Another year...well almost two.....

OMG!! Is it really that long since I last posted...no, can't be! Where the hell have the years gone??

Well, 2016 must have been pretty good because nothing fundamentally challenging really stands out in my memory, and it was SUCH a loooong time ago.   2017 on the other hand.......

2017 has been the biggest year of ups and downs that I have experienced so far in my many, but not too many, years of living.  We have had holidays, we have welcomed new members into our family, we are currently amidst a bathroom renovation (finally).....but..... this year we have also seen tragedy and misfortune.

What's that saying? Bad luck comes in threes. Well for us it seemed like it was just going to keep coming there for a while. I have experienced loss before but none hit quite so hard as the suicide of a family member. I think it's particularly hard when you just don't see it coming.  It was just shit! That's all I can say.

Literally a week or so later, a close friend lost her sister in a tragic accident. Followed close behind by a very very very close call when Brett's son rolled his car. All in the car were okay luckily, but it was a very frightening time. Not helped by the timing either.  The big "C" word has also reared it's ugly head this year, with my cousin succumbing earlier in the year.

On a happier note now....

Brett and I enjoyed an amazing holiday to Tasmania earlier in the year.  Three weeks of sight seeing and nomad campervan style trekking around the state was awesome. Loved it!

Cascade Brewery

Eaglehawk Neck (dog line memorial statue)

Queenstown caravan park (and a break in the overcast weather)

Sun setting off Bruny Island

Sun rise off east coast (near Freycinet)

A top the 'nut' (Stanley)

2017 started out great! It was a time of blissful ignorance, with seemingly never ending holiday plans....

With 3 weeks in Tassie, we were home for about a month before leaving for another almost 3 weeks camping and 4wding up through Cape York again. This time we were not alone! What started out as a father-son only trip, turned into a three vehicle entourage. With Bretts dad in with us, there was also our neighbour and his wife, and one other couple.  Both relatively inexperienced 4wders, jumped at the opportunity to tag along.

Black Mountain lookout

Elim Beach (walking towards the 'coloured sands')

Bramwell Junction (the start of the old tele track)

Beautiful Fruitbat Falls (no crocs)

Punsand Bay resort bar

The 'croc' at the Croc Tent (not real)

At the TIP

The old tele track (posing with one of the few telegraph poles still standing)

On the old tele track, getting into some serious 4wding

Woops! Fell into a rut and almost toppled. Needed a pull out from behind.

One of many beautiful spots to cool off along the old tele track

Home again! Almost don't want to wash the red dirt off the car...

Once the nostalgia and enjoyment of our holidays had waned, and the reality that there would be no more holidays for quite some time (humph), we settled back into normality.  Pretty soon, perhaps slightly bored again, we decided we should add to our family. No no no...NO! I'm not going THERE again.  Been there, done that - our children are all grown up and life is good.  No, what I mean is we decided to get a puppy.......

Enter...Louie the Jack Russell

Louie has been a joy and constant source of entertainment since the day he arrived. Well, I say 'arrived' but it was actually quite a long journey to collect him. He is the short legged, short haired, variety of JR which we found really hard to find locally.  Brett spotted him online with a breeder in southern Qld and when we rang, he was the only one still available so we decided it was fate.  We left home at about 4am, with the breeder agreeing to meet us in Rockhampton, where we arrived around lunch time. We intended to stay overnight but sharing the driving, we ended up all the way home. About 17 hours all up.  Louie was great. Slept most of the way.  Slept through the night when we got home, and has done ever since.

The house has taken a back step in recent years, mainly for economic reasons, however we have recently decided that the bathroom must be done, sooner rather than later.  I'm pretty sure the bathroom has been renovated in the past, but I'm guessing probably not in the last 20 years.  In any case, we embarked on a full scale demolition and redesign.  Our bathroom, our ONLY bathroom I might add, has been out of action for about 3 weeks now, so it's been camping style facilities ever since.

