Tondelver House - Southern Highlands Self Build

[QUOTE=Moondog55;1140915]resources/QUOTE]

These are great - thanks (The anti-Myna bit is particularly good!)

Well the rain continues (more than doubled the monthly average already - and it's STILL raining!!) which meant I was in and out of the house trying to finish the water heater enclosure during the brief dry spells! But it is all done now (except the left side lower panel which is temporarily unpainted and in place so it can be removed when the plumber comes back to hook up the water heater - except the ground is still so wet he can't return for fear of getting bogged.)






Bought a new sink - much smaller and I will offset the tap to about the 2 o'clock position. This way the sink can sit closer to the wall - better for a small bathroom - it means I can have a narrower vanity countertop.


The countertop is laminated pine 32mm thick. Unfortunately it is not the right colour so I will stain it. Possibly with the same 'Japan Black' used on the outside slats. It will reference the streaks of dark resin in the floorboards of the cabinet.

It also needs to be trimmed 60mm off the long edge so there is only a 50mm overhang on the cabinet.

As you can see the counter is too pinkish to go with the cabinet.


Testing stain application on an off-cut:


I am also toying with the idea of asymmetry - with the basin and/or the cabinet not central to the countertop.

It is greening up nicely with all the rain:


This is not proper lawn - just a mixture of natural grasses - all I have done is remove as many weeds as I can.

I love my view - sometimes I think this looks like a triptych painting!!


And of course the wet weather brings out the roos.

The plumber was booked in for Monday 14th and was all set to go as there had finally been some rainless days beforehand to dry out the ground a bit.

Sunday evening we got hit with 45mm of rain, more predicted the next day with wind gusts of over 70kph

Plumber cancelled.

Finally, last Wednesday he made it out to the house and started work.

Hot water tank connected:


Outside tap, vent and sewerage inspection pipe:


a couple more:


Septic in:


Absorption trench dispersal pipes:


Geotextile laid:


and back-filled:



Pressure pump and water pump installed:


While waiting for this to be done I have been spending a lot of time on Big and Little weed maintenance.

Big refers to wandering around my 25 acres and pulling up acacia seedlings, tea-tree seedlings,horseweed, mullain and 'heeling' up thistles.

Weed numbers are fairly manageable now so there is not much need to use spray poisons.

Small weeding refers to the veggie garden. Being so wet the weeds in the freshly turned soil can go nuts!

As there hasn't been much warm weather this Spring (3 days ago we had a 'feels like' temperature of minus 4.7 ) the veggie seedlings have been slow to take off. Here's a few of what is growing (brought home the first zucchini today):




Rhubarb (a favourite!)


I realise the soil doesn't look well mulched - unfortunately with the winds I get, the mulch gets blown away.

Here is the bathroom vanity temporarily attached to the wall to keep it out of the way. The surface stain is lighter than it looks (more like the front edge) and I'm fairly happy with it.

Looking good Turnstiles! The backseat plumber in me says the copper pipework needs more lagging. Especially if it's going in concrete.

Hi Uncle Bob - the ground copper pipe as well as that in the hot water tank enclosure is having lagging - I'm doing that tomorrow before I back-fill. It isn't going into concrete.

The entire area in pix 1 & 2 is having about 300mm of clean-fill and then topsoil. (Up to the top of the besser blocks.)

Do you think it is worthwhile lagging the hot water plastic pipes (like those behind the bathroom vanity in the last pic) inside the house to prevent heat loss or is that overkill?

Originally Posted by turnstiles

Do you think it is worthwhile lagging the hot water plastic pipes (like those behind the bathroom vanity in the last pic) inside the house to prevent heat loss or is that overkill?

It wouldn't hurt. I reckon you can't have too much insulation, especially up here.

I took on more teaching (3 weeks full time) as we are about to enter Summer hols (6 weeks without income ). So not much house progress as, besides all the usual shopping, cooking, cleaning and laundry to do I also have my 60sqm veggie garden to manage.

