The last two weeks just gush past ... no really

Oh dear, two weeks since the last blog, been busy, and not enthused to get
on with tapping on the keyboard. There again perhaps I just wanted to blot
out the happenings of our 3rd week in the house and move swiftly onto the
fourth!!

We are nearly sorted in the house now, kind of. Just a few wee jobs to get
finished and we will finally have a build free environment for a while until
we decide to push on with the next build phase. Silly things are holding us
up at the moment, 3rd party suppliers, but this week coming should put a
tick against virtually all of our outstanding items. The big effort for us
personally is to get some collection of large bulky items done in Mufasa.
Fridge, lounge chairs, shower door, and dining table on the list this week.
Well assuming that our fridge is available. It was ordered back in Feb and
Sue has been fighting with the shop to get stock available for us to collect
down in Durban. Long story, but we are hoping that one is now there with our
name on, unless they sell it to someone else in the meantime, and a final
call tomorrow morning should confirm that, or not! The fun is going to be
fitting things in Mufasa's load bay. With the help of some of the builders
this week we will get the canopy off giving us the space we need, and then
it will be furniture removal African style. Watch this space!! Our Telkom
landline is on order. Well we think it is. Might get some action on that
this week too. Takes 2-3 weeks to process the order, and then some more time
to actually do anything about it. The question of availability of ADSL still
needs to be answered but is a no brainer I think as our neighbours have it,
but you never know. No ADSL and we will not bother with a landline. Simple!

As to the happenings of week 3. A fair disaster, but could have been many
times worse. We are still slowly getting the Rayburn installed. Water and
Flue on the 'To Do' list. The first objective, get the water tank etc. all
plumbed in. Took a day or so, but eventually with a few goes and the odd
change of plan it was 90% done come Thursday. The water tank for the Rayburn
was up and full. The links to the hot water system and Geyser in place, just
the flue to be done. Also that Wednesday and Thursday we had the wooden
skirting fitted and painted. Looks really nice despite the house being in a
mess with everything we have stacked in the middle of the lounge to give
access for the skirting to be done. Anyway, Thursday evening we sit down to
dinner, glass of wine, very stressful few days getting the job done. Dinner
finished, watching a bit of TV. BANG!. What the F***? Look around, water
gushing out of the Rayburn. OMG! Looking back I think we handled it quite
well, although the odd moment of 'what can I do to stop it' type panic was
thrown in to the mix every now and then. Mains water quickly turned off.
Attempts to drain the whole system externally failing as the Rayburn is the
lowest point. We spent the next hour or so frantically fighting a battle
with brooms diverting the water out of any door possible. The water ran from
the Rayburn in the middle of the house everywhere, end to end, damming up in
the bedroom. We ended up with not only the Rayburn hot water tank of 100+
litres gushing out but also via some strange back feed the 150 litres in the
Geyser too! Thankfully we had kept all the packing paper from our shipping
and we used many a sheet of that to stem and soak up the water. The under
floor heating had its first use trying to fight the damp and dry floors off.
We managed to migrate everything standing in water to the sunroom in between
frantic sweeping of water.

Apart from some very damp skirting, great timing getting that put in, and
the odd soggy box we escaped without any real damage. One advantage of not
having any sofa or chairs yet, they would have been a wet mess. As disasters
go it was a mere teardrop to the scale of Japan, but to us it was very real
and bloody annoying. We think the problem was the back water tank in the
Rayburn splitting. It was the original tank and we thought it was fine, told
it was fine, who knows. It had not been a good week for water consumption.
With all the plumbing of installing it and then the loss of the water in it
we must have blown several hundred litres of water. As to a plan going
forward. I think the heating of water via the Rayburn is off the agenda. We
could get the tank in the Rayburn replaced with a new one, but at a fair
cost. Anyway, we don't think we could sleep at night worrying about whether
it would blow again. I am just glad I did not go cycling with the club that
afternoon and evening otherwise poor Sue would have been on her own fighting
it!

This week just gone has been quiet. The house to ourselves for a while,
which has been nice, waiting for the final push to get the outstanding jobs
list all ticked off. We are hoping that this coming week should get us home
and dry on most things, we shall see. Getting the flue in for the Rayburn
should be an interesting trick, need to keep a good eye and control over
that one!!

Slow progress is the name of the game ...

Can you believe it, it is the end of our second week in the house already!
Time just seems to fly past whether we are busy or not. It is just a shame
that the speed of the work progressing to get our house 100% doesn't work on
the same scale. Things are definitely getting there, just slowly. A few
nagging issues are yet to be resolved but nothing that detracts from our
enjoyment of being here, it is just frustrating.

