Sooooo – our floors could get laid over the top of that weird waterproofing membraney stuff:

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

But it was obviously better to get some waterproofing layer that did the job properly (you can see the nice shiny smoothness in the background):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sooooo - 4 and a half rooms all lovely wood floors to look at and love J in the first week.  Half a room…mmm, the jarrah floorboards we picked up (from the Salvage yard even though they are brand new – seconds, that is) had some character and we knew we would be lucky to get away with the tight square metreage amount that was available.  We took all the 72m² available at the salvage yard - for the 68 m² flooring we needed – so only 4m² to ‘play with’ and we ended up about 5m² short now.  We were so lucky to find enough locally to finish off, and Michael got to install them too (I helped a little, it was hard work!)

Soooooo – 39mm of rain one night last week – plenty to water in the septic tanks and leach drains - again – but dang, one of the septic tanks developed a lean – so it needed to be levelled out. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So much work that doesn’t really seem to be a step forward!  Oh well, there *is* always good isn’t there?  Our lovely neighbour, Terry, leant us his brand new sump pump and Michael was able to rig up the block and tackle on some planks suspended across from the tractor to the far bank, and he managed to get it all straightened back up again, after 3 days of work.... but yay! 

And Michael had already had the leach drain all beautifully levelled too:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 And had got onto the pick to take out some more of the clay wall so they could sit in a straight row:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 But we still had to call in the big digger – again (this is Jo, our neighbour's, dad):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The leach drains were about 1m too short (only because we changed over to the plastic ones and you need 14.7m compared to 12 m for concrete) – we knew we were close – and even though Michael is certainly no stranger to hard, digging work, there was no way he could dig through another metre of mud and rock hard gravel.

Best news though – Kent, the plumber could come back yesterday, so all the plumbing is connected and the shire will do their inspection on Friday morning so we can get this all buried and stop the pits flooding!  We sure will be happy with that!!!

Sooooo – still plenty of rainy days lately and still very high humidity in the house.  The doors were being kept open of course as wood flooring got cut etc – but Desmond has Kenny to help now – so the humidity drops right down to ~55% overnight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope that is enough to encourage the lice to live outside instead!!  With a life cycle of 21 days we need to keep the humidity down for about 3 weeks to see if they really are dying off – it’s a lesson in patience for me :-/!  It does look like there are much, much fewer bodies on the tiles over the last couple of days – but I am needing to see zero to believe they are gone!

Here’s the better photo I promised: J

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They are gorgeous window seats aren’t they?!!

I am still loving all our walls – the strawbaled ones look stunning as usual, and the ones we are painting, I just love the colour – so all good all around.

One small problem, and I mean we have some small – visitors…

… of the crawly variety…

 

 

 

 

 

 

They are mostly underneath the truth window, though are under all windows and in all corners of the house now – so they have been sent off to the Ag Dept to get identified.  The most likely strawbale bugs are booklice or spider mites – both of which seem to break out/in of ‘grain’ storage with warm, humid weather – so the deluges we have had of late, before the render has completely dried out, might be what has brought them out of the bales.  I wasn’t naïve enough to think we wouldn’t have some critters in the bales, but I was hoping they would die a natural death before I had to deal with them…and drying out seems to be what will drive booklice/spider mites out of our home too - so - while we wait for summer for that to happen completely, I am getting some damp absorbing granules to have in containers around the house – just to feel like I am doing something at least…and we will wait on the Ag Dept to tell me we have nothing to worry about.

Meanwhile, last week Michael has been digging trenches on all four sides of our home – so it feels like we have a moat now (and sure did when the rain filled quite a bit of it!).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, Kent the plumber was here today – so we have a network of greywater and black water pipes started - which aren't actually upside down, despite the suggestion of this photo!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, we would have had some septic tanks to plumb them into too…save for us not receiving the correct invoice for them, so we couldn’t pay until this morning – and then they want to wait until the transfer is in their bank account before they leave the yard…sigh, so we wait (~patiently).

Now, let’s talk seriously about loos!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I still can’t believe I had to go to a shop and sit on loos to choose one!! LOL.  My criteria was – easy to clean – because, Hello, I’ll be the only one doing that!  The lady did tell me these ones had been designed/shaped for – ahem – clean flushing – IYKWIM ;-)

Too much information??

It’s been busy, busy, busy in our family – school ball for the eldest J; back to school for three – and starting kindy for the very first time for the youngest - today, day 3, her tears came, it sure does tug at a mumma’s heart L.

But luckfully it has been quiet on the build (Ryan is away this week) so we have had time to do some much needed catchup on paperwork and finalise the electrics.

And then the lovely Mat and Kent from South West Environmental Plumbing came along yesterday and started to get water to our home – yay!  The way I look at this, we can already almost take a hot shower ;-)
 

 














Ok, it might take a bit more before that actually happens – but the vision is there isn’t it?!!