Some plants are beginning to produce food - have quite a few zucchini already, and the basket shown below has them, some chives, mint, beetroot leaves, coriander and cos lettuce so I can begin having salads for dinner!

Capsicum are slow at taking off as are the squash. I should get my first red onions in a week or so.

Veggie growing is so satisfying

Here's a quick veggie update!!








It has been miserably cold recently - like a late winters day. I was wearing a coat and knitted beanie 2 days ago!

The cool Spring effect on vegetation is noticeable - my native Cedar trees (one of the few Australian deciduous trees) are only just showing signs of new leaves.

But Spring is such a beautiful time of year:

Hi Moondog - when the veggie garden was established back in mid 2015, I planted the first sprig of mint (pic 1) within a steel offcut from my foundation tubes (pic 2)

This stopped it spreading for years. But it escaped in the last couple of years and has spread a little on the outside of the fence.

I will endeavour to remove these in the near future!





The above pic also shows the very first thing I did in the house construction - cutting down these large tubes to make foundation pier concrete forms.
Little did I suspect then what the future would hold

Minor update I'm afraid. Xmas and New Year slowed things down a bit as I am waiting for quotes from electricians and waterproofer/tilers, and tradies all seem to take long breaks over summer (how dare they LOL!)

I need these services to be completed before I can continue with work inside.

I am not allowed to do the bathroom waterproofing myself and as it is such a relatively small job I decided to incorporate the floor screeding and levelling plus the floor tiling into one job quote to make it worth the tradies time. I will tile the walls myself.

One thing I have done is to install the box gutter rain head (for some reason the plumber left it for me to do?) and make the enclosure. I would have had it finished except I was one sheet of fibre cement short and I cannot yet get one (reason later)




It all has 2 undercoats and 2 top coats.

Quite a bit of my time was spent with weed control. A very wet Spring and Summer has led to an outbreak of large thistles. Previous experience has shown that both poisoning and uprooting the thistles does not prevent the plant from continuing to force seed heads to form. So now I wander around the 25 acres with a bucket and secateurs and collect all the flower heads, and then I uproot the plant.

In the last few days I collected 5 buckets of compressed thistle heads!



The veggie garden has been prolific. So many zucchinis from just three plants that I have run out of ideas for them!

I've made pickles and chutney (about a dozen jars of each).

Marrow are just zucchinis that have grown too large, so you scoop the seeds from the middle and use the rest.



plus zucchini slice (like a pastry-less quiche), stuffed baked zooks, zucchini cake, containers of blanched zooks in the freezer to add to stews etc in Autumn and Winter, and many given away.

Spinach means Spinach and Ricotta Rolls (forgot the sesame seeds on top)


The red onion harvest is in - not as big onions as usual but many in number:


Too many cos lettuce to use so friends and neighbours got their share. I'm currently collecting a handful or two of green beans everyday which are mostly blanched and frozen.

I'm ready to harvest the beetroots, I'm on my second crop of radish, plus a bed of rocket is coming up to replace the cos lettuce for salads.

Pumpkins should be ready in a month or two.

And the little wallaby that has been hanging around for the past year or so reappeared after an absence of a couple of months and she has a new baby (couldn't get a pic of the baby as it is still pouch-bound but I saw its little feet sticking out last week!) No doubt she will be showing off bub to me when it's old enough to leave the pouch!


I am now back teaching and have accepted the next 4 weeks full time as I need to increase my savings with tradies to pay.

Also my 28 year old Toyota Ute finally died on me 2 weeks ago (almost half a million kms on the clock) and I needed wheels in a hurry and there were no available utes in my price range. I
had to settle for a regular car (2005 Mazda 3 in excellent condition) For the first time ever I have aircon and central locking!! And with the same sized fuel tank as the ute I now get around 720-740kms per tank whereas the ute gave me around 430kms. Fortunately I have done most of my big carrying tasks for the house and anything that won't fit in the car I will have delivered. Savings in petrol will pay for it!

Originally Posted by METRIX

Can you send some of those spinach rolls here, they look great.

My first attempt - and they did taste pretty good! Homegrown spinach and onions plus ricotta and some grated cheddar (unfortunately I don't have cows!)

