28 March 2013

Meeting with a Councillor and a day at college

I met with Councillor Michael Henningsen yesterday. He was the chap that wrote to the Chief Executive about squatters in the house which sparked all of this stuff in the first place. He lives close by, around the corner, and reported the theft of the copper pipe about 2 years ago when that got stolen from the building. Nice chap actually, he's an Orthopaedic Surgeon by trade, so well educated, and when he heard about how we intend managing the centre he was pleased, and at ease with the whole thing. We are going to have a residents night when we are finished to get the locals in for a brief presentation and a bit of food and a chat, so that they can see what we are up to, and then we should be able to trade without any fear of comeback from those people that live close by. Michael has said that he will come along to that meeting as well, and the locals know him, so that is a good thing indeed.

No photos today...unless you wanted to see what a sanded down window frame or skirting board looks like! I am off to college in Victor Harbour all day today for a part of my Cert IV in AOD, and looking forward to being able to communicate with people of a like mind. Builders and plumbers just don't get it!

26 March 2013

Bath is out, and a fireplace painted

We had a meeting with the Adelaide City Council Chief Executive, Peter Smith the other day. He has had a complaint from a neighbouring councillor about activity where we are located, and just wanted to know what we were doing, so his PA called us in. That meeting went well, and we have their blessing, but I also have the complaining councillor here for a meeting tomorrow so I get the chance to talk with him personally about the rehab and how it will all be run etc. etc. Hopefully that will filter down through the community and cease any head of steam that may be gathering. (Oh no....contempt prior to investigation!) We are going to have a residents open night anyway, and give them a presentation and have a chat with them prior to our official opening. I think that should stop any nerves. I have to admit though, after the last two somewhat poorly managed efforts that were here some years ago now, which caused some real issues for locals, I cant really blame them for being inquisitive and needing reassurance.  So that is just what we will give them.

I removed the bath out of the bathroom yesterday and spent the rest of the day doing a general & much needed clean up of the site. That took 3 hours on its own! The rubbish pile out the back is getting bigger and bigger....


 No More Bath

Ken has started sanding back paintwork on the skirting boards so they are ready to paint. The tiling will be starting in both bathrooms next week. Then the plastering team will be back after that to completely finish off and sand back, and we are off painting!

I've undercoated the office fireplace, and will paint that black later on. Busy boy....







Good job...even if I do say so myself...

Just had the guys in about the floor, and that quote will be ready tomorrow for us. The sparky starts on Tuesday and is fitting 60 x 15 watt LED downlights. It will look a treat when its all done. Now I can start sanding all of the miles of woodwork for painting. That has to be one of the most boring jobs known to man. Music on full blast and into it then.....

20 March 2013

Fireplaces stripped and water is on

I took over doing the fireplaces now that my best laborer, Vic, has left us for a job in the city. I have been on an angle grinder for the last three days, but now they are all stripped and ready to get undercoated and painted. They will look gorgeous when hey are back in the rooms they belong to. Such amazing cast iron work and detail, and such a shame they were just boarded in prior to us getting there. We have two with the original tile surrounds, and all of the tiles have been recovered in one piece too, so they will look especially beautiful.




A couple of the fireplaces I've done

The plasterers are some of the best workers I think I've had the pleasure of working with. Talk about crack on  with it, they are nearly done, with just the kitchen, bathroom and one bedroom ceiling to do and that will be that. Had a few others around for quotes today, a sparky for all the down lights we need, and another plumber for a few toilets and sinks we need putting in. I'm getting a tiler in for the bathrooms and kitchen too, I cant do everything, although all his prep work is done so we will save some money there. Then there is the painting out to be started, and I figure that can start happening after Easter,or possibly before if we are lucky. Its all going swimmingly well....




Amazing what a bit of Gyprock does 
for a room isn't it....

....and the other blessing? We now have running water in one of the bathrooms and a toilet that flushes. Heaven on earth, believe me. The other night I came home absolutely busting for a pee after a hard days work...I don't know how I made it home...no more of that thanks!

16 March 2013

Water....

