29th January

You will realise that there has been some blog neglect happening here this week. This may sound a little like, "why I have not done my homework..." but I have had a couple of diversions this week. Firstly, Lester and I had to celebrate our thirtieth wedding anniversary.  Then there was the diversion of Kieran's being knocked of his bike in Sydney, by a motorist who opened her car door onto him. After an evening in RPA Emergency, he stumbled home bruised and lacerated but substantially in tact, luckily. (That is the second time that has happened in this family. John Rosen was swiped in Hamilton many years ago when he was living in Newcastle.) Then I became involved in the addictive and time consuming process of searching the net's real estate pages, looking for a place for Bernie and Jac to buy. This took a few evenings and today they have a list of twenty places to "open house" (yes, I know it's not a verb!) today. And then there was the fire..... really! Skip the next paragraph if you  think this is a lame excuse.

Sally (hero dog) slept inside  on Monday night as there was thunder and she was freaking out, as she does. About 3.30 she came into the bedroom and pawed at the bed, which I tried to ignore. She kept circling the bed (her toe nails annoyingly clicking on the boards and even pestering Lester on his side of the bed. Needless to say we were getting pretty annoyed with her. I tried to get her to go downstairs but she wouldn't budge from standing next to Lester. I eventually gave up, defeated  and dozed off, only to be awoken by an explosive noise and bright orange light and commotion coming in the window from the balcony. The house over the road was fiercely burning and billowing black smoke filled the street. So, Sally was obviously able to smell it before it blew the windows of the house out. The rest of the night was filled with five fire trucks, multiple ambulance and police vehicles; all whirring and wizzing their red and blue lights...so that was all the sleep we got. My excuse...I went to bed early on Tuesday. (P.S. No-one was in the house. The tenant had moved out that afternoon. We apologised to Sally and have been very nice to her since!)

This does not mean that no progress has been made on "the pad" this week, although Australia Day and RDOs coincided and shortened the working week.

Lester and I spent our  Australia Day, transfering belongings from the old lock-up into a larger lock-up. It was incredibly hot over there in cementland in Mayfield, pushing trolley loads of archived medical records and offsprings' belongings. However, it was a satisfying activity. We sorted all manner of junk and discovered some of the boys' stuff which I have been, falsely as it turns out, accused of throwing out.

I have been talking colours and fabrics with a designer. I love doing this although the decisions become harder to make with various options to weigh up.  I really like Porter's and Resene paint colours and textures. The carpet has been measured up but the colour not finalised yet.   I have talked with Bobby about the details of the cabinets in various spaces, including the stair voids. It is a good feeling to finalise these loose ideas which have been floating around in the grey matter for almost a year now. We have decided to do away with the cavity sliders in the bedroom, for various reasons. Principally because I am liking the idea of fabric curtain dividers.

We have decided not to get the ethanol heater. It is pretty expensive for a stainless steel box and we cannot fit it into the bookshelf as we had first been told. There are also some problems with the exhaust for the kitchen. The salesman was not helpful when I rang him back to ask where the rectangular fitting was. Apparently, they don't exist, or it is back in America. He was much more helpful when he was selling us the thing. Anyway, it seems we will have to get something made. The other problem with the kitchen exhaust is that it will have to be ducted well away from the air conditioning unit and the bedroom window upstairs which will involve attaching something like a stink-pipe to the back wall.

The kitchen detail is gradually filling in, as it the plumbing upstairs.

Sally - hero dog!

House fire  over the road

Australia Day revels: our new, organised lock-up. Plenty of room for more stuff!

The pop-up kitchen exhaust system; (Lester in back-ground!)

Kitchen detail. The glass doors have been fitted.

20th January

Lots of action today. Gyprocking progressed. It makes such a difference. Jim is a very neat worker and has taken care with the details of the kitchen. I worked on the surgery desk all day and Greg came down several times to discuss Very Important Details, (e.g. the placement of the shower tap, the space under the laundry sink which will have 12 plumbing bits happening there that there won't be much room for anything else...etc) much to the delight of patients. (I swear one patient called Claire gets an appointment every three days just to keep tabs on the build!!!)