I've heard the term 'bull at a gate' quite a few times, and I do have a tendency to rip into something and stop to think about the consequences afterwards. Unfortunately with this renovation, we completely underestimated the amount of work required just to stabilize the floor joists and straighten the wall studs.  Old houses!!   At least it is being done properly and should be strong enough to last another 70 years.  Not a lot to see at the moment so will post pictures next time - hopefully in the not too distant future!!

Have an enjoyable and uneventful 2017 Christmas everyone. Hopefully 2018 will be a good year!

renovation update

Well, Christmas 2015 has passed and we have welcomed in 2016! I hope everyone had a good one.

While many people were slowing down for christmas, taking breaks from their usual working lives and perhaps going away for a holiday, we were...you guessed it...renovating.  At a mad, crazy pace, we put in almost everything we had to build a deck and portico by christmas morning. That was in the space of about 1 1/2 weeks roughly.  We did it!  We celebrated christmas 2015 with family and friends on our new deck.  There are still a couple of little finishing off things to do, like fascias and painting and we will put a ceiling in and fit lighting as well...but it is definately a usable space.

New fan and lighting in the lounge

Brett built a beautiful feature wall out of old silky oak panels, as well as floating shelves and drawers to house our tv/stereo gear etc

Wall mounted the tv and voila, finished. 

The new lounge getting into the christmas spirit

Getting into the christmas spirit with my 'trestle tree'

The posts for the deck/portico in

Work begins on the portico roof

Portico roof done! Work beginning on the deck

Working into the evening to get the deck finished (sorry neighbours)

Done! (except for some finishing off bits)

Enjoying christmas breakfast with family and friends

Work starts in the new main bedroom. Blocked off old arch through to dining room and built new wall for walk-in-robe

New louvres fitted to where front door once was

Finished! New lighting and wall paint

Walk in robe awaiting its fitout of shelves and hanging space

A 'before' photo taken by the real estate when the house was for sale

 

The latest 'after' photo (with window awnings added)

So, to recap the renovations completed so far are restump, repaint facade, swap lounge and main bedroom, and build a deck and portico.  Tick!   Now we plan to build a new front fence and do some landscaping so we can enjoy our new deck living area more.  We still need to paint the rest of the house outside, revamp the second bedroom and office, kitchen, bathroom etc.  Does it ever end??

Apart from giving us a fabulous looking home, we now have a new appreciation of older timber homes. Sometimes a curse and believe me, there is plenty of cursing, older timber homes have a unique ability to be transformed in so many ways. The options are unlimited (depending on how deep your pockets are). Sure, we could have taken out a massive bank loan and paid for someone else to do all the work but we wouldn't have the same appreciation. Things wouldn't have been done exactly as we wanted, and we wouldn't have learnt as much about the house.  Of course there are plenty of challenges that someone more experienced might have resolved much more quickly than we did... for instance, walls that look square, rarely are. And, anything timber, from floorboards to load bearing posts, can be warped and bowed and unlevel (or all three).  We have had to work with the house and all of its quirks, however in doing so, we have also learnt many new skills and have loved the challenge. The big question....would we do it again?  Yes probably.

Progress Report #2

For so long now it seems nothing much has been happening on the house. 'Stuff' has been happening, in fact we're flat out every weekend pretty much, but its just been all the preparation and intermediary stuff that doesn't really leave you satisfied that anything is actually finished.  Well....now stuff really is happening. It is finally starting to come together and we can see what all that blood sweat and tears has achieved.


The new lounge is very close to being finished. Just a few touch ups and we're done. New lights and a fan were fitted yesterday. Air-conditioners were fitted in the lounge and bedroom a few weeks ago (just in time for a stinking hot summer again). We've added new skirting, cornice and a picture rail. Sanded, prepped and painted. 


We've cut a new doorway through to the kitchen which has changed the whole feeling of the house. What was previously quite a dark kitchen, is now filled with light and we have a wonderful breeze blowing in through the new front doors. We will barely need to run the air-conditioner hopefully.


