Chewing Like Crazy

There is a period of time, after you take on a project like this, where it consumes you and you have little time to focus on much else. It's just a cycle of eat, sleep, sit and wonder what the hell you've done.

It's inevitable, however, that real life claws its way back sooner or later.

When we moved to the Lockyer Valley, it was to make a tree change. We envisioned a quieter, slower existence out here.

 I think we underestimated the reality of moving within an hour of three growing cities (Toowoomba, Ipswich and Brisbane) and the opportunities that would present for meeting new people and for work.

Neither Dan or I have ever been one to resist a good opportunity. We both tend to bite off more than we can chew and then chew like crazy. 

Now, we're both working harder than we've ever worked and not just on the house. Dan's new job is all-consuming - in a good way, he's loving it - and, aside from the usual demands of caring for a toddler, I'm tinkering away on several projects now which hopefully will be at a point where I can reveal them soon.

The house has stopped being such a high priority. Rather, it's a minor side-show. A curiosity. It's functioning just fine as a half-lived in house, a little cottage, with most now closed off for who-knows-how-long. Months? I mentioned having Christmas here this year and Dan looked terrified, like he had no intention of finishing the kitchen and dining room finished by then.

I hope we have it finished by then.

We'll get there, sooner or later, and the occasional realisation that one day I won't have to work from a dark corner of the guest room at night or cook dinner on an electric grill perched on top of a washing machine never fails to fill me with happiness.

We've had a few deliveries this week to add to our growing collection of building supplies. This window arrived on Wednesday and will eventually go into the kitchen. I never knew it was possible to love a window, but I love this one. It will one day have my favourite view on our property through it.

One day.

Sunday Bits and Pieces - The Outside Edition

Before I kick off with a heap of photos from outside, taken over the last few days with my actual camera (not my Iphone - I'm trying to get break the habit), I have to issue a correction.

Today, I went with my family to the National Hotel in Laidley for lunch and who should we end up sitting right next to, but Joyce.

Joyce and I have caught up a few times now and today we were talking about this blog and she admitted that she didn't like that I kept describing Little House as a former school house when it was, in fact,  a school once upon a time.

So, I'm setting the record straight for you Joyce, lest the local history records be tainted by my words - Little House was a school, not a school house.

Moving on, we've been outside a lot over the last few days. It's been cooler but still sunny and the perfect weather for getting into jobs that were so unpleasant over summer. 

Dan spent this morning putting up these racks, for categorising and storing VJs he removes from the house and picks up at the salvage yard until he needs them again.

I've been working away on this one patch of weeds and long grass for weeks now. Slowly, I'm forcing it back to a point where I can keep it maintained on the mower from now on. Every little bit helps. 

The little one has strawberries still firmly on her mind and has to be reminded that not everything growing in the garden can be eaten as is... and also, she likes wearing her boots on the wrong feet. 

Whatever works.

She's also been checking on the horses for Louise...

...and keeping an eye on the plants for her Mother...

...and is getting sick of being photographed.

The nights are getting cold and the Westerly is starting to get pretty fierce. Winter, here we come. 

The afternoons are still pretty lovely, though.

Happy Sunday!

Big House From The Front

Tonight, I'm going to do something I've not done here: post a full frontal picture of Big House. In all her glory (or current lack thereof).

Soon, this house is going to look very different and I can't really convey the transformation without showing you what she looks like now too. 

The tree needs a cut back, the house needs a new roof and her verandahs opened and some timber battons at the bottom....

She needs a lot of things, let's be honest here. 

(Excuse Pepper and her George Jetson get-up there, she was desexed last week)

Meanwhile, here on the interior, Dan is making good progress. 

I'm getting to do all the fun stuff - pick colour schemes and lighting and taps and so on.

This old house of ours - she keeps us busy. We think she'll be worth it.

Operation Demolition

Operation: Demolition has begun.

Dan came home from work last night and, after a lengthy interlude cleaning out a very old blockage from a drain over at Little House (yuck), started pulling VJs from the wall between what will be the study and what will be the kitchen.

The first pull of his crowbar on the first board brought down a shower of ancient rats' nests and faeces on his head and I could hear the unique combination of gagging and swearing from the verandah kitchen.

Stupidly, I went in there to offer support. 

The smell. My God, the smell.

