The Renos

I've been waiting until I found some better 'before' photos to put up this post, but I realised it might never go up!

As you know, Anthony's been building me a kitchen. This year, it started out somewhat like this (there was a fridge and some other ugly cupboards on the left-hand side):

When I find an older photo of the complete kitchen, I'll pop it in...

After several months of disruption and mess (and a few freezing winter weeks which saw me huddled out on the front deck cooking on a camp stove), I'm happy to say it now looks like this:

There's still a little bit to do: on the back wall, Anthony's going to build a little shelf unit, and the windowsill still needs a coat of paint, but for now, it's done!


We were shopping after Christmas (one of my favourite hobbies - the Boxing Day sales!), when I thought it would be a good idea to finish the rest of this area. I had promised Anthony a big-screen TV when he finished the kitchen/lounge room, so I reminded him of this and suggested we finish the lounge room too.

Silly me. Being a public servant at the moment, I only had a couple of weeks off over Christmas, and because I'd preparing and cooking for Christmas, I hadn't had a moment to stop and relax (and blog!).
Nevertheless, we kicked off on the 27th, moving most of the stuff from the lounge/dining room to my study and my bedroom, meaning that I had nowhere to just sit and relax (even outside was dust-strewn and messy!).

Anthony spent a whole day in the ceiling, moving batts and vacuuming the roof space. The ceiling panels were sagging (quite dramatically in places) and he wanted to make sure the roof space was clear before screwing them up.

Next, I had wanted to get rid of this 'wood look' panelling for a long time:

I spent a day pulling it off, then the wall panels, as they were covered in glue and Anthony said they were too far gone to save. I then vaccumed out the old insulation and, with Anthony's help, replaced the gyprock panels.

After that, I was on plastering duty. Not the easiest task, given the scars left from the walls we pulled out years ago. But I did OK. On New Year's Eve, I spent the evening 'getting plastered', only stopping for a brief drive out to the city with the boys to see the midnight fireworks.

By the 4th of January, after a couple of days spent sanding the walls and ceiling, I was fed up. I was due to go back to work on the 9th, and not only did I have nowhere to go and relax, but we weren't even close to starting painting.
I was getting crankier and crankier and much harder to be around, when Anthony snapped: 'why don't you just go away for a couple of days?'

So I did! That afternoon, Oliver and I packed up and drove to Lake Tabourie on the south coast (the only place I could get a room). I might post about this when I get the photos up.

By the time we got back on the 7th, the painting was almost done. I helped Anthony with some finishing touches and we were able to use the room by the Sunday night. I've spent the last couple of weeks (after work and on weekends) putting it all back together. At the moment it looks like this:

We've got a couple of bits and pieces to do, but I'm pretty happy with it.

Don't you love a happy ending?

Our House Part 2: Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes (outside)

While I haven't taken many photos of the inside of our house, I've certainly made up for it with photos of the outside. This post will be told in pictures.

Before...
This one was taken pretty early on. We'd already moved the fence forward (it used to be at the back end of the house), but hadn't done much with the block yet. The yucky potato vine (on the front wall) is still there, and the little apple blossom tree my parents gave us is still sitting in a pot.

See the massive gum tree in the backyard? It truly was enormous. It was a good 15 metres tall and about 1 metre across on the widest part of the trunk. Sadly, it got quite sick a couple of years after we moved in, and we had to have it cut down. We still have a big part of the trunk in the backyard, that Anthony will (one day - it's on the list!) turn into a seat.

A couple of years later, I'd planted a bit of a flower garden out the front. Mostly bulbs, but a couple of shrubby things as well that are quite big now (and a good screen across the neighbour's driveway). You can see the little apple blossom tree on the far right of the picture - where we planted it in the ground.

In 2004, we had the driveway done, and had a couple of decks built.

One in the front:

 

And a really big one in the back:

If you look closely, you'll also see the really cool playground we built for the boys. They've had a lot of fun on it!

And now?

Well, now, it's probably not looking its best.

