Our House - Carl Benton

Our New Home in Hamilton

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Posted in Our House at August 5th, 2014. No Comments. - 5,217 views

Well, it is the morning of the 5th November 2011, and last night it snowed here in Dunedin. It is supposed to be almost summer, yet the ground is partly white! A nice treat for my birthday, which will be melted in about an hour. Enough to be interesting, but not annoying or fun.

Vege Garden & Back Lawn

The Deck

Posted in Family, Our House at November 5th, 2011. No Comments. - 2,614 views

Go Black!

This week Christy and I constructed a rather large ‘GO BLACK’ sign and put it up on the roof. The lettering is made from LED Neon Flex, and can be seen from the southern motorway here in Dunedin. It was so clear, that even the Otago Daily Times (ODT) reporters came around and took photos of us next to the sign, and put them on the front page of today’s paper (Friday 16 Sep 2011). Read the article here.

Carl, Christy and Samara next to the Go Black sign.

Posted in Family, LEDstuff, Our House, Rugby at September 16th, 2011. No Comments. - 2,839 views

Patio Progress #3

Oh yeaaahhhh!!!!!

Well, that says it all. The steps are in, the pavers are in, the gardens are in, the lawn is in… and it’s looking rather @*#$% awsome if you ask me! We did a lot of ground work for the patio base, so the 530 pavers went down with relative ease. The two-tier side garden below the lawn has been tidied with a small slate/concrete wall, and the grass in on the lawn is growing nicely. The next phase is to do the bottom steps, and the deck.

Posted in Our House at October 20th, 2010. No Comments. - 1,211 views

Patio Progress #2

Well, the pattio project has been going for about 3 months now, and we have achieved quite a lot. With the pattio area now flat, bottom and boundary walls installed, and steps over half way, we should have most of it finished in the next 2 months. Three lights have been installed and the wiring is in place. The strip light for the steps arrived last week, which I got manufactured especially for the pattio with half the normal brightness. This is because there is a total of 40m of strip light, and the normal brightness would be way too much. Once the steps are in, which should be about 3 weeks away, the strip lighting will be installed. I can’t wait!

Posted in Our House at July 8th, 2010. No Comments. - 996 views

Patio Progress #1

I thought I would just add some information on our progress on the patio project. So far we have been digging, and digging, and digging… The skip we hired was picked up today which had about 3 cubic meters of concrete and clay! Luckily it didn’t put holes in our driveway hehe. To help explain how everything will be constructed, see the image below:

Patio Layout

This image was taken from Solidworks where I have built up a 3D model of the whole area, showing all the dimensions and how it will all be constructed. That way I can see how many posts I need for walls, the length everything and how it will fit together.

The original land surface was sloping from the front of the upper lawn down to the front of the patio and down through the deck. Therefore most of the patio needs to be dug out, as well as an area below the patio for the wall and part of the deck. To build the upper steps, the patio garden wall needs to go in, and to do that we at least need to put in the front corner post which is also one of the posts for the retaining wall below the patio. Therefore we have started with that.

As far as lighting goes, there will be spots in the patio garden wall, and upper garden wall, strip light along the front of each of the upper steps and maybe spots on the lower steps, and maybe a few spots in the patio-deck wall.

You can see the pictures of the construction of the patio here.

Posted in Our House at April 26th, 2010. No Comments. - 1,109 views