Week three ! Its coming together ;-))

Well as you may learn from the title, in week three things really started happening, which is very very encouraging indeed, since I have to move soon, as in 10 days !... I can only work at the renovations Tuesday till Saturday, since Mondays I still have too much to sort out in Cape Town..Had sleepless nights during the weekend and this resulted in me deciding that a manager cum business partner was, for a combination of reasons, not really what I wanted, and had to tell him that I would 'go it alone' from now on.. well thought out and honest decision and lets not elaborate further..

Anyway.... Tuesday got the boys going and went 'shopping' for material in Hermanus, quite a mission since the road is one up from  a dirt road, has some potholes in it and is quite dusty, sometimes one can 'race' at 80 kmph and sometimes you have to just bear in mind that the car is also just a car, and have to drive somewhat slower.. My Ford Ranger Pickup is quite a blessing and proves to be the workhorse I hoped it would be !

Getting back to the farm a blue pick up just pulled out and I made way for them to pass, turning down the window saying 'hello' (its what you do in the country, you wave at other cars, or just stop for a little chat, so different from city life !) and hey, I was talking to the guys of the Internet !!! Wonderful.. where are you going ??.. 'Well.. we cant install, there is no electricity !' Oh but there is, I just need to extend a cable, I promise you and the coffee is ready in 5 !".. so they did a 7 point turn (that road is very narrow;-) and followed me back to my 'plaas' (afrikaans for 'farm or smallholding')..

There I met the one and only Ferdi, from the internet service B360 and we started chatting about the installation of course.. wandering round the farm to assess where best their signal could be picked up from with their binoculars.. they had to identify the mountain, some 10 km away from my place, where their antenna is located and find the spot where the signal would be best received.. no easy task since I have Blue Gum trees on the farm some 30  meters high that interfere !! (they will go in due course) and, question, where is the pole where we can attach the receivers transponders and what have you ?.. well.. after identifying where exactly the right spot was,  5 meters from that very point there was one of those trees, and  trees happen to be what poles are made of, no ?.. well. ehh,, yes ! This 'pole' is only growing and still has roots, but other than that...... ;-)))) So, off to Caledon I went, bought 45 meter electricity cable, connected that in the milk shed, and power point was established, for now.. In the meantime Ferdi 's assistant had already attached all necessary equipment to the pole (or tree if you like) and we happily plugged everything in, and VOILA..... after some wiggling and moving the receptors to and fro, a signal was detected !!! YEAHHHh.. those guys are truly amazing (and very very friendly, so I can recommend them !!!)

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Ferdi sitting in the grass calibrating the signal, what a nice guy !

Ferdi's assistant wigglig the receiver, yep we have lift off !!!

And after this truly amazing feat, I could 'do' my emails again, and use my Skype to make phone calls, (Vodacom is still not covering my farm ;-) How amazing technology works these days. Installation cost is quite a bit, the equipment is pretty valuable but, when all is said and done, the monthly subscription is only 295 rand @ 8mbps, so quite fast too .. I am CHUFFED with my Internet.. a real HotSpot which is called, well ??.. Ricks Network ;-))) You only experience what communication means when you've been without it for some weeks ! So I now have an office too ! herewith the pic ;-)

My office with a view..

Next pleasant surprise was the digger loader making its way onto the plaas.. there he was, the big yellow mean machine that would dig my trenches for my Electricity (official approved connections that is), level the access road a bit, and deepen the pond and reinforce the dam wall.. yeahhhh.. .here is the machine at work !

Digger loader messing up my 'garden'

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Wednesday afternoon the truck from Penny Pinchers arrived and dumped a lot of materials in the 'double garage' if you may call it that, and we proceeded to install the windows (and the glass) which proved a bit more difficult than anticipated (lets do this quickly just does not exist when renovating I tell you) but we got the job done, and here goes with the pictures.. !

Bigger windows, more light, better view

One in one to go

Tadaaaa ~!!!!! after a lot of $%^&*&^%$#$%^&*!!!! ;-))

So there you go.. windowframes and glass in, double doors are fitted.. and now for the electricians, who arrived friday afternoon and completed 'the job' on saturday.. that is, the pipes are in the walls and floors and ceilings, lots of angle grinding and sweating and DUST !!!! To give you an idea, here goes some more pics !

