These past 5 weeks seem to have gone rather slowly...  Mark was away for a well needed 'away' time on the Transkei coast with friends for a week (tho Mmalae continued working), Mmalae's sister suddenly passed away and he needed to be with family for just over a week.  Mark has also been working on sorting out the hot and cold water lines and redoing the wiring.  Here he is on the outside of the house doing something water related.  Our dog Jamie particuarly liked the water work cos she went crawling under the house with Mark.

 The first bathroom is taking shape nicely.  Tiling, grouting water lines, toilet connection, window and mirror edging done.  Tho we experianced a setback when we connected the water... a leak in the newly tiled wall (you can see the darkened tile in the left bottom corner).  This meant chipping out the tiles above the pipes, finding the leak and replastering and tiling those sections.  Mark and Mmalae finished that this week too.  The pic above is looking into the bathroom from the door and the bottom is looking back at the door from the shower end.  The basin will go next to the loo.

 The electric box is looking better and better.  Mark has had to figure out what wires were doing what before he could sort out the box (the house is 100 years old!).  He's now in a place of needing to wait until the new roof and beams are in place so he can finish it off.  They hope to build truces etc next week, Mark has ordered the roofing supplies and Lordwilling the one side of the roof will get done the week after next.  

The retaining blocks of the ramp to the front door are all in now (with plants :)  and will be completed once all the rubble is out of the house.  Rubble still to come from replacing the window in Kara's room (small one on the left) and the remodeling of the second bathroom (the shower is now leaking badly, so just in time).  JJ's room will be the window in the middle (next to Kara's.

WEEKS 5 TO 10 GARDEN...

The side garden is slowly taking shape.  Our back neighbors are the closest to us so we are trying to grow higher shrubs  around the perimieter of the property.  Our back neighbors, however, are really lovely.  Ash and Sherona were actually watching out for us when Mark was away in Transkei.
We are still battling weeds but seems like we're getting a handle on them.

 The front has gorgeous trees.   I couldn't resist putting some succulants around this one.  

This gives an idea of the view tward the front gate.  We cut back a lot of what was already in the garden, added new slips etc.  Things are taking root and the Fosters shrubs we pruned back, are growing wonderfuly again.  Its so wonderful to experiance the joy of His creation.

WEEK 4 - APPROACHING THE ROOF

yes you're right... the bath has nothing to do with the roof :) But wanted to show you the bathtub with the shower space behind it. Its set and Mark is now working on connecting the water pipes.


Apparently the trained eye might see from this picture that the left side of the house had already dropped a full 2 inches. While Mmalae was plastering, Mark put in new beams and a shutter board in the new celing space. Because the roof is so unsecure, they have had to create access to it from inside the house. Mark has put 4 braces inside the roof space and 3 from the floor to the ceiling level, besides the steel beams. He feels it is now secure to start trying to remove the asbestos sheets from the roof. Watch this space....


The last of the bashing down of walls took place this side of the house this week. The wall going from the kitchen to the dinning area had a huge crack. So Mmalae and Mark removed it to match the other side, put a good lintle in and will brick it in above the lintle next week. The front part of the roof (over the dinning area) actually started giving way this week, but is stable with bracing. Thankfully the steel beams were already in place giving much more support to the rest of the roof. ceiling space.

WEEK 4 - FRONT ACCESS TO THE HOUSE

With most of the bashing done on the interior of the house... the rubble needed to go somewhere. We had wanted to have a wheelchair accessible enterance, so it made sense to use the rubble to this end. Mark decided to use retained wall blocks to hold the shape on each side of the ramp.


J helped Mark by lifting the paving bricks to be used later. Mark has moved much of the rubble to make the gradient of the ramp up to the vernada level.


By Friday.... still a ways to go but making good progress. Some even have flowers in already. 2 more rows to go to get to the veranda level.

WEEK 3

Mark and Mmalae found the electric box in rather a precarious situation. The wires were just plastered into the wall. They apparently need to be in pipes inside the wall. So Mark started trying to figure out the wiring. You can see him half in the roof doing just that in the next picture.

The wall between the lounge and kitchen is now completely out and the 2nd steel beam is in (you can see them both in this picture). Wow its amazing how much more light it is in the lounge. The guys also took ou the doorway space in the enterance way. Mark was pleased that the kitchen and dinning area's windowframes do not have wood bora and don't need to be replaced.

WEEK 2 - view from lounge toward kitchen and first bathroom

View from lounge toward kitchen (behind middle wall) and front door on the right of wall. Dinning room through doorway on left and first bathroom behind wall on left of this doorway.

They have removed the doorway from the lounge into the dinningroom area. And, half of the wall, so far, between the lounge and the kitchen. The open plan version will allow more light and make life easier for those with low vision:) The bathroom is otherside the wall on the left.

WEEK 2 - steel rafters to hold up new roof

Bringing the steel beam into the house. It weighed 125kg. Mark found that the previous beams beside being effected by wood bora, also had warped by 2 inches. The span of the lounge was too great for the load of the roof. He plans to put 2 of these steel beams in to hold the roof - because he is removing the load bearing wall between the kitchen and lounge (to make it open plan and to bring more light into the lounge). These load bearing walls were also significantly cracked. He is also thinking of putting a room space later on.

Mark and Mmalae working out how to get it up (the celings are high!) without injury and without it falling and taking the floor with it.

Half way up...

It took them the whole day to get it up, but there it is. Second one... next week.