is all we can see from the deck – well that and blackberries.  And tobacco bush.

 

Black Wattle does however make beautiful cut timber for furniture and decks.

What better material to use!  Especially since we can threaten the rest of the bloody stuff with a similar fate if it keeps coming down the hill!

So we’ve sourced this material from the ‘giraffe shed’ which is all well and good.  Until you realise that it is a ‘mixed pack’ which leads to different challenges.

When you buy timber it comes in packs that are the same size and length.  When you source material  from the giraffe shed it does not.  Your shopping experience is also a little different, moving old old lick blocks, and blue tongue lizards to get to your materials.

Then sorting them using the very mild super power that is years and years of stacking timber (your keen eye) in the back of the white dog landcruiser over to site.

Then sort and stack, restack and sort and try and build the puzzle together. 



This one here, that one there

Err, that one over there



















At first we talked about mixing up the widths of timber so it looked deliberate rather than opportunistic – but then I had a idea of using an optical illusion  to increase the size of the deck.

You know how when you draw things, the things that are closer are bigger and the things that are further away are smaller.... well that is what we have done.

The lengths were mixed too but for a deck that is not too bad.  So long as your joins are not all along the same bearer/joist thingy, you are all good.

Cut em down to size..

Instead of using nails, we have also chose to use screws (bugled headed batten screws that are counter sunk) because of Australian hardwoods tendency to ‘spit’ out their fixings.

The FB did a brilliant job of laying the first pieces – and so after that it was me, two drills – one with a driving bit and one with a drill/countersinker (which was totally worth the $29 investment) and just getting em laid!

The first one!

We did run out of the fancy screws – which seem to have some kind of Teflon stuff on them to make it easier to screw into pine – and so I did a mercy dash to Mitre 10 in Boonah on the public holiday.

If you really try – you can make it door to door in 32 mins.  But I wouldn’t’ recommend it.

Anyway – here are some more pictures of the beautiful deck. 

Ooooh arty!

 

Just waiting for drinks to be spilled

And the master of the deck, the one deck wizard – the brilliant Croupier.

And our builders dog.

So next thing – the bistro blinds up – and getting those bloody windows.

I can't see clearly now...

I am getting pretty antsy about getting stuff done on the shedhouse.

We had set ourselves a goal of being ‘in’ weather tight by ANZAC day, but that didn’t happen.

Just like on Grand Designs, things get in the way.  Not least of all the bloody windows.

I could never figure out for the life of me what took so long about windows when I watched Grand Designs.  And then we started living the great window debacle of 2012.

It is pretty simple, we want 6.5m glass stacking sliding doors, what are 2.4m high.  This goes right across the front section of the shed house and gives us access to our deck, which represents 25% of our total floor space.

I thought it was all sorted, go to window shop, select colour and style, get quote, order windows.  But now I see I was labouring under the impression that customer service and making money were two things these companies wanted to do.

I now see, it is not.

The bloke in the first shop was pretty off hand, and pretty smarmy, and was putting pressure on us to send through the money before he could guarantee delivery to KTown.  It was the end of the month, and he was on commission, so I wasn’t too keen on giving him $4k and hoping it would arrive.  And good thing we didn’t.

The FB organised quotes from the competitors and has come back with a saving of abou $1700 (but without delivery) for the exact thing we want.  So – result!

But many phone calls later and NO JOY.  No one wants to speak to us about ordering the doors.  Therefore we have no doors.  And no doors means no finishing off the floor or putting in the walls.  We don't even know when the doors will be to us. 

It does mean putting up the guttering:



Guttered!



And doing the washing:



That's my mountain in the background!





How MacGuyver hangs his washing

 But it will be worth it.

It will won't it?

Fat Tongue. Skinny Tongue. Green Tongue.

With all the bearers and joist down – we need a real true floor.

As I have mentioned before it gets pretty cold in our little dell, so we need to make sure that there is plenty of insulation.  Underfloor and all.

We have decided that the whole place will be wrapped in sarking – and the means the floor too.  Now sarking comes in different sizes (but not colours, so buying it is not as much fun as buying shoes or handbags.  Or wine), there are wide sizes for ceilings and walls and speciality sizes to go between the bearers, er joists, er... you know what I mean.

