Don't mention the wet stuff

The last fortnight has seen a noticeable decrease in the precipitation, which has allowed for a huge amount of waterproofing to happen, and the backfill on the backwall to go in. There's plastic sheeting up against the bitumen'ed block work, and then it's buried under gravel, with an ag-drain pipe at the bottom, and another one to go in near the top, before the final soil layer brings it back to natural ground level.



One of the outcomes of this is the scaffolding around the stairwell can finally be constructed, so that the stairwell windows (with well over 100kg of glass) can finally be installed, and the roof fitted across the top. You can now see the big feature window at the bottom, a smaller window at the top, the sliding door onto the deck, and the north-facing louvre windows, so that the whole tower also acts as a skylight and solar chimney. Now it just needs some walls...



From the loft side, looking onto where the deck will go



Speaking of the loft, it's still a very open-air structure. It will be totally clad in corrugated iron, with a narrow clear polycarbonate strip around the top to let the light in. It can't have windows in the normal sense, as it overlooks the neighbours too much (we're up high, and close to the boundary). It also won't get much insulation, since it is intended as a storage space. Still, a really nice space!


Inside, a lot of plumbing has gone in, with various colours of plastic piping, and some copper. The bathrooms, kitchen and laundry appear to have most of their requisite water inlets and outlets.



And our first cupboard doors have arrived! There's a bulkhead to go across the top, and some edge panelling to box it in cleanly.



Oh, and some handles would be nice too. They should be here soon.

More good progress

Even when your intrepid correspondent sometimes fails to update the blog, the work does continue. Even when it sometimes gets a bit wet. Did I mention it's been raining a bit? Wettest quarters in over a decade? Oh, I did...

A major achievement this last fortnight has been the garage and loft above. Both now look like rooms at last, rather than just a gap in the walls, and both have (most of) a roof. It also provides the second last wall on the internal courtyard.




The garage has a delightfully high roof. There'll be some steps up to the doorway onto the courtyard, a folding (loft) ladder into the... loft, and also a trapdoor into the loft for anything a little larger or awkward, with a little winch/pulley above it to help lift things.

From the loft you can see the roof-deck starting to appear in full size. Yes, it's strong enough to hold a spa. If we ever want to do that...



The skylight/solar chimney is now mostly boxed in.



Inside, more of the joinery is done, and placed into position. The closest box will be the laundry, hence the pipes and cables going into it.



Apart from the garage wall and some piers, the brickies have been busy filling in lots of the gaps around the windows, including the challenging circular window. This will all be rendered and painted, hiding the bricks.



More of the plaster sheeting is up inside, making the rooms look a lot cleaner, with a nice flat ceiling at last.


The circular window is now properly wrapped.



Perhaps there's been a little too much plastering work, or plastering-under-the-influence. I'm sure we had a window right here....



I'm told it's still there, and we'll see it again. One day...