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Emergency Lockdown Home Office Reveal

This blog post is coming to you live from our new emergency lockdown home office!

If you are one of my Instagram followers, you’ll know that we spent much of Level 5 of South Africa’s Coronavirus lockdown working on our lockdown home office; just in case. Things are a little uncertain at the moment. An office would make a good bedroom if someone close to us found themselves out of work and in need of accommodation. Or, we could use as originally intended – an office or study.

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Soundproofing Bedrooms

One of our concerns, when we began building the container house, was soundproofing the bedrooms. As we will be living communally, we run the risk of having to live with each other’s noise. What do you do if you want to sleep, but others want to watch an action movie? Since moving to the country, we have also come to the realization that many of our neighbours like to listen to loud music long into the night, which can make it difficult to sleep.

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Our First Bathroom; Tiling Fibre Cement Boards

Lockdown has meant that we can work on finishing the South container for Louis and Gwen. And that means working on their private bathroom! it has been awesome watching the bathroom progress as each day passes. But it also meant that we had to work out the best way for tiling fibre cement boards. There is a correct way and then there’s our lockdown way…

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How to Fit PVC Ceilings

All our electrics start off at the main distribution board and then spread out to smaller distribution boards in other areas of the house. This allows us to isolate any electrical fault and fix it, should the need arise. We didn’t want to do too much living around the main DB, so have built a tiny laundry room around the main distribution board. We will, in time, be using this little room to experiment with several ideas we have on finishes. But in the meantime, it’s a good opportunity to show you how to fit PVC Ceilings.

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Repair a Leaking Metal Roof

You may recall that we had some issues with our roof installation and as a result, we have many small holes in our new roof. Winter is approaching fast, so it was becoming a bit urgent that we spent some time to patch up the holes before the rain starts. You can use our method to repair a leaking metal roof of your own, as long as the holes are small and your sheet-metal plates are not too rusty (in which case it is best to replace).

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Shadecloth DIY

I believe that the best way to get through a lockdown, is to keep busy. Thankfully, we have just the thing to keep us busy for South Africa’s Covid-19 lockdown period – The Container House Project. Therefore, if you see “Lockdown” in red on the header picture, you’ll know that the contents of that blog post is on something we accomplished while staying safe at home. And the first thing we did was fit some shadecloth to the side of the carport we recently erected. So with no further ado, herewith our shadecloth DIY.

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Space Saving Ideas

One of the things I really struggle with, and has been a bit of a challenge while living on a building site, is when your things don’t have their own space. I like my stuff to have a “home”, so that I know exactly where to find it when I need it. Therefore, I’m really attracted to space saving ideas; those quirky designs that give a home to the things in your house.

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Are We Participating In The Spekboom Challenge?

Last year (2019) a green initiative, known as the Spekboom Challenge, swept across South Africa like a tidal wave. Understandably, many people around the world are worried about climate change and are looking for small ways they can help avert it. It seems spekboom might be of some help. Here’s some info on the plant, the challenge and the big question: Are we participating?

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