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Somehow we managed to agree on an outdoor dining table and some chairs while out shopping for such today, and while I’d like to say “and with no further ado we installed them” in reality there was a fair bit of what can only be honestly described as “slightly comedic pissing around” which ended up with us having a table and half the final number of chairs on premises and erected in time for the kids dinner. So they ended up with the privilege of the first meal at the table.

So now we just have to hope the rest of the chairs find their way to us, and we can work out the best placement of all the plants in pots. And the BBQ. And the tub of ice and beer! But I am pleased to say the kids enjoyed being the first diners, and smearing sauce all over the new chairs for mum to clean off.

And has been for a week or two now. We just got lazy taking the picture to prove it.

Looking good. Now we just have to move the BBQ in, fill it with tables, chairs, plants etc. There’ll probably be a few lights go up. The outdoor speakers that have been sitting in the cupboard for five years should finally come out and be used (but that will involve a trip up into the roof, so that can wait a bit until I’m sure my legs are flexible enough to get around all the timber up there).

But we’ve got until the start of next summer to get all that organised!

More slow progress, but we’re getting closer to the finished product. And as long as it’s finished by next summer so we can make the most of it then! The normal two crew have been hard out working this week to try and complete the BBQ area.

I think the paving was probably the easiest part of this stage for them. Although it took a lot of measuring and checking levels before fixing them in permanently it can’t as been nowhere near as frustrating as digging the holes for the fence and pergola.

They had a new bloke start with them this week and I did feel sorry for him because he got the job of hole digging. In our very stony soil. To make matters worse he was newly off the boat from Scotland, so was not used to the the 28-32 degree heat he was working in during his two days of digging.

But we are almost there – just finishing off of the pointing of pavers to go, the remaining bits on top of the pergola to finish off, and then the fence to close it in on two sides. Then we will just need to seal the pavers and we are finished!

In other “work around the house” news, they have also managed to outline the house path at the front door – a huge improvement on the non-outlined, weedy path we had there previously.

My self appointed job for the last two days while the kids have either been sleeping or at preschool has been to dig over the back area to make a garden now that the new laundry step is in place. Stupid I know. The ground here is so stony, but luckily the dry summer has made it OK to dig. Although a dust mask might be a good idea, I have managed it all by myself without the help or instructions from the ‘boss’ (apparently he has some type of man flu and is also too busy working from home).

To put my digging into some sort of perspective in case the pic does not do it justice it’s about 4-4.5m by 1m wide on one side of the step and then 1.5m by 1.5m on the other side. You might say that’s not much…… Well then you are welcome to come and dig them many more bigger gardens we have to do. Who said starting from scratch was fun! Not a bad effort so far from me if I do say so myself.

I even have a sore shoulder and butt cheek on my digging side. Now just to get out some more stones, take out a bit of dirt, put in some compost, plonk in the now obligatory irrigation pipe and sprinklers and then pick something to plant in there. Then I will be happy with having completed another of the endless projects we have to do around the house.

After all the hard prep work has been done, I finally got a little bit of help or shall we say interference from ‘the boss’, and so a week later the compost, irrigation and some plants have been added. And that there completes my laundry garden!

Here is the old area/deck before they started all the work. The deck looks so small it’s hiding behind the BBQ and all the stones.

Here is the new deck. It’s much bigger, better and more usable. It really does make a big difference and change the whole look. All in all we are pretty happy with the progress so far. However, I am relieved they had a day on another job yesterday, as grateful as I am for the progress I was a bit over the endless hammering. I think it took them about 4 full days in the end. Not bad going.

And as a bit of a bonus here is the before and after pics showing the new step for the laundry. Pretty happy with that! It means I can now actually stand on it with the laundry trolley and not have to balance on one leg. Mike is a little sad about retiring his makeshift step that we have used for almost 4 years now (I wasn’t too bothered) but he seems quite attached and wants to find another place for it somewhere.

Now we just wait for the next phase to begin. Will it be the tidying up of the front door or will it be the BBQ area… Watch this space.

I suspect you might be slightly relieved that I’ve skipped day 2, but here we are after another couple of days sawing, hammering and general construction. Still not finished, but coming along nicely. Faceplates and another seat or two to complete as well as a heap of nailing to be done, but better. Much better.

