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.