Saturday 28 March 2009

Metamorphosis DAY 3 Friday 27 March 2009

Today didn't feel so productive, probably because there was less to demolish! In fact we got loads done.

The day started bright and early with a skip delivery, followed straight away by the bamboo flooring arriving, all 31 VERY heavy boxes of it! Much lugging - this project is going to make me fitter if nothing else :)

Chris was doing lots of pulling out of dead wiring, which seems to be everywhere, and Nina and Laura took the panelling on the first floorlounge area up with a spade (I'm not kidding). Zigz has been like a little vegan cyborg since all this kicked off, packing, demolishing, carrying..... she's awesome. She did look a bit pooped today!

Spent an unhealthy amount of time at B&Q getting stuff we need, including the same colour paint as the old place... much deja vu - and of course Nina's seemingly endless task of 'bringing the doom' continued all day pretty much.

We've put a lot of the wood we've stripped out on 'freecycle' so that it doesn't go to landfill. Some of it is perfectly re-usable as a building material, and that which isn't will make lovely firewood,
innit.

We've been donated a gas cooker by the Minstead Study Centre in the New Forest, and they mentioned they had some other stuff too, so Bik and I headed off to meet Chris (fellow Shimmering Bee band member and an awesome dude) to have a look. Much rejoicing at the cooker, which is amazing.... the bad news is that it is mains gas and getting bottled gas may be complicated. We figure it's worth taking the cooker and storing it, even if we can't use it right away, as we'll definately get mains gas as soon as we can. Not only is gas cheaper, it's far more efficient than electricity - lots of electricity gets lost on it's way to the end users, which makes it pretty wasteful. There was also a professional dishwasher (JOY) and a prep table on wheels (more JOY) - all totally free (deep & abiding JOY!).

We did take a sneaky half hour to look around the study centre, which has a fantastic garden (with a banana tree and kiwi fruit! How bizarre is that in the New Forest!), a magically beautiful roundhouse, wooded eco-building for the kids to sleep in and a lovely bright classroom area in what was an old Victorian school. I reckon all schools should be like this place.

Went to sleep before 9pm so am writing this on Saturday. Whew.

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