Springing into life

P says he’ll be catching waves with his boys in southern NSW in two and a half weeks and we’ll be at lock up stage.

Hard to imagine but, yes the new room is really taking shape.

We chose the colour of the room last night – bushland – and the corrugated iron is now on order.

It was all action this morning with the builder, his helper, the plumber and of course the plumber’s dog.

Digging up old things

So the new room can fit on our small parcel of land, the old brick shed has been cut in half.  As a result, the old workbench no longer fits, and is sitting out in the backyard.  

You couldn’t really see it when it was in the shed.  It’s been knocked together out of lots of pieces of old timber. I guess you’d call it organic.  Parts of it are painted a colour we used to call lavatory green. It reminds me of the one from my childhood in Eskdale Road – just over the other side of the racecourse from here. 

It was in an old corrugated iron shed with a dirt floor and Dad and I used to hang out there together on weekends.  He had a light over the workbench and fixed things; a replacement knob fashioned for my Etch-a-Sketch; a new handle made for the axe; the Noritake dinner plates, that mum threw at him in a rage, painstakingly glued back together; broken radios repaired; and wobbly legs on chairs made brand new again.

Dad thought, or perhaps hoped, I had a practical side but I just liked watching him as I twirled the handle of the red vice in and out. It was the place where all the problems could be sorted out. 

If something proved difficult to solve he said, ’This is set to try the likes of you and I, but we won’t be beaten will we?’

And I’d smile tentatively, willing him on to victory.

He worked away in silence, totally immersed in the job in front of him. Sometimes thinking he was in his dental surgery he’d call me nurse,  and ask me to hand him a wood planer or a chisel or to hold on to one end of something and pull .  Things could get pretty rough in a dental surgery back in the sixties.

Then finally I’d hear the magic words, ‘Now we’re cooking with gas,’ and I knew everything was going to be just fine.

On the eve of construction

We used to wake up to my alarm but I don't need it anymore. Blundstones down the side path and cheery talk about weather or cricket or where to put the newly arrived timber, get me up well before 7.30 am.

Yes, after two years of planning with J the architect we have finally got to the building stage. We’re adding a room and making a few internal rearrangements. Why did the planning stage take so long? Well, I don’t think J the architect ever had enough the time for a little job like ours. He is very kind and took it on as a favour. 

I’ve known J for a long time. Thirty years ago, he had a tiny Edwardian brick house in North Carlton. A bit like this one, when I think about it. He lived there with his then girlfriend and her two wild boys aged about four and six. His sister M, her partner B and I ran a singing telegram business from his attic.  It was bedlam twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Somewhere in the middle of the unrelenting chaos, he was trying to establish himself as an architect.

There still don’t seem to be enough hours in the day for him. Teenage children of his own now and a large practice to manage. Once, after an on-site early meeting with him, he drove me into town.  I noticed the orange light on his fuel gauge and suggested he might need to fill up. He said we’d be fine. Not only did he know that it was on, but he knew exactly how many kilometres he had left before we conked out.

Anyway, somehow we cajoled the plans out of him and one by one ticked off the required bits of paper work - the building permit, boundary survey, and soil testing. And now we have P the builder on site. He has been in action for two weeks now and is aiming for lock up before Christmas. He’s even here on Saturdays to make sure he gets everything done on time.

P appears to be the ultimate planner. When we signed the contracts, I was impressed that he gave us a prioritised list of places for choosing knobs, tiles, doors etc. Even more impressive, when he realised we intended to get a dog, he sent me off to buy a dog door so he could install it in the yet to be made up sliding door on the new room.  All before he had turned the first sod.

It all seemed logical to me until I got to the pet shop. I was finding it hard to decide on the size we needed. The shop assistant called me lady and said that getting a dog might would be a help.