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!'

Five days after the Earthquake

Five days after the earthquake and we have finally had a decent sleep. Perhaps it was simply exhaustion that led many of us to sleep through the minor aftershocks. I would be happy if I felt fully rested, but like many, I still feel exhausted.

As more pictures are shown in the news we see more and more of the damage.

A railway line not supposed to look like this! Up and down, left to right...and as dreadful as it is to look at, I cannot help but wonder what it would have looked like as it happened? The macabre side of human nature wants to ask for a replay on television.

Houses that had looked okay on Tuesday, with intact chimneys, were not looking as good after yesterday's 5.1 magnitude aftershock. (Some people are saying it was a completely different earthquake and not an aftershock, becuase it was a different fault, one actually near Diamond Harbour.) Whatever you want to call it, further damage happened. Our own chimney which had a small crack down the right side, now has a slightly bigger crack there and a new crack down the left side. Am I worried a bigger aftershock will topple the chimney? Yes, I am, but at the moment the cracks are only a few millimeters wide. We will just take things one day at a time...or perhaps more correctly would be to say 'one aftershock at a time'.

As I said, chimneys continue to be an issue for many houses. Builders, bricklayers and roofers are working as hard as they can to get these dangerous chimneys down as safely as possible.

But when the aftershock hits, and you really really want the chimney to topple the other way ... sometimes it just comes right through your house, leaving a massive hole in the roof. Fortunately this is not the norm.

It is time to appreciate our builders as the vital components to recovery that they are. Tradesmen are the men we most want to see walking up the driveway, tool belt swinging.