It started about the time we moved in to the house. The old water delivery pipes started bursting. We went as long as 4 days without water. A well placed letter to the editor of the Cape Times by our back yard neighbor, who happens to be the areas largest employer as well as a very famous wine maker, got the attention of the local politicians. Within 2 days of the article being published and a follow on news report about "No Water in Calitzdorp", they announced that they would replace the entire street's service. Promised 10 days start to finish. Now 3 weeks and we are still not hooked up, but the interesting part is that we have not had one outage since the announcement.

We really did not like the front door. Our contractor begged us to take the old paint off. So we agreed.

Paint being stripped

Like new front door (only 105 years old)

Beautiful

The dining room is looking very nice

Buck's office is his "man cave"

The closet was not to Yvonne's liking. Not enough hanging space, so we changed it

And added new cupboards on the other side of the wall

Master bath is taking shape

New linen cupboards in the bath

Testing the new paint colors on the outside

The dark color was too dark, but it will be a nice contrast to the light blue

The front door is so beautiful that we've decided to take the paint off of all of the shutters on the street side of the house

Kitchen construction has started. Hammer and chisel, to make the runs for the electric conduit

Holes in the wall on Monday, mortared in on Wednesday

It only took them about 10 minutes to find the water pipe (with the chisel). The worker came to me and said "do you know where the water shut off is?" And then he said "do you have a mop?"

Conduit in place

Wires in the pipes

We're clearing huge quantities of green stuff from the edge of the property in order to make way for the new fence and wall at the driveway entrance

What a crew. They perfomed fantastically. This is Tuesday, Oh and by the way, we had a rain storm that dumped an inch of rain on Wednesday.

This is Thursday, you can see the wall starting up.

Here it is one week later, almost complete

Nice! on Monday following, we had a pretty big wind all day Saturday that helped dry it

Ready for the sliding gate. Next week, I think

Walls painted, ready for the cabinets

Gideon, the carpenter is installing

Yvonne, the cook is LOVING it. Now almost 5 months since she had a kitchen.

The Great Wall of Hemenway. We're waiting for the doors for this and the kitchen to be delivered to Gideon

This is the Weber Room. A place to put it away after use

Nice, you won't even see it when the house gets painted, in a few weeks.

Follow up on the water - This was the hook up day. A few glitches so it was the hook up days. I think it is actually working now, 5 days later.

Our beautiful olive trees, in full flower

In case you wondered, these are olive flowers.