The real big problem we have is the weather. The mornings are beautiful and
sunny. The mountains look so stunning. However, once the afternoon comes,
and sometimes not much past 13h00, the clouds thicken and we get a huge
thunderstorm. Every day. At first I thought it might me my fault. I am
trying desperately to get cycling fit again but dragging myself out of bed
first thing is proving very difficult, so I don't usually get out until just
after lunch. Even if the storm is late, you can guarantee that once I am at
least 10km from home, the clouds appear and lightning and rain are not far
away. I think I have been chased home most afternoons this week with a light
show above my head. I just hope that the theory of being on a bike with
rubber tyres will prevent me from being lit up like a Christmas tree!! I had
to shelter for over 30 minutes on Wednesday out of both a brick wall of rain
and very heavy cracks of lightning all around. Certainly gets the heart
thumping I can tell you. The up side is that the earlier it comes in the
afternoon, the earlier it goes, and the late afternoon and early evening are
cool and dry. Doesn't help much with working in the garden either as that is
having to be an early start and finish too.

I think we are starting to get a plan together for the garden, but there is
just so much to do, as with everything else it will take time and a lot of
blood and sweat. Being out here as with most things we need is a problem
with the grass too. Grass seed is either not available or rubbish and the
nearest turf farm is probably 150km away. So the many areas that we need
'instant' grass can only be resolved with digging and moving existing turf
from areas that it will eventually get dug for building. A slow, hot and
sweaty process, but at least the instant results can be achieved, if it
lives! Just hope we have enough that we can use this way. We don't really
want any bare earth come winter as it gets so dry and dusty for several
months until the spring rains arrive.

The rain is also an issue for water seeping into the house under the doors.
We have spent quite a while improving on drainage to get water flowing where
we want it around the outside of the house. However the rain that hits the
doors and then comes under is more of an issue. We have a stack of unused
towels that are used to try and soak up any errant water, but when the wind
and rain comes from certain directions it is just not enough. Not a major
issue but I need to make a plan and get a good solution in this week. In the
long term the two side doors that are the issue will eventually be internal
doors for the garage and our master bedroom.

The kitchen is almost finished now. We have a new unit under the sink as the
old one looked like it had been fitted by someone with very bad eyesight,
and we hope to have doors on all the cupboards again next week as they have
been taken back for re-spraying as the finish was not up to standard. Got a
very open look to the kitchen at the moment, you know why you have doors
when you see how untidy the contents of the cupboards look without them.
With a bit of luck and a following wind the Rayburn will get connected up
this week, flue and water. Will be good to see if we have success with that
for not only free hot water, but cooking as well. I feel a tale yet to be
told on that one yet though!!

One of the long burning questions we have been chewing on is a name for our
house. Well I think we might have cracked that one. We had a visitor to the
house, in the house. He has been leaving his mark all around the garden, him
and his family probably, but on Wednesday he decided to take a short cut
through our sunroom, not that he had much chance of finding his way out, he
is blind you know. If you haven't guessed already, Mr Mole. We eventually
showed him to the front door and he dived into the bank outside the kitchen
under the turf we had just put down. Later on he must have decided that the
bank was too hard to dig in and he re-appeared and made a dash for safety to
the side of the garden. Now what has this got to do with the name for our
house? Well several people have called it the 'small house', for obvious
reasons. We did think about actually calling it that but decided against it.
Then it came to me, a wee play on words, 'The Smole House'! Are we mad,
probably, but hey who cares!

A more pressing issue rather than a name is a street number as we do not
have yet one. One neighbour is No. 10, the next No. 12. Not much to work on
there as there are no even numbers I can think of that fit between the two
of them. I went to the municipal offices to enquire as to a solution, not
much help there really. We kind of agreed that calling us 12a would do and
the man said 'he would note it down'. Where, I don't know. Does it matter,
not really. It is just a problem of trying to give our address to services
like electric etc. We are trying to get a landline, but trying to convince
the lady on the other end of the phone that we really did exist despite not
having a street number was no easy job. Hopefully if we can tell people that
we are 12a Polo Way, even though officially that doesn't exist, it might
just get us where we want to be. It is a bit like being in Harry Potter and
platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross, just aim between No. 10 and No. 12 Polo Way
at speed and you will appear on our driveway!

It comes as no surprise as I write this that it is just after lunch and the
heavens have opened and the light and sound show is with us again, can't be
my fault as I went for a cycle this morning! It becomes a pain though
unplugging TV etc. every time a storm hits, but they are very big and nasty
affairs, not worth taking the risk. Our neighbours apparently got hit by
lightning a while back and lost TV and other electrical equipment, so it
does happen. Hopefully not to us!

