Stuff from Thailand!

Our stuff arrived from Thailand!!! After MANY MANY snafus (which are ongoing, unfortunately), the container from Thailand arrived at the land.

GB and the carpenters unloaded the thing all morning, grabbing out doors and furniture and stuff. Most of it is still wrapped up in cardboard.

Here's the bricks that go with the bas relief that GB bought.

Giant vase

Furniture "adorning" the living room

Rocks in the pool

Closet doors

Giant buddha head carving. This isn't the permanent resting place

Noam with the buddha for size perspective.

More and Better Pictures!

Saturday house day!

Well that last post was lame. All of these pictures are the correct way up : )

The tigerwood flooring is all in- the kitchen, living room, and master bedroom.

Luka is cleaning it with his clothing

Osiana and Luka think this is a fun way to play on the new floor with GB. This is our bedroom- you can see the potty at the end of that hall

Here's the fish tank wall and bookshelves in the living room

Granite

bedroom floor

closet.... looks TOO nice for a closet!

?!?!?!? this is right inside the front door. Looks like something we'd see in a Hajim house ;) we'll have to get out a label maker to figure out what these all control!

the outdoor shower rockwork is complete. The guys did an AWEsome job. This is really NICE rockwork.

No visit to the land is complete without a "getting-the-tractor-unstuck" incident. We had a load of cinder delivered to back fill the water tank. Tractor was sunk pretty far in it. But we're experienced (unfortunately!) and pulled it out pretty quickly!

sitting here where my bed is going to be : )

does this work?? a wee video of Luka

granite

until I can figure out WHY on earth these photos loaded sideways.....

the granite is mostly installed:

Ouch!

I was working on clearing the view plane from the house and pool down into the gulch and towards the ocean. There is a snarl of guava locally known as Waiwi.

Chainsaw work is dangerous and often I imagine the worst. I am careful, but when I get tired I'm probably not as in control of everything as I should be.

Waiwi is flexible stuff. After about 3 hours of cutting, one of the trees snapped back and bounced the chainsaw onto my thigh.
It cut right through my jeans.
Blood welled up immediately.
It was a small deep cut.
About as thick as the chain on the saw.
I applied pressure and went back to the truck and bandaged it up.

Now I'm laying on my back with my leg up trying to figure out if I was as safe as I could have been.

Karen won't let me post a picture of the wound. She says it is too gory.

more Rocks

before I talk about rocks....
The flooring is going in soon, and the guys opened up all of the boxes so the wood can aclimate. Look at this beaut of a board! The picture barely does it justice. We really are thrilled, and can't wait to see it all in!

And this is the lanai and "hall" tile, all grouted. It looks awesome!

So on Sunday, we left all the kids at home, and GB and I went to go complete the rock collecting job that he and Noam had started. I reread his post, and I don't think it expresses how HARD the work is! The rocks are so heavy.... and there are so many steps towards getting each 1! into the truck. The system they worked out is really awesome, but it's still a huge effort.

GB and I took up 3 loads- each large rock takes about 20 minutes to get into the truck (smaller ones we carried). It was a lot of work, but the pile looked "large" and we were mostly satisfied.
And we look halfway decent for holding the camera in front of us after several hours of work!
and then.......












the following day was monday. The pool guys wanted some larger rocks, so they went down to the river with their bobcat (machine) to get some.

holey moley!

just ONE of their rocks makes ours look so piddly! just goes to show how machinery and power tools can enhance your life

Here are some more of the big ones next to our small pile

and so you can see that Luka is pretty darned mobile despite his thigh high cast....

April Update

So much has been happening at the land in regards to the house and pool. I've been mostly at home with the recovering toddler.... but GB has taken a bunch of pictures in the last week.

Pool deck all smoothed out!

below the pool, all nice and mowed

view of the pool from the lanai. I suspect this will be a popular place to be

view from the living room

fish tank space! with bookshelves above. This wall is between the master bedroom and the living room.

COLORS!

downstairs bathroom.... with Karen's favorite rock tiles

extra closet space we added above the regular closet. I believe this is in one of the boys' rooms

this cute hobbit doorway goes to the pool equipment. It's going to be kinda underground- the top will be the pool deck. I love the doorway!

Rocking Day

I designed our pool with a waterfall...of real river rock. None of the faux rock for me. I want to keep it real. Sooooo, I had to figure how to get real rock out of the river, up the bank, and into my truck. Karen and I came up with all these complicated schemes involving tractors, sleds, pulleys, and the like, but one morning, in that time between dreams and awaking, I came up with it: hogwire, webbing, and a come-a-long.

You can't get something from nothing, but this really saves my back. (Photos by Noam)

Step #1. Select a rock. 100-200 lbs. Roll rock into place.



Step #2. Roll rock onto hogwire and thread webbing to secure hogwire in a basket around rock.


Step #3. Attach rock to pickup truck. Drive to pull rock up out of river (notice we machete notched a stump to get the right angle of pull. Have your buddy Noam watch to make sure the rock doesn't get hung up on any logs or other rocks)



Step #4. Back truck up and attach come-a-long to hogwire.


Step #5. Use an old solid core door as a ramp and winch rock onto truck.


Step #6. After 3 hours, pose on your pile of 1000+ lbs of river rock knowing you have to double this amount by Monday.


My back is sore, but it would have been totally shot had I rolled these rocks all the way myself.