Right at the start of the jobs, we go to our local supersized hardware store to price it up, and discover that for the amount we are going to use – wouldn’t it be just as easy to buy heaps of the wide stuff, and just run it under the floor bits?  After all the specially sized stuff is much more expensive?

If you ever consider this – just to save $100 – don’t do it.  Really.  Don’t.

Use the specially sized stuff, and a staple hammer/gun thing and be done with it.  That way you will never know the pain of having to roll out 7 m of shiny silver insulation, sticking it to walls, steel, anything to get a good grip.  Using the new silver tape that has backing, and rigging up an old broom handle to act as a tape dispenser, nailing through it, only to discover the things are in the WRONG place, sealing up all the holes, and starting all over again.

As I said, spend the money on the real stuff.

Installing the real stuff takes about 5 mins per ‘run’.  It looks good, it is fun to hammer staple on and everyone is a winner.

After the insulation comes the flooring.

Because we are going to have a wet area, we needed to use two different types of flooring.

There is green tongue for the living/sleeping areas.  This stuff is made out of chip board, steam pressed to be kind of like a big sandwich of chips (mmmm, chips).   

It is supposed to slip together easily, and is glued and screwed into place.  The plastic joining piece is green.  Hence the name.  This comes in a standard size of:   3600 x 900.  It is pretty much this stuff – but slightly cheaper.

Then for the bathroom we have a weather resistant type of flooring.  It is fibre cement and is called Scyon.  It’s size is 2700 x 600.  Now for those of you who are observant, you will see that the two types of flooring are not the same size.  Remember that, it will come into play later....

All of the materials were sourced from Warwick and came out on a truck, to be transferred to Florrie at our builders yeard - more commonly known as Paul Fox's shed.  Thanks Paul!

Ready to lay our first sheet:



If only they were our cattle..



We have decided to lay the flooring in the sections that won’t get really wet ever, so the bedroom/kitchen/dining/study area.  It starts of easy, but takes a turn.

It turns out that the pedantic measuring wasn’t to pedantic.  So some of the floor holdy upy things needed *cough* encouraging into place.

With a hammer.  A very big hammer.

After that took place, the floor went down rather well.

The were placed, glued (with stuff like sikaflex)  joined and screwed.  The Amazing Walter and I spent time counter sinking the floor screws as well, so we can play “slide around in your socks” without pulling skin off the bottom of your feet now.

Like a bought one!  Note the skilled notching for the uprights and bracing.

It is funny how your perception of space changes. The shedhouse feels much bigger now and I am really looking forward to spending more time here.

The bathroom floor size means there has to be additional joists put in to accommodate the smaller size. *That’s the turn, as I write it in tow sentences it doesn’t explain the many hours of work that went into it*

Instead of trying to build of the walls (which are not 100% straight) the floor was built in from the existing floor sheeting, and screwed down with specialised screws and driver bits.  That fibre cement is HARD!

So we can now safely get in and out of the shed – walk across most of the floor and even have storage space for all the tools now!



No more packing and unpacking



We can’t put in the last ‘run’ of flooring – there is not way to keep it dry yet, so there is still a gap.  But as soon as we get our deck on, and our cafe/bistro blinds up, they go in as well.



There's a Deere in there



Pictures and not thousands of words

So in an effort to make this blog more understandable/interesting I have taken some pictures to show what I have been squwaking about.

And it also saves me the indignity of drawing any more pictures.

Here is the bearer/joist join

Here is the image to go with the graphical representation from a previous post.

This is the top view of the join

Beam me up Scotty - or Bearers, Joists and other things I don't know about

Up until now the shed has been a metal construction site.

And there had been some real discussion over the best material for the floor joists and bearers.

No if you, like me, have no idea the difference between what a joist is and what a bearer is let’s take a moment to recap: http://www.abis.com.au/joists

Joists run across ways and bearers run long ways.

Joists are the shorter ones, and bearers the longer ones.

Not that that will help me, I still will have forgotten by the time I get to the end of this post.