Suddenly, I felt very busy with other tasks based at the far end of the house.

He reappeared briefly to bark something at me about how next time I wanted to buy a 100 year old house, I could deal with its hundred year old problems. Then he grabbed the Scotch and a glass and disappeared back to the frontline.

Meanwhile, back in the trenches, verandah kitchen's new benchtop oven hasn't arrived yet so I spent the afternoon chopping veggies and dividing up portions of meat to give the slow cooker a good run over the next week or so.

Verandah kitchen. Strangely comfortable.

Our old stove is still connected, but given the demolition going on around it, I feel it might be more hygienic to use the slow cooker for now.

Renovator's Kitchen

After five or so months in our shell of a kitchen, this afternoon we packed up and moved onto the back verandah instead.

As I've mentioned before, this is so we can basically seal off half the house and start work in there.

While having a kitchen on a verandah doesn't sound ideal, it's actually a step up for us in many ways. We have brought up some cupboards from the shed to use in here, so it actually has more storage than the kitchen we've used so far, which had exactly no cupboards.

The kitchen we've used so far. (The actual real, forever kitchen will go here too)

Setting up the back verandah to use as a kitchen was relatively straightforward. Dan put his plumber's hat on this morning, running new pipes from here to there to divert our water to where we need it to be -- and installing a sink mixer on the old laundry trough.

Today, he's a plumber.

This is the beginnings of our makeshift kitchen. 

For cooking, we have a large countertop oven with two hotplates on the top, plus an array of electric frypans and grills, a slowcooker and, of course, we can just use the BBQ.

So, in many ways a step up for us from the last five months. But I'll probably save my rejoicing until the real kitchen is up and running. 

Budget Bathroom Floor Revamp

Sometimes, in renovating, you have to just invest a little time and money to make something liveable until you can spend more time and money making it better permanently.

Our bathroom is an example. 

With all our time and energy currently going into the kitchen and dining area, the bathroom is well and truly on the backburner. Realistically, I can't see us getting to it for a couple of years. 

We pulled out the old floor coverings when we moved in and, as I've said before, I painted the verandah boards white to try and make it look fresher.

It didn't work, because we have dogs who like to come and sleep in this room.

Mud!

When they were clean, the white boards had a certain rustic charm but the gaps are a big problem - as winter approaches and the wind has started whistling up between them in the mornings, we needed a slightly more weather-proof solution. 

Enter a packet of vinyl tiles.

No mud! Yet!

So there you go. A $50 solution to a lot of cold mornings and hopefully one that'll last a couple of years until we do the bathroom permanently.

Kitchen Countdown

People, it's nearly time to get some kitchen renovation happening around here.

Here's the thing: Dan has a new job and, while we're both thrilled for him because it's a great opportunity for a great company, his time to work on this build just plummeted. Dramatically. To practically no time.

And here's another thing: we can't put off the kitchen renovation because we're sort of locked into the time frames having already ordered the kitchen...

And here's the final thing: our budget allows almost nothing for labour. Dan is our labourer.

So, there you go. An interesting predicament. The kitchen is being installed for us but we need someone to line walls and replace some flooring and install new windows. Dan is going to try and do what he can in the next few weeks and after that, who knows?

I sincerely hope I am not stuck using the back verandah makeshift kitchen for months though.

Anyway, let's not let this little speed bump deter us from important things like looking at inspirational pictures on Pinterest, shall we?

Here's a look at where we're headed, style-wise. This is the closest thing I've found online to what we're doing: the cabinets are very similar to what we've ordered, and we're going with timber bench tops. We'll be doing what we did in the Little House: buying bamboo benchtops from Bunnings and then putting several coats of two pack finish on to harden them up.

This room, as you may notice, has a large pressed tin ceiling, which we also have. I love the colour they've chosen - I'd only really thought to paint ours in white, but it looks great dark here - it really emphasises the detail.

Here's another example:

We've ordered a sink, a fluted double butler's sink, not unlike this one:

Dan has ordered timber sash windows to put back into the kitchen and bedrooms, replacing the aluminium windows there now. We were going to do the kitchen only (for now), but while he was at the supplier's, he saw four windows in the 'seconds' section for a fraction of the price - apparently they were just a custom order that hadn't been picked up. They're quite tall and narrow, so two will be fitted side by side in the two outside bedrooms.

Exciting times!