We still have some fantastic luck with plants, they just seem to like to grow enormous in our yard. You can see that our 'little' apple blossom tree is now quite large; in fact it likes to attack people as they walk up the driveway - I must be a little more ruthless in my pruning.
But the weeds have moved in to stay unfortunately. I let things go for a while and they took advantage. It's very hard to stay on top of them...

Except for my newest little corner. We started this little corner out the back not long before Sam died. Anthony has built an amazing wall out of concrete sleepers that goes on and on and on. It's fairly spectacular!

Samuel was around to see it go up (well some of it anyway). He even helped a bit.
You can see he was very good at supervising:

But also pitched in from time to time. He did tend to grumble a bit and give up fairly quickly, but he always helped!

So that little corner's OK.  It's where I grow my berries and also in my new apple (and sunflower!) garden. I manage to keep the weeds down and keep it all mulched and watered.

But, there's still so much to do. I guess that's the price we pay for having a big (1/4 acre) block, and I know that one day it will be very nice, but sometime I wish some of those Backyard Blitz (do they even have that show any more?? ;p) folks would come along and make it all pretty!

 Well anyway, it's a work in progress. And having all the food coming out of there is definitely a benefit. It was a great move planting lots of food (I'll tell you about that soon too), and I can see the structure starting to come together. Perhaps I shouldn't hope for it to be done too soon, then I might have nothing to complain about!

Reigniting old passions

It's OK, don't panic, I didn't find an old boyfriend on Facebook and run away with him. To tell you the truth, I don't have that many ex boyfriends, and less interest in reigniting anything at all with them (I certainly knew how to pick them in the past, but that's another story).

No, today I'm talking about reconnecting with things that make me happy, that give me some sense of satisfaction. In the past week or so I rediscovered a couple.

Renovating
As I have mentioned, we are currently renovating. I guess you could say we've been renovating since we moved in here 12 years ago (as of yesterday), but in the past few months, we have been gathering a bit of steam.

We've had a fairly rough/interesting couple of years, with lots of ups and downs, and with me starting a new (and very demanding) job, we have let things slide a bit.

Anyway, I got a bit keen and decided I'd paint one of the walls, mainly so that we could live with the colour for a few months and see if we liked it. When Anthony does the kitchen, we will be replacing the ceiling in the lounge/dining/kitchen area and repainting, so I wanted to get a feel for what colour might be OK there.
Once I started preparing the wall, I thought it might be good to put a new window in. The old one was almost falling apart and looked pretty shabby. In fact, most of the room did
9sorry, forgot to take a 'before' photo (again), this is a kind of old one):

So we went out to the Handyman's Trading Post and bought a new window. Actually, we bought a new window, a glass door and a beautiful big set of cedar French doors which we will use in a shed/rumpus room we're building, but the window was the one going in first.
I'm very lucky that Anthony (as well as being a very talented woodworker) is one of those 'handy' people. So replacing a window was no problem for him. I did some bits and pieces, but I'll give him all the credit. I did the painting though. It turned out quite well:

We went for blinds because I like how they are tidy and hide away. We still have to finish the valance, but I think it looks much better.
The only trouble now of course, is that now that that wall looks great, the rest of the room/house looks a bit shabby. Actually, I guess that's probably a good thing in many ways, as it prompted me to do a thorough clean and sort. It's very nice and tidy now (in this end of the house anyway).

While we were doing it, I thought how nice it would be to do that for a while: buy a house, do it up, sell it again, buy a new one. I think it would be a nice way to love for a while. You could even do it in different states if you were really adventurous!

In the meantime though, we have quite a task ahead of us. At the moment, Anthony is building a BIG retaining wall out the back. He hadn't been lately, first because of the Samuel thing, and then because of the buckets and buckets of rain we've had lately. The wall is looking great though. We've used concrete sleepers so that it will last a long time, and they are very effective.

I just hope we'll have some dry days soon so we can get it finished! (we are actually much further along than this, I must go out and take some more photos.

Once the wall is finished, we are going to build a big shed, which will be like an extra couple of rooms (lined, insulated, power etc). Somewhere to put the pool table! (and all my teacher crap)
Then (the bit I'm excited about) Anthony is going to build me my kitchen. We have already bought a nice Lofra stove, and a sink and range hood, so I am very keen to get it all going!