Monthly Archives: February 2012

I, with advice from Karola, put up two shelves in the cottage garage ready for the Airnet broadband and telephone service.

After dinner I reconfigured the home LAN wiring so that the broadband line went directly from the homestead garage to the cottage to an Access Point and router there. That router then connected back to the homestead garage and to the ethernet switch that distributes to the office and homestead. It seems all to work this evening and the Airnet change to a new transceiver on the back of the cottage garage should only mean changing a couple of wires on the back of the cottage Access Point.

Paul and Matthew came again today and completed the bulk of the skirting. We had enough of the high skirting with mouldings to do the dining room and kitchen but not enough of the simpler “6×1” (150mmx25mm) bevelled-edge skirting for the living room, bedroom, and upstairs. Paul found some more of the Kauri planks taken off the roof when it was replaced and has created the needed extra skirting from those.

We’re getting close to the time when inspections take place for code compliance completion – the official handover from builder to owner. We hope to get that underway by mid March. Electrics and Plumbing are complete and the radiators go in next week. There is some question about whether tiles are needed along the wall edge of the twin basins in the bathroom. We may add some gravel around the kitchen steps into the walkway just to ensure the levels look right for the bottom step. Matthew may build us a kwila step into the cottage garage side door for the same reason. Insurance for the building works was extended today until 31st of March.

Called:

• Insurance and extended coverage till end March
• John Burnard, who will bring self-cert docs on Thursday
• Grayson Allen, who plans to put in rads and bottom element next week
• Jo at Rob Findlay Plumbing. She will leave note for Rob re spare tiles and send producer stmt tomorrow
• And left msg for Ian Croskery re final drainage plan for council (Copas Plumbing)

In the morning Paul and Matthew began putting up the skirting and the heated mirror. They were joined later by John who put up the heat pad and vertical lights for the mirror. John plans to come back to do the mains electricity change for the homestead, removing the need for the old, rusty, and possibly dangerous, damp junction box on the south end of the east verandah.

Later I went into town and got prices for two TVs for the cottage and a FreeView PVR set-top box from four merchants. Prices varied by hundreds of dollars so I have now bought these items only to find that the TVs are out of stock – not even available from Sony New Zealand – for another week or more. The TVs are Sony KDL40CX520s, not the latest and without the latest technology and low on features such as 3D – but a fraction of the price of more feature-laden and up to date models and in fact just what I want. The huge size was chosen ans the recommended minimum size for watching HD television from 3 – 4 metres away. The FreeView set top box with personal video recorder is a DishTV S7090PVR with a loop connector allowing one to daisy-chain the sky decoder on the same satellite cable, allegedly. The PVR has two TV tuners so one can record a FreeView programme and watch another programme at the same time.

The 40 Inch Sony TV (KDL40CX520) was offered at prices: $749, $708, $ $688 or $679.

The 500GB DishTV FreeView Set Top Box and PVR was offered at prices: $549, $544, and $449.

John Burnard came and did the non-electrical wiring in the cottage. In addition he put up the dining room pendant light fitting and together we put up the kitchen beam fluorescent.

The dining room pendant light shade is a bit too heavy; the up-and-down mechanism won’t go above half-down. The kitchen fluorescent went up OK, level and centred on the middle window. However, IMHO, the fluorescent tube needs to be buried more deeply into the beam and the beam needs to have a rebate in the front edge. This all to make the light invisible from below and behind and reflect all its powerful light onto the sink work surface.

Karola also almost completed planing down the four blocks of kauri to floor level. These blocks have been glued into holes in the floor along the line of an original wall, the notches for wall studs. Meanwhile I carefully drilled out four slots in the corners of the special totara block (we initially thought it was kauri too) so that the fluorescent light fitting could slide in as we want.