There are many things of which

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant

Like the true weight of my trailer yesterday!

Overloaded you might say?
No, you're never overloaded when you save about 15K.
Well that's the idea any way... 20 hours of scrapping and stripping, repairs and some glazing putty later I might have another idea, but for now we have more than half our windows sorted.
We deem it important to get the windows first as we need to know the sizes of opening for the plans and the BASIX certification too.

Glad to have them all home and safe in the shed.

Below are some pictures of the outside white and inside brown.
Also a long awaited replacement a LN #7
:-)

Taking the black.

Well yesterday we finally settled on the land! It was such a long settlement owing to red tape at the titles office. There was no problem with the subdivision from the vendor, it just takes that long, seemingly.

As some readers are aware we hosted end if term drinks up on the block, and the positive feedback was very welcome! (Thank you all) It is so reassuring to know that everyone sees the beauty of our garden, as we do.

News regarding the house it's self is the architect has completed copying my drawings, the engineers drawings will be ready today(ish) and our house plans have passed the BASIX certification. Easy too.
Thus the development application should be ready to submit by next week!
Allowing for 6 long weeks in council means that we could possibly commence in as little (or long) 7 weeks.

I spent the afternoon up at the block this afternoon continuing on the wall. It's such a big undertaking that I'm considering "taking the black" so I may devote myself to the wall and joining the nights watch. (Game of Thrones nerd reference)

Also this week we committed to buying a stack of windows from the central coast.
Second hand of course! That seem like that will be great, the last picture below shows the top light. They are western red cedar, double hung sash windows with glazing bars and a leaded high light about with some stained glass. We love the idea of them, time will tell if stripping, repainting and balancing sash is worth all the effort.
Apparently these windows came out of a local public school which explains there size ( they are massive, at 2600mm high)
There are only a few schools in the area where they are from so for the story's sake I'll say they came out of Shelly Beach Public School?

Countries go to war over the love of ideas, I figure that I should at least be able to bring these windows back to life.

One Swung Done

This afternoon we took the ladder up to the block to place the last log in the swing set.
The cross bar.
Very happy with the end result!
Kids called it superiffic!
It's so high that when I pushed the girls I could make a cup of tea before they came swinging back! Awesome.

We had a pretty good run at getting the posts in plumb and level only had to dig three of the holes deeper or wider or longer! (Sarcasm) it was a pain in the backside!
Liza was introduced to the supreme accuracy of my water level (see pic below)
Perhaps I should have left it at home, because I wouldn't have been quite so picky about the braces being level and the Height being so spot on as she was.

Something tells me that my usual "she'll be right" attitude towards unseen, unimportant, irrelevant construction details needs an overhaul, as Liza isn't going to like "close enough to caulk" as a house building mantra.
I'm going adopt a new mentality towards this project, one that I strive for in my furniture making and that is;
"To make as perfectly as possible" this is also the title of a new book being published by Lost Art Press, a translation of a French work on marquetry, by Andre Rubbo.
Still not sure if it applies to our garden furniture.

Now to get permanent seats in place and back into the wall again.
Yes that is a 6' ladder in the middle!

Board? Try Swinging...

No, not that swinging... Today we visited the second hand timber guy and got some 150mm treated posts. 4.5m long with the intention of building an awesome swing for the tin lids and big enough for the big kids too.


what's the legal overhang?

cutting the notches for the housing joints



housing joint completed with bolt hole

Fence finished
With all the extra work that we've had on at work and the rain i haven't had a chance to get up to the block to take a photo of the completed fence. It's a little sad now that it is finished as it makes it look so formal and hemmed in. But i guess that it the job of a fence.
Our neighbours are quick off the mark and have already planted some native plants along a new stretch fence.
The contractor did a good job and it looks as though it will last at least two or three generations.

Completed boundary fence

new plantings along fence lines - natives

Strong foundations
Also completed this afternoon was the end of the first course of the garden wall foundations (if you can call them that).
Although they look higglety pigglety, they are rock solid and do not move under foot as you walk across them, proof that the are tightly bound together and should provide a stable platform for our low garden wall.
Now to start on getting it out of the ground!

Let's make like a banana and split!

Well not so sweet as a Banana split, but I did have an equally rewarding afternoon.
I split my first rock today using the feathers (shims) and wedges that my father made me for my birthday and boy is it fun strangely fun.
It worked just as the book I'd read said it would and that's just fantastic for me. To take new found  information and apply it, is as rewarding as any other challenge i've come across.

So here's the quick version.
Buy a rotary hammer drill. This is very important, why? See my previous post on burning out a drill!
Drill holes 150mm or so apart
Insert feathers with wedge
Tap continually in sequence till you hear a great, immensely satisfying but little, snick.

So the rock I bought home to practice on was large enough to split twice. So now, out of one somewhat unusable round stone I now have three, very useful flat bottomed face stones one of which will be used in a corner. (A very important location)

One happy chappy today.

Now i'm going looking for those large difficult rocks!

Rotatry hammer drill

Feathers and wedges in place

 

Burnt out.

So my father sent me a birthday gift yesterday; some feathers and wedges that he made for me, so I may attempt to split some of these rocks for our garden wall.

Whilst a little inconsistent I have a feeling that they will work very well.  He used 20mm round bar and cut off the feather from each side and had them hardened at a local place in Glen Innes.

my hands after one minute pushed me to a better solution!

I found a 20mm masonry drill bit to use in my smallish Makita hammer drill.
Now from what I've read this may not quite be up to the task of drilling all day but I thought that I could at least practice to see what would be possible with the right equipment.
So I chucked up the drill bit and set to work on the first hole. 1 minute passed and my hands got that crazy itch you get from too much vibration, a bit like those old vibrating exercise machines from the 80's and with out much progress, just like the 80's exercise craze I guess.



I got to thinking.... There is a better way.
I thought of ways to automate the process particularly holding the drill and adding force to the handle.
I thought of adding weights on top but it seemed clumsy and then I thought of an image in a book that I have read many times. Scott landis' workbench book. On the back cover of my version there is a picture of an old guy holding a log down on a trestle using a rope or chain and his foot. Awsome I thought, that'll do me.
So in about two minutes I had two lengths of timber and a rope.
Drilled holes is the ends of the timber and tied the rope between them.
Place one length under the stone and the other stuck out the side. Looped the rope up and over the back of the drill.

It works great! The harder I tread on the timber the more force is added to the drill. It was so successful I drilled an inch in about 30 seconds and I didn't even have to apply any drive with my hands!
During that time I quickly learned that too much pressure is not so great as the drill struggled a bit.
After about 31 seconds I could smell that ominous stench of electrical overloading, bad bad bad. After 35 seconds before I'd even had time to consider stoping smoke billowed from the vents in the body if the drill and it ceased turning.
Both delighted and disappointed as the progress was fast! But I'm now with a hammer drill, a small problem. Warranty I hear you say, we'll as Murphy would have it, it's 8 months out. Boo hoo...

 

There are three kinds of men.

There's the one who learns by reading, a few who learn through observation and the rest have to pee on the electric fence themselves.

No we're not putting up an electric fence but this past week did see the strainer posts for the fence erected.
Now that the concrete is set the fencing contractor will be back later in the week to complete the rest.

The other photo shows the beginning of the low stone wall that will separate the veggie garden and the lawn.
I've not got a flat stone on the whole property I swear, thus this wall is going to be a challenge!