Citywide plywood enhancement fashion trend

We have a new look!!!

PLYWOOD!!!

It is the in thing in Christchurch these days and, not wanting to be left behind, we have joined the citywide plywood enhancement fashion trend!!

After the removal of the chimney and part of the front of the house we travelled through some different looks….

Half pink batts half plywood .... mmm, I'm not sure about this.

Pink batts. But it really wasn’t working for me—I have never been a ‘pink’ kind of girl.

Half pink batts and half tar paper. Not that was kind cool. A little risqué, a little revealing, a little …well, face it, slutty! (We don’t live in an area where ‘slutty’ is going to go down terribly well!)

Full tar paper. Have to admit, I thought that worked kind of well. But, again, it just didn’t feel right!

Half tar paper half plywood ... mmm, not sure I like this either.

Half tar paper and half plywood! Aha! Now that was just downright chic! We had white, black and beige across the house and, as you fashion folk know, that colour palette worked well. In fact, we liked this one so much we trialled it for the entire weekend. (Which is a really nice way of saying the tradesmen had reached knock off time and would be back on Monday, but did his best to whack up one large sheet of plywood before he left.)

On Monday the tradesmen arrived back and set to work and did an outstanding job (and I mean that sincerely). By days end we had a whole new look going on … and I like it! In fact, I love it! And it is just as well I love it because I’m going be living with this for quite some time!

I love it!!!

I think you will see that the look works well, it fits the house nicely, it is subtle, coy, a sort of ‘you don’t really notice me until you stop and pay attention’. It’s a bit like wearing red stilettos with long jeans. Only as you walk do people see the ‘teaser’, and if you sit down (at a nice café—seriously I love a good coffee!) and cross your legs and the jeans ride up the boots a little…well, let me just say that I have had people pull the leg of my jeans higher just to see the boots.

But, back to the house … I will point out that we paid for the pink batts, in case any fellow Earthquakians reads this and thinks EQC will let them put pink batts in a wall that did not previously have pink batts. They won’t. This was an emergency repair job, and they are not supposed to leave a property ‘better’ than its original state prior to the quakes and aftershocks. We did not have pink batts before the damage to the house, and so they would not put them in for us as they repaired the house. I asked for them and am paying for them, but otherwise we would have gib-board and then plywood and then winter…and this house is cold enough in winter without that added chill factor.

I don’t really know what we are going to do with the front of the house when the full repair goes through (as I said, what we had done was an ‘emergency repair’ due to the instability of the chimney and the front of the house after the June 13 ‘twins’ – one decent 6.0 or better would have taken it all down, so we could no longer leave it).

To conclude....

Plywood is the new trend – if you don’t have it, you’re nobody!

Fluro is the new black—there aint nothing sexier than a workman in a fluro vest walking up your driveway, because you know he’s here to fix something!

Hardhats…well, combine that with the fluro and need I say more… (*tiger growl*)

We don’t look at the latest Mercedes or BMW and think ‘Wow, I would love one of those’, we look at the utes and say ‘I wish I had bought one of them!’

When our husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend (not all in the same bed of course ... although...) rolls over and makes the bed shake we almost scream 'Earthquake!'

500 buildings destroyed

Update: 500 buildings have been destroyed, 90 of them in the city center.

90 of power is back on in Christchurch.

Today (Sunday 5th Sept) we are expecting gale force winds, and likely rain and sleet. With many rooves damaged, chimneys down, there will be people who have wind blowing through their houses, and when the rain hits....there are going to be some serious problems for those people.

Overall, the people of Christchurch have been brilliant. Calm, supportive and coping well.

Throughout last night there were many small aftershocks. Knowing that we could be hit by an aftershock of magnitude 6, each aftershock woke me (as I am sure it did everyone else) and the heart rate increased and the adrenaline pumped. It was an unsettling night.

Cracks in paths can be minor or major, but are certainly common! There are many cracks like the one in the picture to the right, but fortunately not in our immediate block! The dog looks as bemused as the humans.

There is going to be some massive work ahead for road workers. It would be, I imagine, a task that must surely seem insurmountable. And it must be done quickly.

For the many houses with fallen chimneys and damaged rooves, they will be needing repairs as fast as they can get them. It is fortunate that we are out of winter, but it is un-fortunate that spring is an unpredictable season where we can get all four seasons in the one day.

My daughter's boyfriend's family suffered cracks through the exterior of their house as we did, and also in the interior, but nothing structural. It helps that he is a builder!! I would imagine he is going to be one of many people with a lot of work coming in. Roofies and builders are going to be the sought after people, the most worshipped men in town!!! Tradesmen are the unsung heroes of our workforce.

Chablias anyone?

The supermarkets, as you can imagine, would have had a massive mess to clean up.

Think of the supermarket you shop in, and consider how much would fall in an earthquake, imagine the mess, the smashed jars and bottles.

The picture to the left is the wine aisle...not a pretty sight.

However, it is, I am sure, an example of what has happened to every supermarket in Christchurch. There is simply no way, in an earthquake as violet as the one we experienced at 4.35 a.m. yesterday morning, that any shop could have got away unscathed.

Bottles of wine, jars of anything you can imagine, will all have fallen and smashed. What a massive clean up staff with have faced. But what seems to have happened everywhere is, the employees turned up, regardless of whether they were scheduled to work or not, and they just got down to work.

People have done what needed to be done, to help. They have been unselfish.

And, dear readers...I just had to share this with you. Because we have been asked to conserve water, some people have set up a new toilet.

Don't you just love Kiwi ingenuity!!

Apparently the dust from your vacuum cleaner can be good at soaking up the liquid...and you can throw in some garden soil to cover up the solids....yes, I know, not really something we want to talk about!

A 4.2 magnitude aftershock hit as I was writing this entry, and gave me a hell of a fright.

It is still so hard to believe all of this has happened. I am still amazed that our house is standing after the violence of the quake.

As one person said in a facebook entry: Christchurch really does rock and roll!!