Originally Posted by turnstiles

(unfortunately I don't have cows!)

You should consider getting something to keep the grass down (besides the kangas). Cows are very calming, I find. We only have one baby cow now. She is almost a year old and very tame. Bottle raised and spoilt rotten. She used to sleep on the verandah with our dogs until recently. (She made the mistake of trying to get onto my wife's lap for a cuddle so now shares with the horses and alpacas out back)

Sk

Originally Posted by ajm

You should consider getting something to keep the grass down (besides the kangas). Cows are very calming.

Hi AJM - I've decided against having any animals (except a dog!) for several reasons.

One is I want to be able to shut the house up and take off somewhere/anywhere for a week/month or more and not have to worry about leaving animals behind. My sister will look after the dog - I don't think she'd be happy with a cow or two though.

And I have seen the damage cows can do when they've escaped from next door onto my place, to the pasture and especially around the dam. One forced it's way through the roo/rabbit fence into my veggie garden and created havoc.

Another reason is - I actually love the long grasses in my paddocks. Every season they are different. Spring had grasses up to my chin and already they have died off and have been replaced by a smaller variety. And because of this, nutrients used to grown the grass returns to the soil. I don't need to perennially fertilise my fields as my neighbour does.

And I've noticed cows seem to scare away the roos - and that would never do!!

Originally Posted by turnstiles

Quite a bit of my time was spent with weed control. A very wet Spring and Summer has led to an outbreak of large thistles. Previous experience has shown that both poisoning and uprooting the thistles does not prevent the plant from continuing to force seed heads to form. So now I wander around the 25 acres with a bucket and secateurs and collect all the flower heads, and then I uproot the plant.

In the last few days I collected 5 buckets of compressed thistle heads!


Also my 28 year old Toyota Ute finally died on me 2 weeks ago (almost half a million kms on the clock) and I needed wheels in a hurry and there were no available utes in my price range.

Yes, do the same with the scotch thistles as once the there is a flower bulb as per your pics, cutting the plant down and chopping off the flower heads still have enough energy in the head to go to seed. These days, if I get to them when they have a flower bulb, chop the bulbs off, into a bucket and use the shovel to chop the plant off at ground level....they never grow back as they are an "annual" which save's the hassle of pulling/digging it out by the roots. Each year there are less of them and now generally only in 3 locations on the property.

My Rav4 is also on its last legs sitting at 460,000km but friggin hard to find something else suitable thats old, in good nic but the hardest thing is reasonable "pre COVID" pricing although Ive noticed some in the lower end of the market are starting to come back down.

Originally Posted by turnstiles

Hi AJM - I've decided against having any animals (except a dog!) for several reasons.

One is I want to be able to shut the house up and take off somewhere/anywhere for a week/month or more and not have to worry about leaving animals behind. My sister will look after the dog - I don't think she'd be happy with a cow or two though.

And I have seen the damage cows can do when they've escaped from next door onto my place, to the pasture and especially around the dam. One forced it's way through the roo/rabbit fence into my veggie garden and created havoc.

Another reason is - I actually love the long grasses in my paddocks. Every season they are different. Spring had grasses up to my chin and already they have died off and have been replaced by a smaller variety. And because of this, nutrients used to grown the grass returns to the soil. I don't need to perennially fertilise my fields as my neighbour does.

And I've noticed cows seem to scare away the roos - and that would never do!!

Completely understand about wanting to escape. Come Christmas each year we have to find house sitters happy to camp at our place to feed the 5 horses, 5 alpacas, three mini goats, 2 pigs, 2 dogs, and baby cow. Oh, and the chickens.

We get the occasional wallaby passing through still though which does cause a little amusement in the herd.

Se

Originally Posted by ajm

Completely understand about wanting to escape. Come Christmas each year we have to find house sitters happy to camp at our place to feed the 5 horses, 5 alpacas, three mini goats, 2 pigs, 2 dogs, and baby cow. Oh, and the chickens.

Oh - you're a zoo keeper!