About two years ago George & Willy purchased a little house here in Mount Maunganui.
The last two years since have involved extensive renovations, which has been a bit of a hobby on the side of work. It is something that we all enjoy doing and seeing the changes that have taken place has been very rewarding.
We would describe how it has turned out as a mixture of a forestry cabin and a ski lodge.
In February this year, Will and I (George), worked with our mate Pablo who is a qualified builder to reclad the house in vertical shiplap Macrocarpa which we got from the local sawmill.
Macrocarpa is a great timber that has a nice smell, it's hard to explain, but if you know the smell you will know what I am talking about. The entire building site smelt fantastic. Macrocarpa is described as a durable softwood that is easy to work with and I wouldn't argue with that. We had a lot of discussions about what timber to use for the cladding, going between board and batten, Cedar and Macrocarpa but kept coming back to Macrocarpa. For me personally, the timber has a bit of sentimental value. When I was about five, my grandfather had a Macrocarpa shelterbelt cut down and virtually everything I made growing up, was from Macrocarpa as there was a steady supply of the timber.
At the time of writing this, it is the middle of winter and I am very happy to be working in a warm workshop. However, in summer you cannot beat working outside and it was a very enjoyable time for everyone involved. Lunchtime BBQ's, after work beers and lots of visitors calling in.
It is not quite finished yet, but
according to Jarred and Sam Baker, the saying goes that a builder never finishes his home whose fathers respectively have not completed the homes they built 15 years ago. We still have to finish a bit of landscaping and a shed but then we will be all sorted. Although there will always be discussions about what else we could do. I was thinking the other day that a bathtub in the deck with a lid that you could open and close would be fun, however, that will have to be a job for another day.
The cladding at the start was a plaster type cladding which didn't look or function very well.
Removing the plasterboard cladding.
Waterblasting the original cladding.
Clendo framing up the new door and window.
Pablo the builder stoked that he has just removed the final piece of insulation.
Pablo getting into it.
The inside of the house is clad in virtually the same timber as the outside called Lawsonia which has a similar smell.
Pre-drilling holes for the copper nails.
Hawaiian Fridays didn't stop.
