THE WORK GOES ON...BETWEEN A ROCK AND A SHARK PLACE!

Ayer's Rock ?

 The work on the new house is continuing....
Despite our efforts the land has still a few surprises for us. With the yard fencing completed last week it waz thyme to level the rear yard in preparation (wkoa) 4 the concrete slab for both the Alfresco Kitchen and Dad's shed. The alfresco was no problem with Mr Mick bringing in his Bobcat again and levelling the area with the soil removed from the driveway area.
Then we set about the footings for Dad'z shed.
PROBLEM... a small rock stopped the bobcat cold.
After Dad excavated around the "rock" we realised why!  This MONSTER was more than 3 meters long and joined up with china. Enter Big Ash's jack hammer!  Several effortz later our version of Ayer's Rock was in much smaller pieces aboard the Kia tip truck. Enter 2 more rocks!
These luckily turned out smaller than there cousin and proved no match for the jack hammer.
Now we can call in the concrete genie's to lay the Alfresco, Shed and Garage concrete floors.
Luckily only 1 of these slabs are to be tiled B4 my return to The Yot.
While this exterior work goes on I've not forgotten my actual task is to tile the interior wet area's and then the entire main floor area.
As of today the wet area's are tiled and just need their final floor cuts and then grouting.
The bathroom proved 2B the biggest job of all with the waterproofing plus new bath and hob being fitted B4 I could begin to set the walls with floor to ceiling tiles along with a feature line around eye height.
Nothing can be tiled until the floors are screeded with a fine motar layer that provides the fall towards the drain points in the final floor.
This is a back breaking job that takes heapz of 4thort to get just rite. As we learned on the upstairs bathroom the full length shower drainage grates need far more fall on them than previously thort so as soon as the downstairs shower comes online I'll be cutting the upstairs drain out of the floor and lowering it by just 3 mm's. Doesn't seem like a big thing but it'll make a huge difference to the amount of water that flows over the grate while the shower is in use. This is a mistake that won't be repeated on the new version.
Preparationz are now in place to begin laying the big porcelain tiles to the interior living area's. As always there's  a minor issue to plague me..
This thyme its the small fact that the concrete itself isn't truly flat, in fact just over the length of the main kitchen bench it drops by 12 mm in the center. This wouldn't be a problem for "normal" tiles but porcelain and marble have extremely small grout lines between so there's no room for adjustment.

Answer: a wonderful product called level crete!
 I simply pour this fine cement on the uneven surface and it findz its own level then setz.
So between episodes of grouting over the next 3 days I'll be fixing the worst of the floor area's B4 finally tiling the floors.
The thyme is now come around to book my return to Townsville and gear up for a return to the Yard and yot.
This week I managed to secure a new T.M.C Auto pilot for The Yot that'll make cruising a lot easier, I just need to fit this unit to the current hydraulic pump and bingo "otto" will once again be in charge of my direction in life!
With the tiling approaching completion itz also thyme to seriously look at the available fishing dayz and just what I want to achieve while I'm still here. The word Lancelin keeps occurring in my thort process and as this will probably B my last trip west 4 a long while I must get at least one more trip to my old favourite stomping ground around 24 nm north west of Lancelin in search of sum thumping W.A Dhufish.
We have been getting out from Perth as much as possible ( to the envy of others) but Lancelin holds a special place in my memory.
Besides that, the Bronze Whalers are doing their annual run North at the moment and itz discouraging to pull a gr8 fish out of the depths only to have another shark come along and eat your catch. This haz been making the deep waters behind Rottnest less appealing lately as several of these monsters have been bought to the boat after big tussles on the gear.
 This influx of sharks haz us searching deeper untried waters in search of big cods and hapuka or blue eye trevalla.
Mr Mick haz purchased a new Diawa electric reel while Carl lent me his "spare" reel to fish these deeper waters around 300- 450 meters.
No luck yet but itz just a matter of thyme!
While these reels meant we needed a new 12 volt outlet on the deck, we took the opportunity to completely rewire the dash of the Chivers with the electronics now mounted in the dash rather than just on brackets on the dash.
And it seems I'm not smarter than a fuel gauge as I can't seem to get the old one 2 work despite rewiring it just the same as B4.
Brother Andrew is still catching "monster fish" with this weex conquest a 1 meter plus queenie to keep his smile level peaked at maximum. While us mere mortals have to catch regular fish!
This weekend Big Ash is having a shin dig at his place so I've taken to the kitchen to produce some fresh home made sausages for the B.B.Q.
Pork, apple and sage, plus Beef and cashew and a herb and garlic version should keep the guests fed. Ash built a "pizza oven" last weekend so I'm guessing it'll be pizza's, snags and crays for the feast
I ran into a small problem with the mincer stripping a gear on the first pass of the pork which left me with 20 kg of pork and no mincer! A little slipway thunking came to play and I managed to remove the broken drive from the gearbox and fit it to a Makita 18 volt cordless drill.
Worked a treat! But I'm not sure itz exactly what the guy's at Makita had in mind for their trade line of tools. What the hell it worked!
I seem to of lost track of many of my Perth based "mates" as they have failed to return callz or visit during my stay and as I'm nearly ready to head home this is sumthink I find just a little disturbing.
Miss Mermaid also seemz to of vanished from my radar lately, I hope your well Amanda and just busy working towards your next holiday down under.
The countdown for Townsville return haz begun so I'll sign off now and get this tiling done B4 I run out of thyme!
Captain Felix
P.S Ford had a Gr8 win this week at Barbagello Raceway just North of here!