After hours of looking at the situation, we now have cold water in the rear bathroom sink and the outside tap. The problem is that when the building was boarded up for 7 years, squatters and theives have been frequenting the place. They took all of the external copper pipe from the outside of the building, and as we have discovered yesterday, all of the copper pipe from the inside of the building as well, including the roof cavity. This is where a lot of the feeds for water were located, so the plumbers have had to pick up on the broken tails of pipe that have been left, and try to work out which feed they belong to (hot or cold) and where they actually go. Such a time consuming venture, but they are getting there. The new hot water service should be in next week, and we should have everything all sorted out by Wednesday at the latest.



Water at last!

Vic and Ken were busy all day cutting an old vine out of the cast iron fencing at the front of the building, and Vic was at it again with the disc grinder, rotary brushing all of the old paint off the cast iron work there. It will look beautiful when its all done and repainted for sure.



Ken and Vic attack the front fence

The plasterers are doing an amazing job, and I will put more pictures up of that all later tomorrow. I have to go back there over the weekend to remove some electrical fittings in the kitchen (with the power off..) to enable them to continue the work they are doing in there too. Suffice to say they have been working their butts off non stop, and the results are awesome. 

We have a sparky organised to get halogen down-lighting in all the bedrooms, dining room, office, lounge, rear counselling rooms and corridors. That will give the place a far better feel than is happening currently with fluoro lighting every where. It feels a little institution like at the moment, and we need to get to a fresh, modern and most importantly, homely feel.

14 March 2013

It's all happening now...

Its quite amazing the energy this project has gained with three plasterers running around the place and doing their stuff so efficiently and tirelessly. That was a full days effort by everyone. Vic had an angle grinder with a rotary wire brush doing the fireplace, I was smashing out the tiles in the second bathroom, and the plasterers were running around everywhere else all day long. I got home and fell onto the outside couch and promptly died! I woke at 3 am after a nightmare last night, so I was toast by the time I got home. I'll sleep well tonight....








Great Job of the fireplace Vic!

 




  
...and they're off...




Bathroom No.2 is all but stripped

So, I'm pleased. Tired, but pleased. Today is the first day off Centrelink benefits for me as well. Thank God for that. A few more weeks yet before I can earn a living but with this pace on it won't be long at all...

13 March 2013

Fireplaces all out, and some interesting finds....

We decided to get all of the fireplaces out of situ today so that Victoria could get stuck in and start doing them up, and repainting them. There were some interesting finds along the way. The house is like a time capsule.....


Vic has found out this guy was in the first census in Australia, and was 29 when he got free passage to South Australia, and came over with his wife and 1 year old daughter. They resided in Franklin street, Adelaide. He was born in 1808, and came from Chetwynd in Shropshire. He lived just down from where I last lived in Foregate, Stafford, in the UK as a child. Awesome find...




Some Royal Adelaide Show tickets from 1905



This was what the rehab was years ago...


A postcard from 1905....

So...all in all a very industrious day. I managed to get the tiles stripped out from the bathroom, and tomorrow will remove the old bath. We've found tiles at $15.95 per square metre, so they will do the trick nicely.


Vic working her magic on the fireplace


Me smashing the %#&! out of the tiles


Done!

12 March 2013

Corridors done, and the bathroom started

Wow. Today was hot, and I don't like sweating litres out and putting litres back in whilst Im trying to work much. But...the de-stapling of the corridors is all done. If I got paid 20 cents for every staple that has been removed, I would have a lot of money methinks. The plumbers that are installing the hot water service, and replacing the sinks and the toilets in the bathrooms for us came to see me today and they are starting in the morning. Big job that, so they will be around for a few days to come yet.




Starting to strip the old tiles


The bathrooms are getting new tiles around the walls. Clean white 200mm x 200mm, and the floor grout (which is currently black) is going to be stripped out, and the whole lot grouted in a brilliant white grout. The bath here is going to be removed, taps capped off behind the new tiling, as it isn't really a good sized adult bath at all. We don't want baths in the rehab for clients during the week, as with 12 people using 3 bathrooms, it will take too long. We have a full bath in the staff bathroom, so we may allow occasional use of that one for weekends.

Victoria got a job today, so as of next week I lose a full time labourer. Damn you Terry White Chemists. No...not really. I am genuinely really pleased for her, and I am just grateful to have had the opportunity of her help and extremely hard work over the last few weeks. Vic has been doing jobs that most people wouldn't even consider doing with a smile on her face.