Apparently the kids spent a fair bit of time with their noses pressed up against the windows. Even the kitties apparently hung out inside for most of the morning. Me? I was just for once grateful that I was at work in air-con.

Those of you who’ve been reading this blog for a few years may remember the great deck building series of posts from around Jun/Jul 2011 that got us our Code of Compliance cert. Since that time we’ve been pondering just what to do with the exterior of the place and finally got enough of a plan together that we could get one with it. Well, when I say “we” you should probably know that this time I’ve wisely not offered my services and we’ve got a gang in to do it all for us.

Today they arrived in force, with 4 vehicles plus a digger, and a small army of workers. Who promtly set about pulling up one of the decks that we’d so carefully installed way back when. Oh well. It’s done the job we needed it to. At least they managed to put in posts for the new extended edition at the same time.

We’re getting very close to the end of the summer break now and having not really accomplished too much to date it was time to roll up sleves and get into shoveling a heap of compost and whatever else smells strongly of pigs into the messy back strip that has mostly laid barren other than a citrus tree or two since we moved in. I’d managed to get motivated enough to get some edging in a while ago, but not bothered to fill in the gaps around it or sort the soil out. Or the weeds. Or the bits of timber lying around from the edging. Frankly it was all a bit of an embarassment.

So into it we got. First jobs were to fill in the gaps around the edging and to give it a bit of a dig over, and or course to pick up all the stones that magically appear everytime you show the soil a spade around here. Not too bad today. Only the 13.5 buketfuls to be carted away, but really that just made a bit of space available for the compost etc. Pity we’d picked a very hot sunny day to be doing all the heavy stuff, but there you go.

And so here’s the finished article. Much, much better. Now we just have to keep it clear of weeds, start watering it so it’s not as dry as a cracker, then work out what to plant in it. That can all wait for another day!

Sometimes it’s the little things that can make a big difference. In this particular instance I’m thinking of the sudden lack of any (visible) cables being emitted from the TV hanging on the wall. Magic!

When we installed all the network, satellite and aerial cabling oh so long ago we neglected to install an HDMI cable, frankly because we were rank amateurs (apart from Kelly, but the IT guys don’t really generally care about TV’s). But luckily the professionals that came after us to connect up all the wires to actual sockets thought that perhaps one day we might like to be able to do so, and very kindly drilled some nice wide holes and installed a pull wire or three. We only needed one (so far), but what a life saver it was!

• So. First step: After convincing my able assistant it was a good time to attempt this task, the initial issue was to work out which of the three pull wires went from the receiver box to the box behind the TV instead of straight up to the roof. Which generally involved tugging randomly until a wire moved more often than the other two.
• Second step: Work out which way it was most inclined to be pulled.
• Third step: Use massive amounts of duct tape to tie the HDMI cable to the pull wire (trying to make a nice conical shape at the front to assist in travelling though holes in studs).
• Fourth step: Pull wire with fingers crossed, and to helpful advice such as “I don’t know how this is meant to work”, “It’s not going to work”, “It’s stuck”, etc…
• Fifth step: Try to mask surprise and look generally like I was confident all the time when the mass of duct tape appears on the end of the wire a lot sooner than we thought it should. I swear we were only a third of the way through, and hadn’t come close to clearing the difficult 90 degree turns, but apparently we had. Joy!
• Sixth step: swap over all the wall boxes and install some blanks around the wire to avoid any mice thinking it’s a nice entry/exit hole for them!

I have to say we were both almost as surprised as when we managed to suck a fishing line from the pump shed. But it was a very, very nice surprise! Especially after putting it off for so long.

That’s obviously the receiver end. There’s really not much point of showing you just a TV on the wall!

So, another job ticked off. What next?!

After twenty months nagging…

One day, one man on a mission.

One clothesline!

And no, the man on the mission was not me.

A simple process really, but one that had taken far too long to get started.

Step 1. Dig a big hole.

Step 2. Put up a clothesline.

Of course that simplifies the process immensely, leaving out the extreme mathematical overload trying to calculate the requisite amount of concrete, the intense and fraught efforts to ensure absolute main standard uprightness (despite how it appears in the picture above, it is ramrod erect!), multiple trips for additional concrete, and general blood, sweat and tears. But all in all a job bloody well done! And one that I didn’t have to have too much to do with.

That’s probably why it got done! Thanks again, Big Kev!