the eye of the storm

Just a few homely touches we've managed so far!

So much to do, so little time

We moved in!  It's been almost 2 weeks since my last confe....blog and there is SO much to do.  Piles of boxes everywhere, and not really anywhere to unpack them to yet.  I can't find anything and even making a cup of tea takes half an hour by the time I wash a cup, fill the kettle, empty the teapot etc.

We also decided to rip out the kitchen floor and replace it with yellow tongue chipboard.  It was very patchy and uneven, with a 3 cm height difference from the centre to the walls and there was an old hearth at one end.  Of course things didn't go to plan!  When the floor came off we found the joists were 600 mm apart.  The rest of the house, int and ext walls all had 450 centres, so I assumed the floor did as well. We had to add more joists to stop the boards from bouncing.

And now we have a kitchen installed.  Electrician here monday and plumber wednesday, then it will be fully functional, YAY!!!

Thanks to Jim (red shirt) for giving us his old kitchen, appliances and all.

you've come a long way baby

It's been a huge and extremely busy week, Sorry for not posting anything for a week.  I've also misplaced my camera! The pics are from last week.

We moved in on Monday, it was hard work and only just got out of the flat, with 2 minutes to spare before the real estate agent came to inspect it.  The house is a disaster zone, a million boxes and no idea where anything is.  I had grand ideas of how to organise myself for the move, but in the end I was just chucking anything into boxes to get it all done.  So now we have a horrendous mess to sort out.  We have the rest of our lives, I AM NEVER MOVING AGAIN! YAY!!!

Gem loves her new room, and despite everything has settled in pretty well.  All Ted needs is a boob and a bed and he's happy.

Thanks to all the great guys who pulled out all the stops to get us in here by the due date.  Peter the sparky, Tony the plumber, Ken the plasterer and Deano, Piers, Rhys and JB.

At the last minute we decided to hang the expense and sand the floor boards.  It was a big push and very hard work for the 2 bolokes who took it on,  but I'm so glad.  We did a water based poly, which meant we could re-coat within an hour.  They're perfect, rustic but no splinters and easy to clean.  You can still see daylight through them in a few places, but a bit of no more gaps in brown and easy fixed.

Will put up new pics as soon as I find my camera.  

So far all the walls are undercoated and the ceilings painted white.  The wonders of an airless spray gun! After masking the bits you don't want painted, it only takes 10 minutes to do a whole room in undercoat. It dries almost immediately, then onto the ceiling.  It will probably take us another five years before all the top coats are done by brush and roller!

Just remember, someone always has to clean up the mess!!

I've run out of cheesy song titles

Almost There!!

We've been back and forth trying to work out what to do about the floors.  Do we sand them, paint them, rip them up and replace with chipboard and carpet?  After firmly deciding on one then another, we've finally and hopefully decided to hang the expense and sand them.  They are just too nice to cover!

keep on truckin'

All done!  All walls and ceilings are now clad with plasterboard and every window is in.  The plastering is coming along, though slowly.  The cornice is up in the hallway and only 5 rooms to go!  Not sure that we'll make the friday deadline for moving in!!!  The plumber came today and fitted out the outside bathroom and  plumbed in the new (old but clean) bath.  Tomorrow Slade is donning the disposable overalls and face mask to remove the small amount of asbestos that we know is cladding the exterior of the old laundry.  Also tomorrow the electricians come back to hook up all the power points and light fittings.

Tomorrow we go offline at the flat, it will be a couple of days before we're on at the house, so Adios for now xxx

living on the ceiling

The ceilings are going in!  No 1's room is complete and as of this afternoon, the hallway, our bedroom and the dining all have ceilings too.  There was a scary moment with the panel lifter we hired from K-K-Kennards- it was holding aloft a 5.4m sheet of 13mm plasterbaord, with one guy standing underneath winding the handle when the handle broke off and the whole thing came crashing down.  We were incredibly lucky that no one was hurt.  If our guy had had his head in a slightly different position, he would have been very seriously injured.

In happier times - before the accident.

No. 1's room with ceiling

We found a fabulous plasterer in the local paper, lots of experience, very fast and about half the price of anyone else.  Would love to pass on his number to anyone who might need one.  On that note, also found a great plumber and electrician - fast, RELIABLE and not too expensive.

Hopefully we'll have some cornices in by Monday!

stairway to heaven

I forgot to photograph the back deathtrap - oops, I mean stairs before they were mostly demolished. Though only 4 of them,  tread - 160 mm - riser - 160 mm! - they were too small to put your feet on normally and too shallow to be anything but a trip hazard.  On the day we planned to replace them, Slade, though delicate and fleet of foot, went straight through them.

Of course, the minute they were out No. 1 found a hundred reasons why she had to go in and out of the doorway.

New old stairs, thanks to David and Jim.  Recycled from Jim's basement and saved from David's firewood pile.

walking on sunshine

Things are chugging along, 3 more windows have gone in.  The triple casement leadlight in the Main bedroom that was part of a bay window, the dining room and Gem's new side window - also part of the bay window.  We decided to just put the one extra window in Gem's room as wall space is precious.  On seeing the room, I think it was the right decision.

