Cottage update

Well it has been nearly three weeks since I posted an update on progress on the cottage.

Over the past three weekends I have:

Torn Out the side wall of the kitchen.

The small tank you can see here is for rainwater, for drinking.The rest of our domestic water comes from a spring across the valley.

Torn out the back wall of the kitchen;

Re-framed the kitchen walls for larger windows;

Put in a new back window

And a side window.

The wood-fired combustion stove is just out of frame to the right. We plan to have benches under the windows, the kitchen sink will ultimately be under the back window, and a gas cook top (for hot weather) under the window to the right.

Then finally, just so we could get a feel for what it will look like, I have put up our first sheet of cladding. For those of you who don't know it is a corrugated steel product called "Colorbond".
Corrugated iron has been a traditional building product in Oz. 
This is the modern version, it should last for 50+ years and never need maintenance. It is fairly quick to work with,
By the way the colour is called "Ironstone" 
And Lilli managed to sneak into this piccie to say hi.

Al Gets Cracking

Well we have had a couple of glorious autumn days. Hardly a cloud in the sky and things are starting to dry out.
After a couple of weeks of gutting the interior of our cottage and measuring and planning we took it up a notch this weekend...

Because of the weekend nature of the work and the recent weather down this way we are proceeding in stages.

So yesterday I took to the weatherboard cladding on the bathroom corner of the cottage.

This first piccie shows the view from inside
 
All the boards and bracing gone just the studs holding up the corner of the roof.
By the way the unsealed track you can see in the piccie is the "road" from the cottage to civilisation.
This track weaves 5km (about 3 miles) down through mountain rainforest to get to a road proper.

The forested mountain you can see in the background is across the valley and is on the property the cottage sits on. More about that another time.


This next piccie taken from the outside shows the next step.

The studs are out now. You can see I have a trailer at the front to cart the old timber away.
The weatherboards are old, about sixty years old and they have to be replaced, they simply don't keep the weather out any longer.
Unfortunately that means I am going to have to replace chunks of the frame as well,
The little window in this piccie is one I have ordered a replacement for.
By the way the rather ugly little tank stand is the hot water tank. Water is heated by a slow combustion stove.
No mains power either.

First thing this morning I began the process of framing up the replacement wall.
 
This is a bit nerve wracking because I have jumped  ahead a step and am framing up for a replacement window before it has arrived. If I get it wrong I will have to tear part of what I do down again.

So this is what I got to when I finished tonight, the framing for the bathroom finished and  the corner wrapped in aluminium foil insulation.
 
 The aluminium will keep the rain out until I re-clad and will also be part of the insulation going forward. The wiring is the remains of an old 12 volt solar system that used to provide light here. Hopefully we will manage something more sophisticated down the track.

Enough for tonight as I have to be up early for work.