The big stacking doors arrived. Steve was right; "humungous" they are! I made Lester pose in front of them to show their human proportions. He posed holding his tummy in,  in order to create the illusion that they were very big and also that he is svelte. It just doesn't quite work on the wide screen.  Greg says that there will be a small problem assembling them. The guys from Langfords are coming out to help, but they are constructed from their ends and as these are an exact fit with the walls, they will have to be put together lengthways in the room and then turned around to fit into the space. Piece of cake!

We got landed with another Solicitor's Letter from the AMP Building Strata Management. This is really hard to deal with. I think I will take Greg's advice and ignore it, although Jacqueline tells me that I can't do that. Greg reckons the best way is to change your email address. Smart boy!!!



Richo and Greg unloading the doors

 Lester and I had a little chat over dinner about colours, curtains, budget etc. We agreed that this was not going to be a horrible experience that sends people demented, as seen on "Grand Designs".  We are going to be relaxed about everything, knowing that  things will not be perfectly smooth. Just like going on an overseas holiday. Hard work, potentially heartbreaking, but we are determined to enjoy it as a new experience. As soon as we get to the budget bit we both decide we are tired and it is "bliss out" time. We have been bingeing on "West Wing" which Lester recieved as a gift at Christmas. So, instead of talking finance and possibly depressing ourselves, we watch three episodes of "West Wing" and - bingo - we become thankful that we could be the President of the United States and have really big things to worry about!

Greg organising the traffic in Hunter St.,  to unload the doors

My view from the desk. Isaac negotiating some very long bits!

Lester doing stomach contractions, to make the doors look extra large!

Gyprocking upstairs

Who own de street???

19th January

Shopping Day... How patient is Steve? We went around tile outlets, door outlets and paver outlets - all in two hours. I only changed my mind ...several times...and he patiently stood by and made handy calculations. How lucky is Claire!!   Anyway, many details are now solved and a couple of new probelms (decisions) created. All good.

This morning, befoer "the spree", a colour consultant came and we talked tones, colours, light, depth for a couple of hours and came up with a colour scheme. Loyal  followers will know that I have been pondering this problem for several months now. She was terrific. It helps when you know the "rules" and having guidance to formulate what is essentially an idea, (a vision???) I know that I like Porter's Paints and it  became evident in my conversation with her, why this is so. Their colours are made from "reduced" pigments; they aren't bright colours but they have richness and depth. It's just like a good gravy or sauce; always good when based in a good reduction.

Gyprocked ceiling

Still Life: leftover splodge

More gyprocking happened today and a big clean up in readiness for the arrival of the big glass doors tomorrow. Steve checked out the doors at the factory today and said they are "humungous". He then had to tell them to dismantle the doors as they can't come into the place unless they are in bits. They are heavy and many hands will be required to lift them. Richo and Isaac did lots of shovelling and cleaning up to make way for them.

Lester and I made a few big decisions tonight: we won't do stacker doors upstairs now, to separate the bedroom. Got another idea. We are happy not to move in until the end of March when EVERYTHING  is finished and we come back from our holiday.  We will invest in a Dog Loo for Sally. And, biggest decision of all; we won't put the  wine storage on the wall. We need the space around the stairs. OMG! Where do we put the wine then??? Ten minutes of stunned silence and then the obvious revealed itself. Greg has already built storage under the stairs which is accessed through the downstairs toilet. I will have to ask him tomorrow if he can make the little door into a bigger one. This is one of those things which annoys builders and which Bernard tells me we shouldn't do: change your mind, (costs money - doing things twice). However, we have changed our minds now that we can see the reality...and Greg is always most obliging, especially after a holiday!

18th January 2011

Well we are back! Since I last blogged, our family (extended) has grown by one.  Charlotte (my niece) and Paul have a new daughter, Bridget Amelia, who was born in the middle of the Brisbane flood on 11.1.11. Very exciting. Rowan and Sam have moved through Vietnam and are now in the Philippines. Liam is holidaying at Bannisters in Mollymook. Bern is back at work in Rose Bay. Jac is back at work in the Aurora Building. Kieran is working on his next film...and Lester and I are ticking off the hours in the surgery. All good.

 Building has resumed with great fervour. Greg and the boys are refreshed and there was a murmur that the build would be completed by end of February. That's six weeks. I am assured that great transformations will happen over the next few weeks. We have decided, though, that it wont worry us if we don't move in until later - so long as it is all finished.


