Is it Isengard? My towering home, with its fireproof coat on and looking all smart.

I’ve managed a short gap between blog posts for once. I did cheat a bit as I wrote these last two posts at the same time, but they needed to be separated out. The last one was about the process, this one is all about appearances.

My very tall home.

The scaffold has been removed and I can finally see what my house looks like. The modern, clean lines of the western entrance will not be to everyone’s taste, but I love it. The natural colours camouflage the house as you approach it through the garden which adds to the initial impact.

The house, in its hiding place in the garden. One of the joys of building like this is that you don’t need to clear the block, you can crane the containers over the trees.

As you walk through the garden you only see it from about 10m away and suddenly a giant, smooth flat wall appears looming over you, which is over 7m tall and has the imposing presence of a blue mountains cliff line. The house was always tall but previously you could see the two stacked containers plus an open, and embarrasingly messy, subfloor space. The cladding has changed it completely. The photos don’t really catch the height and visual impact. I always wanted the outside to capture the feel of a rock face on a rideline, both up close and from the distance when you look back across here from the next ridge along. Even without all of the sandstone colours I wanted to use it does that. The impression is the same as that typical experience of walking through the bush up here and then suddenly there’s a big rock face beside you that stops you in your tracks with a bit of a wow factor.

Through the garden then boom, hello you lovely tall house. As Kath and Kim would say, “it’s nice, it’s different, it’s unusual”. You could probably project a movie onto it. Or I might add some black cockatoo sculptures flying across it the top of it one day.

It’s hard to get good pics as the garden is everywhere. It does need a bit of cutting back, but it is made up of flame retardant plants like rhodos and camelias.

The view a border collie gets while sitting on the front entrance porch.

The south face, which has no windows or doors and most resembles the tower of Isengard.

Once you open the front door and step inside though, instead of a massive, solid house you see straight through the glass sliding doors in front of you to the bush below, it’s like the house is a secret window into the landscape. The feeling inside it is light and open compared to that tall and solid west façade. From the inside you then look up into the 6m high void over the entrance and dining area and there’s a feeling of space, despite the small house dimensions.

The north face. The two stacked windows light up the void and the 6m high ceiling inside the house.

Looking back at the north face. The front and back containers are different colours, but depending on the light they change quite a lot, from moody grey to sand (compare to the pic above).

Once you to get out into the garden on the eastern side the house has more typical character, with the two stories broken up by the upstairs deck and lots more windows and glass doors.

The normal looking (eastern) side of the house, less imposing but very smart. There is still a subfloor door to come, and a gutter that will catch water from the deck. And there’s some rubbishy stuff in the foreground and on the deck for that “still building” look.

Aside from appearing very houselike now, and rather stylish if you like that sort of thing, the house is water tight; I am touching wood as I say this but surely I have finally beaten that water imp. The shutters still have to go over all the windows and doors but the rest of it is also now as fireproof as you can get. This little piggy has set some new standards – forget straw, sticks and bricks, we’ve got thick corten container steel, then fireproof cladding on top of that, and double glazed toughened glass all over. I am going to tempt fate in this time of climate change and come right out and say it, this thing is not going to be easy to destroy.

Although..

One funny thing happened as the cladding crew were leaving – one end of a ladder almost fell into a little sink hole that suddenly appeared. It was round and about 40cm across, with even sides. Almost like an old pier hole. The ground below had just disappeared, about half a meter or so deep. I do hope that’s the only one of those. Is that the imp’s new hobby?

Then another funny thing happened. My last post mentioned a recent lack of huntsman spiders. Right after I posted I walked outside to play soccer with my doggo Groot and there was a huntsman, sitting right at the top of that big new west wall, looking like it had either taken on an ultimate climbing challenge to get up there, or had come from the roof above and was about to bungee jump. It was very exposed to predators, a bit of a dare devil I think. I’m guessing there are more around, otherwise who was it trying to impress? Anyway, they’re more than welcome to enjoy the outside of my house.

The hunstman spider, who was not only showing off its talent for extreme sports, it also chose a dramatic spotlight of sunshine to appear in. Apologies for the blurry pic, it was taken with my phone from miles away.

Still to come; gravel around the base, balustrades, water tanks, and rather a lot of odd jobs. Then the big inside reveal.

Happy holidays to all.