But just in case here is a picture that may help me:

At this stage we are trying to keep an eye on the budget, and given that I would dearly love to have a GIGANTIC floor to ceiling trifold doors that retail at $4500, any saving that can be made here will get  me nicer doors.  So.

Our block is bounded by National Park and State Forest, and just over the hill from us  they harvest pine, so in the interests of keeping it in the district, lowering carbon footprints and the budget, we organised to have the timber cut by Jed Bloomfield.

So we were all ready to lay the joists and bearers, and then, it rained.

And rained

And rained

And the water was pouring out of the sky and the hills.

Not only could we not get in to get Florrie out so she could be loaded with the timber, but the men could not get into the timber to cut it.

Timeframes are being pushed out, but that will just have to be ok.

On the day the timber was picked up, it was still pretty wet.  Florrie needed a hand from the old landcruiser to get over the creek, and through the first bog hole and the second. 

There was smoke, there was mud, there was swearing.

Back up the hill we went, past Queen Mary Falls caravan park, looking out for the tourists with their ice creams, and back down into the valley.

The FB went out to the site to pick up the timber, and I went to see the Amazing Walter! (my nephew). 

When the truck was loaded, there was much discussion as to how over engineered this floor was going to be.

You see we had hoped to line the shed with AAC, which is easy to work with and provides good insulation, and if you use it right, is self supporting. 

It was going to be quite heavy, when all was said and done,  so the other bits of the structure also had to be heavy.

You know, to be TOTALLY over engineered – which is the way we like things.

The beams (I told you I would forget which is which) run one in a ... hang on.... let me defer to a high power than I.

OK the FB tells me:

The Bearers are 75x200mm. The spans are 3mish and the timber is F7 pine

The Joists are 50x150. The spans are aprox 2.3m and the same F& timber is used.

So let’s see who was paying attention.

What is a bearer?

What is a joist?

What does it mean if I still don’t know?

Answers on a post card please.

Of course the bits don't come from the sawmill in the perfect size, or even a uniform size, so there is measuring, and sawing.

With a hand saw.  All 40 of them.  This is so there is a nice tight join between them, with pelnty of surface area.  The joists are then joined togther by drilling through both of them with a LONG fastener, and then onto the bearer with a triple grip.    They were counter sunk so it all looks professional like.

And here is a very complex graphical representation:

That graphics class really paid off!

We have spaced them out so at the back of the house, where the bathroom will be, there is more support to compennsate for the higher traffic.

Looks good!

We get by with a little help from our friends

Walls! Roof!  It is all happening!

What we need now is a floor.  Generally speaking, a shed/house like this is built with a slab floor.  Our place has not for a couple of reasons.

1.     We couldn’t get a concrete mixer in here and I am not mixing that much concrete

2.     The shed is on an old flood plain, with beautiful fertile and unpredictable black soil that moves a lot

3.     It is pretty wet, and we don’t really have the time to wait for a slab to cure.

The FB came up with a cunning plan, involving adjustable stumps, timber joints and purloins and the digging of yet more holes.

After our original hole digging experience, digging the holes for the floor stumps was actually pretty fun.  Although it rained and we faced the same challenges with the post hole digger, we had a roof over our heads, and a carton of beer to help us!

I directed, and shovelled and did not drive the tractor, which meant that the holes were dug in good time and pretty much in the right place.  The beer definitely helped!

The adjustable stumps were a bit more challenging.  The FB had a very definite idea of how he wanted them to be, and back in the recesses of my memory, I had seen a very similar product, so I knew what he was speaking of.

Kind of like this

But not quite

Or like this

But not quite

We need the stumps to be adjustable to overcome the ground movement, and also to overcome the “It’s the first time we have ever built a house so it isn’t really100% square” issues.

So the FB talked to his Dad, who has been a fabrication engineer and problem solver, for pretty much the last 30 years.

Et Voila!  This is where a picture of the stumps would go - if I had one.  But rest assured - they are awesome.

The stumps are beautiful, what the FB wanted and TOTALLY over engineered for our purpose.  Perfect!

So more shovelling, more mixing, the adjustable stumps are in.