Wrapping it up

This is the stage when something really looks like it's happening!  The roof's on and then you cover all the walls and suddenly you're cocooned inside and can really feel what the house is going to be like and the outside gets filled in and looks much more like a house...
Usually a house gets wrapped in sisalation - 'silver paper' which is blue on one side and reflective silver on the other.  For our climate you put it silver side in so that any heat inside the house gets reflected back in and keeps the house warmer.  In a hot climate, you'd put it the other way around to reflect extra heat outwards and keep it out of the house.
For us the wrapping is far more interesting and fun...  We decided to wrap up our place in giant sheets of space-age bubble wrap which is also silver on one side and a very cool-looking bronze on the other (the bronze is pretty much the same as silver but it's less reflective, so doesn't completely blind the bricklayers when they work on the outside of the house - or fry them to a crisp...)

Ah - so it does look like I thought it would! Wrapping gives the whole structure a real shape. Still pretty easy to break in though - just need a nice sharp knife...

Not an easy job to do on your own or if there's any wind - giant sheets of bubble wrap act like a great sail or paragliding 'chute unless you can get 'em under control and pin 'em down with the very cool air-powered staple gun Josh has in his hand.

Front entry - wrapped up and windows in. Not the easiest place to get into just at the moment - might have to look at that before we move in...

Suddenly the house has 'walls' and once the windows started going in, everything really started to look like it should.

Was great to have an extra worker for a couple of days in the form of Joel - all the way from the UK and staying with us as a family with his family for 2 and a half weeks. Here he is wielding the staple gun with great enthusiasm! Josh's chisel in the foreground.