Carol & Paul build a new house

This page has been updated on 21/01/2009 with more photos. Look below the video.

Photographs of our new house, 11 Balalaika street in Nelspruit.
Borders onto Uitsig Landgoed and lots of wild animals.
We hope to move in in early March.
Lots of work still to be done.
I can't wait to get the garden started.
Note the underground water collecting in a hole Paul had dug,
we will water the whole garden from that.
The drain runs under a portion of the house and it's a
natural underground stream that flows all the time.
Carol & Paul

Editors Note : this was done in "High Definition" to give the photos extra clarity



New& more photos plus a slide show on picaso
- just click here

002 Main bedroom -003 Main bedroom View

012 Trees and plants for garden, please note most of the plants are grown from slips by yours truly over a period of 6 months.

014 Corner of Splash Pool we built which is now full since photo was taken

021 Taken from front verandah so you can see 1 kitchen window and 1 dining room window. The pipe sticking out is more or less where the island will end.

022 Dining room from verandah

034 Another in main bedroom’038 view from main bedroom verandah taken in sequence with 038 and 040. You can see Legogot (lions head) other side of White River from the main bedroom on a clear day. Awesome!

042 A friend of Debbie’s donated the cycads to us as they will be moving to NZ end of this year. Her husband is already in NZ. Yvonne knows how much I love gardening and asked Debbie if she thinks we would like them, they all have valid permits. Of course we were thrilled. We made a date for our truck to go and collect them and to take them out the ground. Fortunately one of our workers has worked for a nursery before so knew exactly what to do with hessian etc. It took hours to get them all out. We had obtained a road transport permit from the Parks Board. The woman from Parks board had to be there when we did it, and to inspect we did it properly. A very knowledgeable woman about plants. Particularly plants that are about to be extinct so they are very strict. She followed the truck to see the address they were going to even though it said so on the permit. She also gave us a form to say she will be coming to inspect the cycads in 6 months time and then issue us with new permits that they belong to us. I also moved one cycas from here, a Natalius Cycas, a very much softer looking variety. It was given to me as a present so my name was on the permit so she will inspect that one too. After the 6 month inspection that’s finished. I thought it pretty wonderful that they do actually do this to prevent people from removing and selling them. Yep that goes on all the time and has for the last 30 years. 043 Feature wall in the dining room to hang our big 5 paintings on. They have lovely frames, and in each one is a slight tinge, but lighter colour, than the paprika. They really do look stunning on the Paprika wall, will send a photograph when they are hung up at the end of February.

049 Another photograph of the splash pool. It’s small, that’s all we need, has a martini step seat, and a small step to get to the martini seat. We are fortunate in that we have one of our staff that worked for a pool company and knows his oats. This is the 9^th pool we have built. It looks lovely filled and having had the hottest ever summer it’s going to be lovely to get wet after work. Just deep enough and wide enough to take three strokes across J J

I am sorry I didn’t send one of the front door. Paul had our welder make the front door out of steel. I was rather worried about what it was going to look like. He did an incredible job and it has 4 safety glass panels in it. I will take a photo once it’s painted as at the moment the putty looks new and of course it’s that browny colour of putty so not finished yet.

The bathrooms are getting tiled at the moment and the little rooms (PK) – wow have not heard the word in yonks! Hope you enjoy a tour through a part of our house. None of the second level photographs yet as not much changed. When bathrooms etc are done I will take some. Oh, and most important they have started to put the shell of the kitchen cupboards in. So exciting to see it all falling into place. Angela designed the house and one of the things on my ‘wish list’ as she calls it, was a walk in pantry so I got my walk in pantry! Remember the one in Ndola when we lived next door to the Bourke’s, or was it Burks. That house had a massive pantry.

Hope this is enough of my waffling on Billy. Actually I don’t call my waffling on waffling on, I call it background music…….my friends that I e-mail so enjoy my background music, as they say they can imagine whatever I am telling them.

Carol