Frustration building...

Ok, since last week progress has been as follows...

Monday: Weather fine until 3pm when it rained.....progress on house-NIL

progress on shed-NIL

Tuesday: Weather fine until 3pm when it rained....progress on house-plumbing trenches prepared and gravel piled in readiness...

progress on shed-NIL

Wednesday: Weather fine until lunchtime....progress on house-NIL

progress on shed-NIL

Thursday- Weather gloriously sunny...unfortunately it poured over night resulting in....seriously flooded trenches!

I am slightly frustrated because if the trenches had been done Monday and the plumber worked Tuesday, we wouldn't have this situation!

Just a little bit more...

The plumber didn't show on Thursday when he was expected and then it rained all day Friday so he wasn't going to front up then!



However, on Thursday our garden shed & chook house had the preparation done for their slabs-the boys were hoping to pour on Friday but with the weather that was impossible!

Lemons, spaghetti and metal trees

Over the past few days we have had two more fruit trees planted ( a lemon & a mulberry tree-birthday presents from my MIL)

and then the cabling from the power pit to the house was done...then today the meter box was installed-it's all systems go!

AIMing higher....

Above: Our lovely mud patch! Site scrape all done and now very wet!

Below: Are the trying to tell the tradies to "aim higher"?

And we're off!

That's right folks-on a cold Winter's Day in June (the 16th to be exact) building actually commenced! Whilst I spent 3 hours digging even more garden beds and spraying weeds, our lovely builder had his minions marking out our house site....

Above-no, it's not a rocket launcher...it's a laser level to help site the house~!

Above- A professional at his work...

Above- the first cut....

Trees, trees, trees

The last week has seen the "bones" of the orchard planted-in a semi parterre design. We currently have 28 fruit trees in ranging through the pome fruits ( apples & pears)some plums, cherries and a fig. We have also nearly finished the raspberry & blackberry beds and have decided on the position of the strawberry beds.

Above: Standing in what will be the pear walk looking past the circular quince bed towards where the back of the house will be.

We still have to plant an almond (self pollinating variety) and a mulberry, with the citrus fruit and an avacado going in later in the year.

We don't expect anything to happen on the building front this week-the builder is working a 3 day week and the only day forecast dry is tomorrow...figuires!

Birthday building!

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me! Our building permit arrived in the mail today-so yes it's actually going to happen! Has made my 2nd 21st (42nd) birthday just a little bit sweeter!

His Lordship has given me some Bunnings gift cards so I've bought another Callistemon Taree Pink and 7 bare rooted roses to go in the "Pink"garden bed beside the driveway. I will use the remaining vouchers over the next week or so...

Permitted for real!

Yep-that's right folks-we have been assured that our building permit has actually been passed! So hopefully it won't be long before we see some house action at the block.....

Yesterday His Lordship and I went out and planted a couple more shrubs and erected our letterbox (because the surveyors were having issues with the location of the block..). The letterbox is one we had originally erected at our last house and then kept once we had a brick front fence etc put up.

Above: Our recycled letterbox

Above: Some of the corella flock which visited us yesterday

Above: The 2 new shrubs planted-Callistemon Taree Pink-we will need 3 more

And the saga continues......

Ok-so last week I announced that we had our building permit (albeit sans shed..). A few days later I received a call from our builder's office staff to let us know that the building surveyor wanted further information-WTF?

They questioned consolidation of the blocks (done upon settlement in January and title issued), the positioning of the door to the main bedroom (moved on floorplan, but not transcribed to electrical plans-meant the smoke detector had to be moved...) and the fact that our B A L hadn't been done! We thought that the BAL had been completed with the soil test-LAST OCTOBER! This has now all been addressed and hopefully tomorrow a permit will actually be issued!

Of course, we are now into June and have a snowflake's chance in hell of being able to move out of the rental and into our new house when this lease is up on October 31st...but we will cross that bridge later.

We have however had part of our driveway completed, the shed site scraped and planted a brown turkey fig tree!

Above:Brown Turkey Fig

Above: Looking at Driveway from house site

Above: Site scrape for 6 x 3m shed