The boys have installed the rondo channel in the bedrooms today too.  The timber in the ceiling was so sparse and crooked.  By tomorrow night we'll have ceilings!!!  The plasterer is starting on Friday.  We may even be painting those rooms by next Monday.  Now I get to choose colours!  I'M SO EXCITED.

let the sunshine in

Today we added a new window!  Cut a bloody great hole in the side of the house and it makes the front bedroom so much better.  The room wasn't that dark really, but now it's a whole lot lighter.  The view from the window is of the neighbour's new pergola with grapevine and it will be great when the grapevine is grown.  The window will probably always be screened with white voile sheers, so we won't be looking out much anyway.

 
We're replacing 5 aluminium windows with larger timber ones and adding three new (old) ones, so the house will be fantastically light and hopefully catch the cross breeze to help keep it cool.  From the backyard you can see we're on a bit of a hill and we seem to get a great breeze through the back door.

More window pics coming soon.

it's electric

Here's some fun pictures of the old wiring.  It's 3 phase, for all the outbuildings I think.  Anyway, like everything else about the house, it was a complete mess.  And this wasn't even the original wiring.  There was also rusty old conduit throughout the roof space that still had the original cloth covered wire in it.

So we ripped it all out and started from scratch.  The light switches have been moved to the other side of the doorways, so the doors will now open in the opposite direction.  We will have four power points in each room, is that too many?  And it will feel so much safer.  I won't be scared of plugging in an appliance.

quelle horreur

Good news and BAD NEWS today.

First the good news.  On ripping out the last of the kitchen walls, we uncovered the backs of the fibro sheets in the bathroom and found a big green stamp saying "No Asbestos used in this product".  There's a $4000 saving right there!  So we hired another chippie for 2 weeks to speed things up, as the 3 week deadline is approaching fast.

Now for the bad news.  The bathroom is a soggy stinking rotten mess!  All the studs, bearers and joists along the back wall have  rotted away.  There was a 'repair' done on the bath taps with Duct tape and then tiled over, so for many years there's been water leaking into the wall cavity.  The whole back corner of the house isn't even attached to the ground.  The floor on the laundry side is timber, but the floor on the bathroom side is a 30cm thick concrete slab poured onto corrugated iron that's resting on some bricks.

 Our bathroom floor

The wall of death 

A stalagmite on the hot tap inside the wall cavity  

The duct tape repair

There's no way it will be ready for us in 3 weeks!  I think we'll seal it up and forget about it over Christmas and make a plan for the new year.  Luckily there's a beautiful bathroom in the old laundry in the back yard!  We'll bathe outside for summer and aim for an indoor one by Easter.

At least there's somewhere to hang the towels

break on through to the other side

Today we cut through the wall to re open the old back door.  You can now see straight from the front door to the back yard.  Probably not very good Feng Shui,  but as we're not Chinese!!  Apparently it means that all your cash will flow straight out the door.  I think buying an old timber house pretty much guarantees that's going to happen anyway.

Our builder has started and the list of jobs just got a lot longer.  There's nary a straight wall and the ceiling has so few timbers it's amazing the roof hasn't fallen in.  There's LVL's (no idea what that stands for - Laminated something), Rondo channel, noggins, packing, expander foam etc etc.

Still, the roof looks sound, there's no daylight coming through anywhere, and after a very heavy rain, there's no sign of any leaks.  That's good news.

Walls come tumbling down

There is so much to do and so little time when you have small children.  On Saturday I escaped early in the morning and went by train to the new house, no kids in tow, and spent 2 blissful hours pulling out nails and sweeping.  Sore hands by the end of the day, but seeing the nail free floorboards was so satisfying.

Early morning waiting for the train- The new house is only 2 stops away, but 2 trains also.

Houses are really quite simple constructions.  Once you've removed the walls and ceilings, there's really only a few sticks of wood holding the roof above the floor.  No noggins either!

Our real builder starts tomorrow, yippee!.  The electrician on Thursday, Then the repair work can begin.

The Great Undress

Today we hired a couple of guys to continue with the dirty work.  They made great progress, getting the ceilings and all the wall layers off in one day.  Tomorrow they rip up the lino and carpet.

We're starting to see what was originally there.  And more things are making sense.

Why are none of the windows centered in the walls?  The original windows were much narrower and taller than the aluminium ones.  Instead of cutting 2 studs to put in the windows, they cut one and went for asymmetry!!  I can't live with that, it will jar every time I look at it.  So luckily, our new windows are even wider than the al ones, and we can centre them in all the walls without having to patch the ext weatherboard.

The next great discovery is the shadow of the original window architrave.  A good job for Jeremy to replicate!  I hope he's as excited as I am!

And todays last but definitely not least discovery is the false ceiling that was put in the corridor, hiding a fanlight above the front door and the original line of the verandah.

Can't wait to see what's under the lino!

Windows

All of the windows in the house were replaced with aluminium ones many years ago.  I've been looking for secondhand timber ones, all the same height, on ebay and in various salvage yards.  I think I've bought 11 now.  They all need some work, but we decided on casement windows as repairs are simpler and I really like the proportions of tall, narrow sashes.  One of the sets of windows was a bay window with leadlights.  One day!!! I'll get to re-lead them all and re-install them.  And One Day I'll get to make leadlights for the whole house.