Living area tables

Having not written here for ages, it seemed about time to add an entry. Alot has happened over the last two years, the garden has grown alot (especially Meriel's vegetable patch) and the house has proved to be everything we ever wanted it to be. We've had numerous visitors and all agree that the house is just fantastic.

By way of starting off the update, here's some details of the living area tables we had built.

We didn't have any space where we could make things and leave them half-made, mainly because we knocked down our garage to make the house bigger. This in turn meant that if we wanted to do any small scale projects, we had to do them on the kitchen table and then either complete them, or tidy them away until a moment in which we could complete them presented itself.

We started by looking at an all wooden design, where two tables which normally live in the corner of our living area could be taken out and put together to form a large square table to dine on. The idea here is that no one gets a leg in front of them when the tables are joined:

But after getting a joinery quote to have it made out of even the cheapest materials, we decided that it was too expensive.

Then recently we happened upon a young guy who does welding occasionally. So we gave him a new brief for the legs to be made out of 25mm box-section steel (very cheap). Here's the re-jigged design:



We were originally looking at mdf tops, but on reflection we decided that ply would be cheaper and look nicer. So we got the legs made, got some cheap ply, treated it, glued two sheets together for each of the table tops and voila:

Needless to say, they are perfect.

Bad weather

Weather
Originally uploaded by Lenny&Meriel

The weather has been very extreme here and the house has been taking a real battering. As you can see the wind has been very high and I'm only gutted that I didn't do a screen grab of this from this morning, when the wind was gusting to 69 knots, force 12 - That's well into hurricane force (although only in the gusts). The average before was 47 knots, Force 9.

From the air

The builders will be back soon to do the snagging and in the meantime I've managed to KAP the house, so here's one of the views from the air:

Living room desk almost done

Living room desk
Originally uploaded by Lenny & Meriel.

As you can see, just got to paint the doors and fit the handles before the family arrive for their visit. Anyway it looks good (the curved brackets and light well are really nice) and pretty much exactly like the sketchup image - it's also extremely solid.

Closure

Closure
Originally uploaded by Lenny & Meriel.

So this letter from Matt really signifies the end of the financial to-ings and fro-ings. The house is now done (with only the snagging to do at the release of the retention.

And what the letter says is true - we are thrilled with the house and we can't see why anyone who comes here wouldn't be blown away by the good work done by Rihoys.

New living room desk

Living room desk - the plan
Originally uploaded by Lenny & Meriel.

We decided to jump in with both feet and make the desk in the living room that we've talked about for some time.

We're mainly doing it so that we can fit two desktops on it - it'll make for more sociable surfing if nothing else.

The development of the desk is charted in the living room desk set.

They're back

Rihoys will be in tomorrow to finish a number of outstanding issues - not snagging, but just stuff which was never quite finished. They should be in for about a week, and Brian will be here to oversee it all. We thought he'd retired - maybe he gets a bit bored.

Updated rear elevation

DSC_7643
Originally uploaded by Lenny & Meriel.

Just a more recent shot of the rear of the house.

It's been such warm weather lately that I've been able to open up all the sliding doors - that's global warming for you, I guess.