Today the solar hot water service was installed and Greg and the boys worked on putting battony sort of  pieces of wood on the walls to make them level on which to support glass and gyprock. The Gyprocker was also on site, filling in bits and pieces and neatening up edges.

Ian also arrived and spent some hours dangling bits of wire and drills into the innards of one of the walls in order to retrieve a wayward cable.

Tomorrow should be fun...Steve is taking me shopping! I think we are looking at doors and tiles - but it's not everyday a girl gets an offer to go shopping!!!

5th January

Silly season has come and gone - and it was all good. Great to see the kids again, although the increased amount of housework was an interesting challenge. Am out of the habit of cleaning up and fooding. Although not much is happening on the build I feel I must make contact with my blog buddies as so many of you have commented, with touches of alarm, that the blog has stopped. The blog has slowed down as the builders are on hols until the 17th January. That's OK. Everyone needs a break.

However, on the Sunday after New Year, Lester and I headed over town to drop some things into the surgery (and to check out the new deli, bar and restaurant in the old Royal site. We were alarmed  as we pulled up as the door to the upstairs was swinging open. Turns out that John, the electrician, was working away and he managed, by the end of the day, to have installed our door ringer + camera device. It was great to have the time to double check placements of  points and switches.

For Christmas I gave Lester a fantastic book. We all know that people give others the present that they wish would be given to them. (This is why I never get the diamond ring or the Gucci handbag.) But this book is a winner - for both of us. It seems pretty nerdy, and, OK I admit, it is. It is called,  Early Architects of the Hunter Region: A Hundred Years to 1940,   by Les Reedman. I saw it in the only remaining bookshop in the Mall which I usually find has a hopelessly appalling selection. I thought that I would like to glance through this, so I'll buy it and give it to Lester. It was not until Christmas morning that Lester opened it and was delighted to find six pages devoted to William David Jeater, 1896 - 1981,  of Jeater & Rodd  and later Jeater, Rodd & Hay, the architect who worked on many buildings, including OURS!!

 He came to Newcastle in 1925, (and in 1927 heped design the Congregational Church in Epping.)  He worked on major alterations to the Wolfe St.,  Lyric Picture Theatre which was integrated with the 1890's Masonic Temple. He worked on the residence on the corner of Silsoe and Corona Sts, Hamilton, the Carrington Chambers in Watt St.,  In 1931 he was involved in remodelling the Charlston Studios in Hunter St.,  designed by Menkens in 1906. During The Depression, he altered the elaborate facade of the Legal Chambers in Bolton St.  for Legacy House and worked on the Dungog Theatre, transforming it into a stuccoed Spanish mission style building.

He also altered the facade of Queensland Insurance Company at 59 Hunter St (that's us) by using a four inch thick, glazed terra cotta, "then on Sydney's Martin Place banks but not previously used in Newcastle." (NMH 9/3/1935). This was the first use of terra cotta facing in Newcastle.

He was a wonderful man; the "Professor of Architecture" at the "University of Changi" and was later a teacher in architecture at Newcastle Technical College. He went on to work on Wirraway Flats and the Arcade - remodelling of Municipal Baths - in Newcomen St, the Esplanade Hotel, Telford St.

During WWII he was captured in Singapore and he returned to Newcaste in middle age and ran his own practice from his home in Merewether.

It is quite significant to us, that Jeater worked on so many of the Art Deco buildings in Newcastle which Lester and I know and admire so much.

We talked to our local pharmacist who has worked two doors up from the surgery for centuries. He told us that he remembers when our building was MacDonald's Shipping Agency. So, maybe it wasn't the P&O Building until much later - possibly before it was the shop front used by the Wilderness Society - as it was when I first came to Newcastle. I will get the timeline of the tenants of this  building sorted - soon.

Meanwhile, back on the home front in Stocko;  it is Junk Clean Up Week. With the help of Carl, Bernard, Kieran and Liam, we must have put half  a house out on the street: bikes, boards, furniture, golf stuff, art and painting stuff, tools, tents, ... masses of stuff. And guess what???!! Most of it has been "recycled" by the locals. Bernie calls them "The Gatherers". So much of our 27 years of junk has been gathered up by people who want and love our old stuff. How good is that!

A page from the excellent book by Les Reedman

The front door - uninviting - terra cotta tiles on column

close up of the door camera / speaker

It may be several days before I write again. Depends on the workers!