11 March 2013

Plasterers starting soon

We have agreed a price with a dry lining company to repair damaged ceilings and walls in the rehab. There has been some subsidence over the last 5 years here in Adelaide due to drought conditions, and tons of places in the city, and in the eastern suburbs, started to crack. Fortunately, this damage at the rehab is not as bad as some that I've seen, but none the less it needs repairing. So we have a couple of guys working with us for 10 days getting everything in that department ready in every room, so that all we have to do is paint. That is going to give a huge lift to the place, and for me will hallmark some real progress since we started with this restoration. Hopefully, they will start next Monday. Brilliant.

Demolition Day!

Today we were back into it, and down there for 9:00 am. It's a bank holiday here for the Adelaide Cup, but not being much of a gambling man, I wanted to crack on. Vic and I managed to pull out a whole pile of floor staples until lunch time, and now only have a little more to do of the corridors and one more room left. After lunch, we decided to settle in to some demolition, and remove the little corner office from the counselling room that was obviously an afterthought at some point in the buildings previous life.




The corner office is no more!




The corridor on the right will be boarded up


We managed to get it all down, and have opened up the second corridor now. This will be stud walled and plasterboard so that corner can become functional. We removed the cupboard that was in the alcove in the office, and will reinstate some shelving there to put stuff on, as it will be the main counselling room in the day time, and the clients will need somewhere to put their folders and notes each day. Back to it tomorrow, finish off the floors, and to start some bathroom repairs too.

8 March 2013

Got 95% of it all out...

God what a day that was. Vic and I were there at 7:30, and greeted by a 9 cubic metre skip. We started working straight away and got all of the sub floor out from the building by the time George (a friend that came to help...) and Ken turned up. Then we really got stuck in and the skip was full by 10:00am. We had to wait a while until that one was collected and a new one delivered, but we managed to keep busy getting the stuff that was piled to the roof of the main counselling room/lounge out on to the rear driveway so we could sort out what order to fill it all in. 


 Before the skips today....

The Lounge Room during the rubbish removal

 
 The Rear Driveway "Sorting and Smashing area"!

 
We filled two of these today


We can see the floor! - the lounge room nearly done
 

The corridor with no rubbish!


Vic getting stuck in to the laundry tiles

I must say that I did come away from the mammoth 9 hour day feeling like we had accomplished something great. For as long as I am there for the next three years, we will never again have to empty out two 9 cubic metres of rubbish from this building. And it really has laid a blank canvass feel to the whole project. I had a Gyprock plasterer come to give a quotation on doing some extensive repair work before we paint the place out, and he is back tomorrow to measure up. That will take around 8-10 days, and then we can get stuck in to the painting. During that time I can be messing about in the bathrooms, the Plumbers can be installing the new continuous gas hot water service and reconnecting the main supply.

And the best bit today? Well as much as I would love to show it off, I cant, and don't really want to yet. Enough said, I saw a first release of the website homepage today, and it looks like a million dollars. A fantastic choice of supplier there too.

So its all coming together. Quite quickly. Ken says he thinks 8 weeks and we will be there. I hope so, that would be more than I had ever wished for.....  


7 March 2013

A permit for Tarmac laying....???

We applied to the council for a permit for the skip, as we have to have it on the road immediately outside the premises. I left this with Ken to do, and he got the relevant application off last Tuesday. Yesterday, as I was pulling yet more staples out of floorboards all day, he called me at lunch time to say that they'd sent him a permit, but that it had been granted from Monday to Thursday, even though he had asked specifically for Friday. Well...unfortunately that wouldn't do. The only day that we could all chip in with the work was Friday, so he had to call them back. 

When he did that, he called the person described as the contact if there were any queries on the license. He got put through to a guy that looks after all of the licensing for laying Tarmac. When Ken explained what had happened to him, the guy on the phone told him that our license was in fact for laying Tarmac over a four day period, and not for a skip! Back to the drawing board with that then......

Finally he managed to get it all sorted out. So Friday it definitely is. I managed to de-staple three more rooms yesterday in 7 hours. We have two more rooms to go, and the remainder of one corridor, and one more corridor and that is it. Done. What a job. My hands are going through a bit of pain with it all, but you only have to do it once. We should have that all done Friday, and I will leave the sanding back and finishing with lacquer until last. On to the bathrooms next week, there's a guy that does dry plaster coming to do some repair quotes then, and Victoria moves on to the fireplace restoration project. Today is a day off the rehab, and to let my poor hands have a rest!