'House finished' photos available

Latest photos of the 'finished' house available in 'Construction in
progress' under Photo Albums.

The adventure finally starts

Well it has been a long time coming but the day arrived that we finally made
the long drive to take up residence in the village. I think we must we must
have gone through all the emotions during the 8.5 hours on the road and
couldn't really decide if we were excited, apprehensive, scared, or just
wondering what the hell we were doing. The only thing we could agree on was
that as usual it was always great to leave the city behind and head out into
the wilderness beyond.

The house was like a busy ants nest on arrival. People rushing around trying
to finish things off. On initial inspection the house looked great but we
knew that there would be a few things to be finished off in the days and
possibly weeks to come. Even though we found quite a few things that we
weren't happy with or that needed fixing, we knew that it would get done to
our satisfaction in the end. It's a bit annoying and frustrating, but Rome
wasn't built in a day, and it would have taken a whole lot longer in Africa!
On the whole we are very pleased with our new home. It will take a while for
us to get settled in properly, especially as we still have the garage and
main bedroom to be built sometime. Living in a building site, what a
pleasure to look forward too! As is usual for us our first couple of nights
would be spent indoor camping. Airbed on the floor, Mufasa's fridge in the
corner, living out of boxes, nothing changes.

We arrived with Mufasa jammed full of stuff, the question was, where was it
going to go. The worrying thing was that we would be expecting delivery on
Tuesday of our goods that had been shipped from the UK, where would all that
go? We don't have much storage space yet as this will come in the bedroom
extension later on, and the garage. The kitchen is a fair size and storage
is no problem there, but clothes, books, garden tools, mountain bikes, and
general stuff would have to squeeze in somewhere or just stay in the boxes
and suitcases they came in. We had been given a delivery window of 5pm to
7pm on Tuesday for delivery of the shipping goods. They finally arrived at
just after 11pm! The poor guys in the truck looked knackered having been on
the go since 7am and with many a km under their belts that day. It was
exciting to see all our stuff again, and with all the boxes accounted for we
went to bed waiting for morning to come and have fun opening 29 early
Christmas presents. It was fun going through everything, but there was
always the thought in the back of the mind of 'would everything be in one
piece'. Thankfully, only the one casualty, a cracked wine glass, we will
live with that considering the long journey it has gone through. Anyway, the
idiots who had all our stuff in storage in the UK for 5 years manage to
damage a hell of a lot more!

The big problem we have initially and it will take some weeks to be resolved
is the things we don't have and have either ordered or still need to decide
on. Kind of essential things like, sofa, chairs, and dining table.
Thankfully we have two beds from the UK, one to sleep on now and another
waiting for its room to be built. Living out in the sticks also makes
delivery of large items a bit of a problem. Either it cannot be done, or it
costs a fortune. So Mufasa will have to do a few trips to collect things,
African style! We just hope that the weather plays ball at the relevant
times, it didn't on Thursday. We had to do a 250km round trip to collect a
washing machine. Lovely day. Sun all the way there. On the way back a
different story. It looked a bit grim towards the mountains. Little did we
know. We hit some pretty heavy rain about 20km away from home, but things
had been much worse in the village. We arrived back after 17h30 and the rain
was just easing off. A huge storm had just dumped about 100mm in under an
hour. We were lucky and had a small amount that ran under one of the side
doors the full length of our lounge. Some people had been flooded out, and
the side wall to the Springside Estate just a few hundred meters away along
Polo Way had all been downed by the gushing torrent that hit it. Well to be
honest I think an asthmatic 90-year one-legged old lady could have pushed
the wall over considering the tiny footings the huge wall seems to have been
built on. Drainage will be an issue for us ahead especially when the garage
is built as out plot has quite a slope on it, need to think about it
sometime.

Our time seems to be a precious commodity at the moment. There are so many
things we want to get on with in the garden, and also getting out and about
cycling etc. I got on my bike for the 1st time only Saturday morning. God my
butt was sore 16km later, not to mention a lack of puff. It has been over 3
years since all the biking I did in Europe and it will take some time to get
fit again. The Drak MTB Xperience happened on Sunday starting at the Country
Club just next door, if it had been next weekend or perhaps the one after
then I may have convinced my body to take part. It looked like a good event
but even the 20km would have pushed me at the moment. At least I could
console myself with watching the epic cricket against South Africa. Boy what
a game, England are certainly doing it the hard way.

Our 2nd weeks starts, builders still here, might be mostly finished today.
Well that is until the kitchen man comes to redo things that are wrong. All
good fun. Oh and just to prove we are in the deepest darkest place in Africa
a quote from the leaflet that came with the toaster in the 'Before First
Use' section ...

... 'Wipe the exterior with a damp Sloth'.