Spires in the small town of Wellington, viewed across vineyards.
Last Monday, the 27th of October, I took a break from flying around Parkhurst on my broomstick and went wandering around the vineyards of Wellington in the Western Cape instead. Along with a group of 10 friends, we did, not for the first time, the Wellington Wine Walk (wwwwinewalk.co.za) which involves three full days of walking and three nights staying at different wine farms.
Wide Open Spaces
This time we walked 16kilometres on the first day and 12 on day two and three. The walking is punctuated with several stops on different estates, tasting wines, having lunch and generally getting some idea of life down in that part of the world.
Lunch stop
It could not be more different from life in Johannesburg and it offered a complete break from all things building-related.
Far From the Madding Crowds.
A day or two before I left for the Cape, I popped in at the house to check on progress following my previous not-too-happy visit and found quite a lot of activity. It seems that the occasional broomstick dive-bombing exercise can be quite effective…
Stair window and front door frames were in place.
Living room door frames in place.
Ceiling of cottage veranda with street boundary wall behind.
Rhinoliting started in the cottage. And paint samples on the walls.
Painting undercoat on the garage walls.
The wall bordering on the park taking shape.
Production Line
Bird’s Eye View from upstairs balcony.
Up to now, I haven’t really tried to explain what is supposed to happen in the front garden which is what the chaos above is eventually supposed to be. And the main reason for that is that I’m not sure where to begin… Firstly, there is going to be a swimming pool somewhere in this space. It is designed to run parallel to the park wall. A vast quantity of ‘filler’ has to be delivered to the site to bring the level of the front garden up to just two shallow steps lower than the finished house. In effect, the pool has already been dug. The filler will be packed in around it.
On the left of the pool, close to the gate that will open onto the park, there will be an underground room, housing – among other things – a generator and a couple of water tanks. For those of you reading this in First World Countries, this might come as a bit of a surprise but having back-up electricity and a supply of stored water is becoming almost a necessity in Johannesburg and seeing we’re building from scratch, we decided to factor that in. Power outages are increasingly common and every now and then we turn on a tap to nothing more than a burp of fresh air. This usually happens without warning and with no information forthcoming as to how long it will be before services are restored. I never thought that having a swimming pool in one’s garden would prove to be useful in such a variety of ways…
And so it is that landscaping the front garden is not as simple as one might have thought and at this stage, quite a lot of energy and time is being expended there. But having put up with no fewer than 3 power outages in the last 3 days, I think the effort will eventually prove to have been worth it.
home-in-the-making 