Day 24 – 14 October 2020

Posted on

A big day today. The build encroached into our living space today. The main part of the renovation is now ready for sheeting, so it is time to get to all of the other jobs we’ve planned. In our living space we are removing old joinery and streamlining the design to give us more space and recovering the floor. Twenty years of wear and tear, cats and a dog has certainly left its mark.

It feels as if we are being squeezed out of our house. All we have now is our bedroom and the makeshift office. When I said on day one we are performing open heart surgery on our house, well now that has grown to a heart and lung transplant as well. Whereas we can see the future benefit, living through it is difficult. Our living space, TV, music etc, has been demolished. We now have a ramshackle collection of cables and a TV balanced on an old blanket box. The cat zone if devoid of any comfortable space for our cats and our poor dog doesn’t know which way is up.

Taking out old joinery

As the team demolish the joinery they come across a time capsule of sorts. They give it to me and I open the little carboard cylinder. Inside is a die cast metal racing car, Dick Johnson’s number 17 GreensTuf Falcon from the 1983 Bathurst 1000. It is the one he smashed at the Forrest Elbow on top of the mountain winding up in the scrub during qualifying. I was, still am, a big fan of the DJR racing team. Ironically, this weekend coming will see the race run with almost no crowd as we all continue to manage through the COVID pandemic. Wow, 37 years since the event and some 18 years since I hid the little model away. It now sits on my desk as a reminder of how quickly time passes and how, in the blink of an eye, life can change.

Dick Johnson’s GreensTuf Falcon

The boys get back to work as this manic day continues. Mardi and I get back to the office to do our work.

The certifier arrives to certify the work prior to sheeting, the Gyprock sheets arrive, demolition continues, Chris, our builder, has his kids with him and they are fascinated with our pond and gold fish, every door in the house is open and we have cats and a dog all over the place. It’s a mental day.

As the house slowly becomes quiet as people leave and we finish up work for the day we go back to our living room and take in what looks a little like a disaster zone. Our cats slowly emerge and inspect their changed surroundings. Cast are amazing, you only have to move one piece of furniture and it’s like, wow, you’ve renovated, let me look around and check it all out. It’s a bit like that, our cats walking around inspecting everything. They haven’t seen the new area yet, it’s been blocked off for weeks. That’ll be an adventure.

We settle down and relax for a while.

Day 18 to 23 – 6 to 13 October 2020

Posted on

After a glorious weekend in Canberra, heavy cloud cover, storms and rain rolled in over night. Although the heavy rain didn’t dampen the spirits of the five builders who arrived promptly at 7.00am. They quickly got to work readying our space to install our new hard wood floors.

They were ready to go as the wood arrives at around 11.00amn.  Over 130 square metres of flooring will be laid, around 410 linear metres of Jarrah hard wood boards, each 130mm in width and varying lengths.

The flooring taking up most of our garage

They make a start at the Eastern most end of the house and hallway and start to work their way into the kitchen and living areas.

This next seven or eight days are all about the floor.  From dawn until dusk three builders work seamlessly together laying floorboards for five days straight.

Our final choice on flooring was not without its difficulties. We knew we always wanted a hard floor, as opposed to carpet. We’ve always had solid wooden floors, Sydney Blue Gum in the newer part of the house and original pine in the older part – designed as the original sub floor, which we have never covered.

Images of the flooring going down

We explored all manner of hard wood floors; laminated timbers, artificial timbers, rubber that looks and feel like timber and of course tiles. 

In the end and despite the heavy cost we circled back to solid hardwood. It is durable, will last a lifetime, insulative, and just looks magnificent.

Seeing it go down fills us with joy. The natural and varied colour and grain, the look and feel of solidness and the overall beauty can’t be beaten.

Each day more and more of our old tired pinewood floors is covered. The pine has served us well.  It was, is, the original flooring installed when the house was built 50 years ago. For the first 30 years of its life it was covered with carpet. We pulled the carpet up in 1999/2000 and then had it polished as part of our first renovation is 2002. It looked great, in parts still looks great, but 20 years of use has seen it worn down. The high traffic areas are bare, our office has seen a lot of wear and the boards were splitting and splintering. Cat scratches and claw marks from the dog adorn the hallway and corners. It is sad to see it get covered, but we are satisfied that it will remain as our sub floor and continue to keep our house up.

