Posted on

More tree pruning

I know, all we seem to do is play in the garden and climb trees when we should be working on the house. Well it was just too nice a day to stay in doors, a toasty -5°C/23°F (luckily no wind chill) and the sun was shining. We’re pruning the trees to thin the canopy, remove dead wood and remove some of the branches which overhang the lawn. We are being careful in what we remove as we don’t want to spoil the visual aspect of the trees and after we have finished you probably won’t notice that they have been cut at all. I won’t seal the cuts as it seems that trees can look after themselves.

Currently I’m just taking off some of the main branches, leaving 3 – 4 foot stumps on the tree which I’ll trim flush with the main trunk at a later date. The reason I’m leaving long stumps is that when a branch breaks, it can cause tear out, which you can see was what happened in the video below and I don’t want that to happen to the main tree. As for the stumps, I’ll cut them off in shorter lengths, 1 – 2 foot so I can control the wood as it starts to fall. When I was cutting this branch (and it was pretty big) you could hear it going and I didn’t want to be up there when it went. I’m lucky I did go down as that could have been messy as it hit the ladder on it’s descent and the branch went quick.

Still using the trusting Bahco bow saw, but starting to feel that I could do with a powered chainsaw, not sure if I’d buy an electric corded or a gas/petrol one. I’m not looking for a super powerful behemoth of a chainsaw, rather something small and lightweight. We used to have a corded Black and Decker one in the UK which worked great for anything less than about 9″ in diameter. By the way I think this is the first time I have ever used the word behemoth in any written form and if you’re interested it’s origins are:

Behemoth comes from the Hebrew word b’hemah meaning beast.

I also found out that I’ve been pronouncing it incorrectly, shame on me. By the way we did buy a larger Bahco bow saw, however we’ve lost it so if either of us have left it at your house, can we have it back please?

Lastly the stones at the base of the tree aren’t grave stones but they could be, but that’s another story …

Posted on

We have cut ties with our builder

Last week we cut ties with our builder Thomas Motzer. We had pretty much exhausted our budget so it seemed a good time to part ways. Unfortunately the parting was acrimonious. I won’t go into details but both parties disagreed over the final bills. We only wanted what we thought we had paid for and I’m sure Thomas thought the same.

This was a big lesson learnt for us and I can recommend the following tips for anyone entering similar ventures.

  • Get everything written down and signed – I know this seems obvious but it’s easy to assume the best in people. As an example both Aimee and I are pretty sure that when discussing repairing/replacing the roof that the soffit/ceiling above the rear upper balcony would be fixed. Well it wasn’t. I spoke to some knowledgeable people about this and it seems a bit of a grey area, it could be classed as soffit or it could be a ceiling. So in summary I would record any conversations with contractors and make sure that all expectations are listed out and signed for. By the way this isn’t the only work which we expected to be done that wasn’t – there’s a list
  • I would recommend compartmentalizing any large project into smaller individual projects and when each project is completed get it signed off complete with costs. What we experienced was that at the eleventh hour (and pretty much the eleventh minute) we were charged for work/materials for projects that happened months ago [spfx: fish smell] and these were costs that we were previously unaware of.
  • Be your own boss. In future we will not be hiring general contractors and instead we will hire specialists for each task.

Dealing with Thomas over the last few weeks has been pretty stressful with threats of a Mechanic/Material lien being put on the house. We were prepared to fight but after talking to our lawyer, paying up seemed the easiest, though it was a bitter pill to swallow.

We’re on our own now, but the both of us feel a little relieved.

Posted on

Prepping for the concrete pour

Currently we’re trying to prepare the ground floor for a concrete pour. It’s probably too cold for a concrete pour at the moment, plus we need to get the plumbing roughed in before that happens but at least that will give us a bit of breathing space to save up for it.

The time lapse is pretty boring I know, we were trying to remove all the high spots with a laser level (unfortunately you can’t see it in the video as it makes the soil look like little chunks of burning charcoal), possible we’ll have to remove more earth but we’ll wait until we hire someone. We’re trying to do as much as possible ourselves to keep costs down.

We’re not sure what to do with the staircase, I’m tempted to pull it off and have a new one built which we’ll either do ourselves or pay someone. We would keep the banister rail and as many of the spindles/balusters as possible. It would definitely be easier for the pour if the stairs weren’t there. I’ll probably ask our friends Derrick and Giovanna for some advice on the stairs.

After we finished we had about an hour before it got dark so we got out the ladders and started trimming the trees. We only have a Bahco bow saw (which I love by the way), so it does take a while. I did order a larger Bahco bow saw but we couldn’t find it. Some of the limbs we want to remove are about 12″ in diameter so it may be a long slog, but we’ll keep nibbling away at it. We will do a nice job trimming the trees, such that they still look elegant and balanced.

tree3
tree1
tree2

[Show slideshow]
Posted on

Superman breaks free from captivity

I found him while I was jack hammering up the hearth of the chimney we recently removed. I’ll probably chisel him out completely from the concrete tomorrow. There’s also a small ball which you can see in the last photo. I wonder how many decades he’d been trapped?

Note “Hutton” in reverse, this was the local brickyard for which Ponckhockie residents provided a lot of the workforce.

So if you’ve ever wondered where some of your favourite childhood toys went, your parents buried them under a concrete slab, probably …

sm2
sm1
sm3
freed
washed

[Show slideshow]
Posted on

Door added to cupola just before first winter storm

I have to say my door making skills need to be honed. The first door was great, 5/8″ ply all braced with 2 x 4’s and then covered with tvyek, trouble was it was too heavy for for one person to hold off the ground while the other secured it to the frame. Fast forward a few iterations and we finally got the door on, not a great job, but when the weather gets better, we’ll adjust it. When it’s 22°F (-6°C) tempers are short, but that was short lived. This is only a temporary door to keep the winter out so it doesn’t need to be perfect. Oh and we did finally finish off fastening the house wrap.

It was touch and go whether we were going to make it home from DM as a lot of cars were wheel spinning and getting no where. On seeing this we reversed and tried some side roads which weren’t as steep though we did indulge in quite a few very lax “Californian stops”, especially at uphill stop signs. Our trusty Toyota Corolla did a great job, admittedly we did fish tail a bit 🙂

We ended the afternoon with a beer at Rough Draft which is a fine beer and books establishment. If you’re reading this Kyra and Vanessa this is our project and it was great meeting you.

By the way what is nice about a snow flurry is that it’s tranquil – the snow deadens sound and not many cars are out.

snow5
snow2
snow8
snow6
snow4
snow7
snow3
snow1

[Show slideshow]