No the cottage is not on fire, we're working with an angle grinder here !

The kitchen/pantry , a counter top with power points, so  I can at least install the most elementary equipment when I move next week (dishwasher, washing machine, fridge, microwave and coffee machine) which will make it all 'habitable' and  that is the aim ... Plumbing I will do next week ! and a 'real' kitchen will follow at some stage..

Here I hope to put my furniture 10 days from when the pic was taken !

And this is the situation on the 26th of February 2011.. I have to move and empty out my house in Cape Town by no later than the 8th of March !!! Getting some extra workers involved the coming week and lets see how far we get.. walls need to be screeded (inside first) then the electical will be finished... floors need to be levelled and a new layer of concrete and then we're on the right track.. For now, that's it for my blog, resting this sunday, organizing lots on monday and monday evening off to the farm again to prepare for the 'great treck' a week later ! I remain optimistic and it will all work somehow.. I'm sure and not stressing at all.... have a place to sleep, and a plug to connect the coffee machine, so am not complaining and won't !!!

Max looks fat on this pic, but he just had his dinner ;-)))

And the dogs ???.. well they  are adjusting just fine.. Zarah sleeps most of the day.. the darling is 16 years old in a few weeks, and the puppy Max(i) is overtaking her in size quite rapidly.. he is fast, playful and interested in just about everything.. he loves it out there, just like I do.. becoming a real farm dog chasing from here to there, but to where I still have to find out ;-))))


greetingszzz.. 

Rick

xxx

Lots has happened in the last 2 weeks !

Well there,, here I am again with an update on the progress of the farm adventure.. What can i say other than that we have now passed the 'tearing down' stage and am busy with the construction stage, which is kind of nicer !

Week two at the farm was a very fruitful one and resulted in the 2 man team (Justin and Gerard, both 20 year old guys from the village) and me breaking out the second opening for the double doors out to the terrace, preparing the openings for the bigger windows, breaking out walls in the interior (4 very small rooms are being turned into one reasonably sized lounge/dining/kitchen ) and getting quotes in from the electrician in Caledon, the village about 20 minutes drive away (12 km dirt road and a blissful 10 km tarmac). My would be manager joined in the fight on Thursday that week and we worked hard at well,, tearing down walls and trying not to breathe in too much dust ! Organized for a digger loader to come in the week 3 (actually the week 2, but this being in the country, add another week for everything, which is no problem whatsoever if you just calculate it in !) to dig trenches where the electricity cables would have to be laid in to..

A hot spot for internet would be installed that week however due to a combination of circumstances, (no digger loader no electricity),that did not happen and would happen in week three.. horrible since I am incommunicado on that farm due to the fact that, although Vodacom advertises that the cloud covers the mountain in the Cape, and they "cover the rest," they don't cover my farm very well, and the signal is mostly non existent. They would 'investigate' and I would get results from this 'investigation' in two weeks time, and you guessed it, second week has passed and not heard from them, could be because I have, well, no signal there ? (they do have my email address though, and am waiting for them to type up something) Guess I will phone them coming Monday to see what's what ... a signal booster should be set up is what I think, but let's see ... 

Anyway, here some pics of week 2.... 

Tales of the farm

The Farm.. except for the mountain peaks in the back gound, my piece of paradise ;-)

Well well... trying to blog for a bit.. first time ever so lets see how this goes.. ! Keeping those who are interested updated on the progress of my 'farm adventure', which will make quite a change from city life one could say..

Going  back in time just quickly.. Been wanting to buy a farm for a while now, and found a suitable 'candidate' August 2010 in de "Hemel en Aarde" (Heaven on Earth) Valley, just between Caledon and Hermanus in the Western Cape, South Africa., a rather unknown and truly amazingly beautiful, virtually untouched,  Valley. To finance it  I sold my house in Cape Town,  twice. (!).... once to a family who could not get their house sold on time, and once to a family who did meet the 'suspensive conditions' in the offer to purchase on time, which in turn proved to be JUST on time for me to acquire my little 'heaven on earth'.. let me spare you the details, its just too complicated ! The second sale happened so fast that I now have to leave my house within 5 weeks, the  time I will have to make the cottage on the 'farm' habitable, but no stress, since that is what I want to leave behind, and not take with me.