Not long after we moved in (a few years ago now), we learnt that the breezes comes from the front of the house. We often found it much cooler sitting out the front than out the back. Thus the reason why we decided to open up the front of the house and create more of an entertaining area at the front.  Plans are underway to build an additional roofed structure on the front of the house, in keeping with the gable style, that will give us that entertaining area as well as protect the new front doors/louvres.  We will also be adding decking and new landscaping to make it hopefully a pretty awesome space.


So, for now we plod on with the finishing touches for the lounge room so we can move everything out of the old lounge. We can then start on room number 2, the new main bedroom!


We might take a bit of a break over Christmas (which seems to have sprung up on us again).................. maybe :)


p.s. In late October, Tilly had 6 ducklings hatch successfully.  Their cuteness only lasted about 2-3 weeks and they now look more like less cute mini ducks.  I haven't managed to work out males from females yet - that should come soon when their voice breaks and they start to quack. Well....the females will quack. The males get more of a low squeaky noise. The males also get a curl in their tail feathers (but that won't happen for another month or so). They will all be going to new homes but might wait until I can sex them.

Still a work in progress but the front of the house is starting to look more completed

New porch light to replace the horrible 70's yellow glass one

Newly fitted in the lounge - LED downlights, a pendant light in the corner (knicknamed 'the fishbowl') and black fan

 

 

Tilly's brood freshly hatched and very cute

Tilly's brood about 5 weeks old and not so cute anymore

Progress report

Gee time flies! Even though we are a long way from being even close to finishing anything, I thought I better report on progress so far.

The house is completely restumped and so work both internal and external commenced with a frenzy (as if we didn't have enough to do still).  We have decided on a process of room shuffling to enable us to complete one empty room at a time. First on the list was the new lounge room which meant we had to move out of our bedroom.  That meant moving everything out of the spare bedroom into the office, moving everything out of the office etc etc. The result being that we have one empty lounge room and an abundance of 'stuff' in a pile waiting to either go back into the new rooms as we complete them or eventually sorted through and gotten rid of.

After much debate, we eventually decided to go with timber french doors in the front of the house. This mostly came about after we came across an old set of silky oak french doors for sale on Gumtree. They were originally from the old Townsville hospital so also carry abit of history. They needed sanding and varnishing but have come up looking amazing.

Settling on grey, white and colourbond ironstone for the colour scheme, we are close to finishing painting the front of the house.   French doors are fitted so just waiting on new timber louvres to go in either side then we can finish repairing the chamferboard and complete the painting. We are also fitting traditional style window awnings over the two front windows to disguise the ugly aluminium sliders a little bit. We decided to leave the existing windows for the time being due to the cost of replacing.

We also had to apply to relocate the entry point for the electricity. Previously hanging a bit too low across the street and fitting smack bang in the middle of the front of the house, it now sits at a good height and fixes to the side of the house.  Costing about $1500, this was done (a) to allow us to build a portico and deck off the new front doors, and (b) so we can plant tall shrubs in the front garden (for privacy) without the risk of them reaching the cable. 

On the inside, we have removed the ceiling sheeting to reveal the original (much) higher ceiling height, with battens still in place. VJ wall sheeting also still in place, we thought it was a crime not to revert back to the original 3.5metre high ceilings. It changes the look of the room completely, making it feel more spacious and cooler. Now comes the fun part - choosing new light/fan fittings.

We just need to replace the ceiling sheeting, cut openings for the new doors into the spare bedroom and kitchen, moving light switches and power points, fit airconditioner, paint....

Til my next report!

p.s Tilly is sitting on eggs at the moment so hopefully will have more ducklings soon. This time hatched my mother duck instead of surrogate chook.

Making up window awnings (currently removed for painting)

Uncovering the original ceiling height (with lower ceiling battens still showing)

Original ceiling height (with lower ceiling battens removed)

New front doors fitting - Yay they fit!

With timber louvres in place for photo (currently removed for painting)

Old power entry connection point - now needing patching and painting.

The new power connection point

Tilly and her nest