In between floor laying the team straighten walls in readiness for plastering and the electrician puts the finishing touches on our electrical layout. One big job remained on Tuesday, moving our data cabling and internet access. We have a data rack with 24 cat5 cables running throughout the house. When cat5 was all the rage and before WiFi was common place. He managed to salvage it all, although we don’t use many of the ports now, some will come in handy in the outer reaches of the house and to provide a stable connection for streaming services and our NAS.

Weekend four – 3, 4 and 5 October 2020

Posted on

A long weekend in Canberra, footy finals are into full swing and we enjoy a couple of nice meals with friends away from the construction zone.

With builders not on site for a few days, we are at a limbo stage. All of the pre work has been done, we are now waiting on floors, walls, insulation and final electrical.  That is all for next week, when we start to hit high gear and the build really kicks in.

We also note while they are not on site how our animals almost return to normal. It is easy to forget the impact on them. Their routine is out of whack, their usual sleeping zones, eating zones are all changing and the time they get to sleep, eat and do dog and cat things also changes.

Dahlia the dog inspecting the works

The cats quickly depart the scene when they hear a builder’s car arrive.  Their library sanctuary, whilst not part of the construction zone just yet, is close enough to make them all want to escape to the cat runs outside. They reappear around 5.00pm after the house has gone quiet. They then cuddle up with us, on alert, in case noises start to re-emerge from the construction zone.

Dahlia, our 11 year old pit bull terrier, is also out of sorts. She is a special dog with special needs. If her routine is interrupted, she get a little distressed. Her routine has been thrown out the window. One day she is in with us, in our makeshift office, the next she is outside as builders bang and crash around us. Her bed gets moved around at night from one place to the next. We are lucky to be both working from home most days as a result of COVID, it has made managing Dahlia easier during the build.  Only 10 weeks to go!

Day 15/16/17 – 30 September 2020, 1 and 2 October

Posted on

Chris arrives at lunchtime for a discussion about our final kitchen cabinetry. We had detailed plans drawn by our designers, Department of Design (https://www.deptofdesign.com.au, if you get a chance, use them, they are wonderful), so this task wasn’t very hard.

We reviewed all of the detailed drawings with Chris so he could go and get the cabinets made and then assemble them on site. We have quite a bit of detail in our design. Some shadow lines, hidden handles, integrated appliances and LED strip lighting.

Plans

Once we agree on the final detailed points, Chris heads off to the joiner to have the final plans checked and get the process of making the cupboards up. In four week’s time we should eb ready for the kitchen to go in. In the meantime, there is a lot to do.  The schedule for the next couple of weeks will see flooring and wall sheeting happening, a couple of new windows go in, insulation and finalisation of the electrical layout.

For now that is all the work until next week, it’s a long weekend in Canberra and the builders have earned a break.

Day 14 – 29 September 2020

Posted on

Today can be described in a single word: electrical.

John, our electrician arrives at 7.30am and by about 4.00pm what seems like a few kilometres of cabling has been installed.

There neat work of the electrician

We meet with him in the morning for an hour or so and go over the plans, confirming the location of lights, switches and power points. We want to get a mix of ideal task lighting for me, but also nice effect and ambient lighting. So a combination of LED down lights and feature lights should do the trick.

John then gets to work.

By the end of the day, neatly hung and fixed cables appear in all the right places. A stark difference to the spaghetti junction we had a few days earlier. In the corner are the empty spindles, testament to the amount of wiring needed.

Hanging cables resemble an executioneer’s hanging ground with macabre hanging nooses everywhere

Weekend three – 26 and 27 September 2020

Posted on

The amount of decisions you need to make is astounding. This weekend we are off to select a rangehood. A few months ago when selecting our appliances we chose a rangehood. A nice Qasair. It was the right size, had easy to see controls and was relatively quiet. Perfect.

No

Now the ceiling was open and the builders could see where it was to go, we had a problem. Qasair come with solid ducting between the unit and the exhaust area above the roof. To fit the ducting in was going to require some serious ceiling modifications. Chris suggested we explore something with flexible ducting.

Thankfully during our search we had located a model with flexible ducting, but discounted it. I think our decision was based on the issue of the ducting and whether flexible ducting was more prone to tearing, damage. So off we went to do more research on the ducting and rangehoods in general. Why do we need so many types of rangehoods? Decision fatigue quickly sets in and we end up going back to an original decision, a Schweigen and explore it further.

A great brand, good reviews, German engineering and the bonus of a motor outside the kitchen altogether, so very quiet. After some research on the ducting and a visit to a local store, The Good Guys, we settled on a Schweigen.