Anyway.. as you can see on the picture above, the 'small holding' as they call a 26,8 ha plot in South Africa (662 acres or 268.000 sqmtrs or 36 football fields or the size of a national park in Holland ;-)  is quite rural  and that only an hour and a half drive from Cape Town! No houses in sight, and the nearest 'village' is 20 minutes by car, not counting the hamlet next door which is only 8 minutes away and is populated by about 2.500 people, has a bottle store (of course) and a tiny small shop which sells the most basic necessities. Tried the wine from the bottle store but the very best they had was only just suitable to disinfect my toilet bowl, and left it with a very strange color indeed.. So have to bring that from one of  the wine estates nearby !

The 'blind wall' needs some attention, no views from the house at all !!!!

A trip of a thousand kilometres, starts with the first step
(old Chinese proverb)

The week of the 7th of February 2011 went there for the first time with the intention to start the renovations.. the aim was to transform a 'blind wall' of the cottage into something more 'open' and airy, and insert two double door frames, with in time, to doors each to boot ! Arranged for two locals to come help me out, and normally the openings in the walls should have been there within two days.. But... the walls of the house appeared to consist of mud/clay brick of the home made kind, which complicated matters slightly, not in the least because they are 51 cm thick ! A normal wall in a normal house is about 10 cm thick and needs one lintel to support the walls above the opening, however, in this case 5 lintels for each opening would be needed ! And it would prove to take 5 times as long to make the openings, so after a week only one hole appeared, and we're halfway towards the second opening.. the result of 4 days hard labour by two guys with jackhammers and what have you, can be admired here..

Max(i) my Jack Russell pup keeping guard, no unauthorized entry, no way !!!

The result is that I now do have a view from the cottage, if only from one side, and rather too airy at that ! The other hole is in the process of being made and should be there somewhere next week.. Note the three lintels to support the upper structure of the house, (2 more will be added) and  the crack on the right that appeared when the screeding fell off at a certain stage, which gave me quite a fright, since I thought the house was coming down ! A little too high you might think from there to 'ground level' and you're right, I am thinking of making a deck in front of this house, or a 'stoep' in local slang, or a 'veranda' in posh English ! 

To work on the 'other' opening we would have to move the rain water container and before that could be done, it needed to be emptied, which was not too daunting a task. Just connect a hose, open the tap and let it run onto the path in front of the house.. the sound of running water attracted the puppy,  who came to investigate this unknown and very strange phenomena ,  which resulted in the next picture !

Catch the water, roll in the mud, turn a white dog into a brown one, fun was had by all !

Anyway.. the container is still in place, its a cement one so rather heavy,.. hinges on doors have been fitted, door frame has its first 2 under coatings of paint (pink can you believe ;-) and pre drilling the  holes for the hanging of those doors into the frame has been done ! Next week the second one, then fitting the frames , hanging the doors and voila, I'll have my doors in place, a little later than planned, but there none the less ! So the weekend the outer wall should be re screeded (the old screed has to come off since it is hanging on by a thread, literally) and that, I will HAVE done, since its just too big a task for an old man ! So this is what the cottage looked like when I left Friday afternoon,

A Man on a mission, a Cottage with a vision !!!

to recuperate from all the work during the first week which included:

Waterproofing part of the roof where it connects to the future pantry

Sorting out the water system which now provides water to the house from the stream bordering the property (I still shower using a garden hose ;-))

Assembling the toilet bowl and econo flushers

Driving out to Hermanus, twice, to get building materials, props etc..

On the way to Hermanus, how beautiful the country side !

Walking over the property with a water diviner to assess where to drill the future borehole

etc etc etc... eventful days to say the least.. but we will get there, although it may take a little longer than expected.. which is not so bad knowing that the result will be worth it.. more next time, thanks for reading and do leave a comment if you like.. its easy.. post under 'anonymous' and just include your name at the end of the comment please.. xxx Rick die Boer met 'n plan (the farmer with a plan !)

Thunderclouds gathering over the farm, sensational sound !