work in progress

While we work on installing the new back-of-the-wineshop, we have a special niece visit us from the Nederlands. Lotte agrees that the skateboard installation has a charismatic godlike presence. This evening we could once again enjoy our skemerkelkie (my translation from Afrikaans is evening chalice) in the bright new back of the shop. All this while the last days of the school holidays are upon us.

The kitchenette needs work but to mark territory we have moved in with kettles and coffee machines.  The resident plumber has installed the dishwasher and  basin and things are functioning. I have to be positive so I shall admit that now the list is indeed getting shorter: install toilet and basin in guest washroom, build book shelf in living room upstairs, place hardwood floor upstairs, create courtyard terrace, build stairs to this terrace, install heatpump before winter, paint walls up-and downstairs, fix and finish unplastered door openings etc etc etc...  Summer has been a whirlwind balance of visitors, frantic work, management of tools, clearing living spaces and if there is a flower to symbolize such dedication, it has to be love-lies-bleeding. Janet, your amaranthus caudatus is still flowering!

book in hand, tool in hand

A blogging friend of mine wonders if the end of the (physical) book has arrived. He thinks not and I think not. It reminded me of Rushkoff saying we have a choice: to programme or to be programmed. I want to programme me. I want to read a book in bed at night, lie in a hot bath holding a book. I want the book to remember where I read it. I want to remember the book, the very page where I read those words. I want to own the book if I can, re-read it when I want, re-examine the pages I liked. Reading an e-book will not be good enough.
The new bookshelf is still in the form of a pile of wood, a stack of planks on the floor beside the very books that will eventually furnish the shelves. But once the books go onto the shelves, I want to arrange them according to colour: all the black spines together, lined up on a shelf. The white spines together, the reddish spines together. I know my books by their colour. I know them as objects. Beloved objects.

it is as if....

Sometimes it helps to look at someone else's renovation trials and tribulations.... Marilyn and Bruce, you are as determined as we are! http://dooverdog.blogspot.com/ 
I loved your Waiting for Godot comparison. So here is mine for this day: Sisyphus!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRJ-RsxVvuA

saturday afternoon

Hanging a candlelabra and a tapestry against the wall takes all Saturday afternoon. All the tools are out again, electrical wires and connections once again worked on. When when oh when will it all be done? For tomorrow we had plans to paint walls, but the consensus is that we will need a day of rest. Either that, or we wake up with renewed energy in the morning and build the bookshelves! The books have been lying about on the floor upstairs for months.

surfaces

Soft and hard, old and new, finished and unfinished --  interesting surfaces to look at, to touch. Armed with a loaded staple-gun, visiting friend Janet leapt onto a ladder to create a theatrical ambience; an unplastered dooorway became an Italian archway. The wine-shop had atmosphere as we enjoyed our first supper (and gallons of wine of course) with friends in the newly created space. 

let's play "spot the ladder"

We have made progress; there is light at the end of the wine-cave. Ladders and tool boxes can now be easily removed when friends come over for dinner; unfinished doorways clad with fabric to hide the unplastered surfaces.... the fun we are having. Now to get the rest of the groundfloor job done: the garden, the courtyard, the kitchenette, the small WC. The resident plumber has done the invisible work inside the walls:  we have plumbing, electrical sockets, vacuum and ventilation pipes.