Whilst in the Good Guys we also wandered around and looked at every other appliance. The same paradox hits us, so much choice., How many blender versions do we really need? Vacuum cleaners! And of course TVs!! We certainly live in a world where we are not constrained by choice, but sometimes this variety makes making a decision tougher.This phenomenon is known as the Paradox of Choice.

Choosing colours, or anything where the choice is wide is difficult

Barry Schwartz defined the paradox of choice as the fact that in western developed societies a large amount of choice is commonly associated with welfare and freedom but too much choice causes the feeling of less happiness, less satisfaction and can even lead to paralysis. The paradox of choice has been recognised as one of the major sources of mass confusion in today’s society.  See more: https://www.techwell.com/2012/09/how-you-can-overcome-paradox-choice.

Notwithstanding the plethora of choices available to us we buy a new vacuum cleaner. A Dyson. The decision is easy for us, we’ve always been Dyson fans, so our choice is immediately limited. We want a cordless model. Again limiting our choice. They have four in the range. We have hardwood floors. The choice is down to two. We buy the on with more battery life. Decision made.

Overcoming the paradox of choice is tied to purchasing decisions and consumer purchasing behaviour. The Consumer Decision Processes (also known as Buyer Decision Processes) refer to the decision-making stages that a consumer undergoes before, during, and after they purchase a product or service.

Belch and Belch (p.110 2015) define consumer behaviour as ‘the processes and activities people engage in when searching for, selecting, purchasing, using, evaluating, and disposing of products and services so as to satisfy their needs and desires’.  Similarly, London and Bitta (2009) suggested ‘[c]onsumer behaviour is the decision process and physical activity individuals engage in when evaluating, acquiring, using or disposing of goods and services.’

The crux of the research is contained in these definitions and the process consumers undertake when making a purchasing decision.

Sachdeva (2015) summarises the consumer buying process into five core steps:

  • Problem recognition
  • Information search
  • Evaluation of alternatives
  • Purchase decision
  • Post purchase behaviour

These five steps were classically applied by us in our search for a rangehood and the vacuum cleaner.  For more info see: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-marketing/chapter/the-consumer-decision-process/.

During the day we also settle on our final paint colour for our pantry and pick some lights for our dining room. By about 4.00pm, decision fatigue has certainly set in, so we call it a day.

Day 13 – 28 September 2020

Posted on

A glorious but freezing Canberra morning greets us all. The nail guns are in full swing by 7.00am as work continues. Today’s task is battening. Battening assists keep the roof beams straight, can be used by the electrician to lay and attach electrical cable to and also holds insulation in place. It is long thin strips of metal than run at right angles to the roof beams.

You’d think it would be quick, but it isn’t. It takes two of the team almost all day to complete the job. Precise measuring, accurate cutting and then fixing along every beam to ensure a solid and robust end product.

Ceiling pattens are in

Also today they frame up a nib wall/servery and step area leading from the kitchen to our living space. An internal sliding door is hung and another great day’s work is dome.

Day 12 – 25 September 2020

Posted on

All quiet on site in the AM.

We were presented with a bitterly cold Spring Canberra day, heavy cloud cover, persistent rain. Chris had told us not much would happen at the end of this week, yesterday and today. Following the electrical rough in, there is little to do now until the flooring goes in. We are waiting on a delivery of 130 square metres of solid timber Jarrah floor boards.

The team arrives around 2pm and works for an hour or so finishing off the little bits and pieces that need doing before the floor goes in. 

Our weekend will see us choosing a rangehood

An interesting perspective. Floor to ceiling panorama

[iheu_ultimate_oxi id=”11″]

Day 10 – 23 September 2020

Posted on

We met with the electrician this morning.  Winter has returned to Canberra as a cold southerly blew as we walked around working out where lights, switches and power points would go. Spaghetti junction above our heads bared witness to 50 years of electrical decisions. A mixture of original cabling, coupled with works we had done in 2002 and 2006.

The tangle of wires we call Spaghetti Junction

John, our electrician, suggested we simply rip it all out and start again. With no walls or ceilings to contend with, it’s a much easier job than chasing wires through the tangled mess that is there now.

Three hours later we leave John to his work.

Throughout the day John goes about his business. First he removes old spaghetti junction, then he starts the task of adding new wiring for all of the new lights, power points and switches. In all we are installing or reconfiguring  37 lights and associated switches and 14 power points. A mixture of traditional lights and switches and some smart switches.

John starts to feed the first of what will be several hundreds of metres of cabling.

The result will be pretty much new cabling throughout the house, a lot safer, and new and simpler layout of our existing lights, complimented with our new lights.  It’s a few days work for John.