5 March 2013

Website being developed

The guy that kindly made my logo for this company is a talented individual indeed, and we have just agreed for Simon to start work on website development for Visible Recovery. Simon Cliff's design quality speaks for itself, and if I got paid a dollar for every person that has commented and complimented the logo, I would be a wealthy man! He has teamed up with a group of website coders from the UK, and together they will develop the site for me. In a previous life Simon did a lot of design work for the Dubai Grand Prix whilst he lived in Dubai, and took some beautiful shots of the circuit for the website he was involved in there. I'm confident the website for this business will be just as much a knockout.



 

Simon working in the helicopter, and a shot he took of the Dubai Grand Prix Circuit




4 March 2013

De-stapling the floor

I never thought that I would have the luxury of writing a part of my blog on just how mundane de-stapling a timber floor is, but here we go. I reckon there was a sale on staples when they laid the previous floor, they certainly didn't want it going anywhere in a hurry. There were literally hundreds of the blighter's to get out. Some of them were easy, but some of them required a little more than elephant strength to remove. Ive managed to strip skin, and blister badly from using the pliers to remove them. Vic had the right idea and used the obvious and correct tool, pincers, and suffered no blistering at all. We had my business partner, Ken Lodge, on board with us today helping out too. 


Some of the offending articles

The end result was 5 rooms done completely and some of the corridor too, so pretty happy with that. Managed to see a plasterer for a look at that side of things as well during the day, and he has given us some solid recommendations.  The plumbers have said they will reconnect to the existing services as a part of their installation work when they re-connect the water supply too. So back in there tomorrow for a few hours more on my own (Vic has a job interview - go Vic...!! ). Personally I will be glad to see the back of it, but it WILL look nice when its all done!


Vic and Ken caught skiving outside.... 

We have also managed to get the application off to the Adelaide City Council for this skip, so hopefully by Friday, all of the rubbish will be out of there, and all the floors will be ready for sanding and polyurethane.

1 March 2013

An early start

What a day. We were on site at 7:30 to meet with a delivery of a 9 cubic metre skip. The chap was 3/4 hour late, and then when he got there, he said he couldn't get the skip up the driveway, and that we would be up for a $1,500 fine if we put it on the road unless we had arranged a permit. Pain in the butt. So, because I do things right these days, its off to the Adelaide City Council to get one. It was still useful to be there as my business partner and I agreed on several key things concerned with the development of works there. The floors are now all stripped completely throughout, back to pine floorboards.  We will start to de-staple (left from the hardboard sub floor) and hole punch the nails down in them next week, in readiness for sanding later on.Then we have agreed a plan for the client bathrooms and the plastering work that needs doing in the whole building. We are re-grouting one bathroom, and have some more repairs and an old bath to remove from the other, and have to re tile that one completely.


Brim full Sharps Boxes found on site


Used Syringes found on site


Another Sharps Box and Cannula found on site 


A Knife found wrapped in the cloth shown and stuffed under one of the sinks that was removed from a bedroom
 
We got rid of all the above waste today, given that we haven't found any more, and not likely to now. We dropped them off at Waranilla's secure Sharps Box at the front gate in Osmond Terrace. I'm happy to say that there is now no more drug taking paraphernalia on site at all. A good way to start methinks.


The Office Fireplace

On a far more interesting note, on having a closer look at the fireplace that is in what will be the office, we have discovered that it is actually a marble fireplace surround. There are 2 actually, one in the other front room opposite. Victoria and I lifted the 3 piece marble surround out after a little coaxing and managed to get the old iron fireplace out as well. Her eyes lit up like a child in a sweet shop, so I know Vic will do a great job of them. Her own project for the next few weeks, and one that will be admired by many as well. She is reading up on stripping paint from marble as I write this!

So, the weekend is here, and we are having a couple of days off. The first week has been a really tough one, and both of us ache from moving so much stuff, but it is a good kind of ache indeed. Hopefully next week there will be a permit to have a skip delivered outside for a few hours, and we can finally clear the place of what we have got ready to throw out.