Laundry

The laundry floor is cleaned now too, ready for linseed oil. I'm so happy with the way the whole laundry has turned out!

There are lots of little things being done around the house, we're working on cleaning up the shed and clearing out a lot of junk. We're looking forward to painting a little cupboard for the spare bedroom tomorrow.. and there's a lot of random bits of painting to do around the outside of the house. Only small things left now. :)

As soon as they're done, I have promised myself a big blog post with before and after photos of the house - as it was when we got it - and now that it's in a much more finished state. Much easier to see the differences that way. I can't wait! :)

Back room

 

We're getting closer to being finished! A huge, heart-felt thanks to Mum, Michael and Mike for taking time out of their crazy-busy lives to come down and stay with us for a few days. They really were the motivation and action behind getting the laundry and back room started! They helped us get the old concrete sinks out - fixed walls - put up architraves around the windows that never had them - got cracking on the painting - solved our procrastination with their can-do attitudes! So thank you, thank you, thank you! :)

We mostly come into the house from the back door, so this area gets the coats and shoes thrown in it. The floors have taken a beating from years of paint and neglect, but we gave them a good scrub today and it's coming up pretty well. Next it needs a good wash and a few coats of linseed oil.

The laundry is to the right of the photo, but no pictures yet - not until after the floor is done tomorrow! :)

Everything is painted the same colours as the kitchen - Goats Cheese is the white, Cheese Stick is the yellow. It feels like it's taken forever! So many fiddly bits! We must have used at least 10 litres of Cheese Stick including the kitchen! Mum and Mike got us another 4 litres before they left - I swore we wouldn't need that much, but they were right!

5 year anniversary!

Today marks the day we became the owners of this old miners cottage - 5 years ago already. We were grateful for the sunny and dry day, because we had much of our belongings outside while an exciting event happened inside!

I don't know if you've noticed the last photos I showed deliberately avoided the floor.. well, I don't have to avoid it anymore. It's beautiful!

The bedroom door is just sitting there for now.. looks a bit weird, but we'll have it back up as soon as we take a bit from the bottom.

Our bedroom again..

The second bedroom, where Ross is staying.

We've noticed most people choose beige or brown carpet, so we hope that we havn't strayed too far from the norm with the grey colour.

We're all completely exhausted from the moving of furniture, heaps of vacuuming and cleaning. It feels so much larger inside now, and clean!

Oh, and in other news, we found ourselves a Ute in need of a new home. It's a 1994 Hilux Grinner!

Hopefully this one will make it up to the farm this next trip! Seriously though, it's a nice car, and I think it'll do just fine. :)

Until next time!

Almost speedy progress

Lime wash isn't the fastest of painting methods, but it does look nice once it's finished! We also have piece of mind knowing that the walls are more able to breathe now. Ignoring all the advice we've been given to use bondcrete, concrete or paint sealant on the walls, we hope the house will be happy and healthy for many years to come.

The bedroom again - the pink is ok, although not my favourite colour, the texture is nice. We're happy with it.

Marty is resting his broken wrist. He's only got one more week before he can have it taken off. It's been great having him home so much, although he's in more of a supervisor / foreman position when it comes to the renovations at the moment.

The front loungeroom. The white is a tad boring after a while, colouring the lime is a bit tricky. Once we've finished painting a room white, we rarely want to paint it over again. Plus I'm a little nervous about making coloured limewash!

There's just one room left to finish - the bedroom up the front. At the moment, it looks a mess:

It won't be long before it looks as good as the other rooms. (I have to keep reminding myself that too!) The carpet is chosen, and ready at the store.. we just have to finish this last room (which is tiny really) and we can have it put down. I hope it looks good. The choosing is the hardest part really.

Oh, and for the sad news.. we recently said a sad goodbye to our 1986 Hilux Ute. It tried to take us and a heavy 4 poster bed up to the farm, it really did. The engine failed about 2 hours into the trip and Ute never started again. Getting a replacement engine was going to be quite hard given it's age, and the cost of that alone would have been much more than the ute was purchased for (a mere $700). Added to that the automatic transmission was failing (we honestly thought that would be the first to go, we had no idea the engine was in trouble!), we thought it was time to let go. We sold it to the wrecker. We got many parts for the ute from that same wrecker, so it's nice to think that someone else's ute may benefit from our loss.

Until next time!

Bedroom pics

We've been working on the loungeroom and bedroom lately, and they're both finished except for carpet of course. It's a very strange feeling actually. Marty and I looked at old pictures just to remind us how far we've come recently.

The bedroom wall - it needed a little scraping back. Some of the paint was lifting off, and underneath that is bright blue! I think the blue is a lime-based paint too, which is interesting.

I skipped over the whitewashing part, because it's a difficult thing to photograph. Basically we put up 3 coats of whitewash. It's best to wet down the wall first, and once it's wet, apply the "paint". It looks like you havn't done anything productive for all the work, but give it 24 hours and the results show themselves. Do that again twice more and it starts to look really nice!
Then we tried a coloured version of the limewash. We used sheep raddle! It's readily available around here at the farm supplies store. I used a combination of red and blue, but it mostly came out pink anyway!

The first coat dried a little light, so I added quite a bit of blue. The end result:

We both wished it was a little more purple, but it's a nice pink. :)

The bedroom is back together, the loungeroom has been moved into the middle room that's finished (it's just white, no colours), and we've started working on the front loungeroom. Already we've repaired the cracks, removed the carpet and fixed a few holes.

So, that's our progress over the past month or so. Of course we wish things were moving along at a quicker pace, but being only human and all...

Until next time!

Pics as promised!

This is what the front of the house looks like with a freshly painted picket fence.

The loungeroom ceiling looks much nicer now. The window frame and skirting boards will be a different shade of white eventually. Actually, that reminds me.. I completely forget what I was doing with the window (probably painting around it) when I noticed that the top of the window was not attached to the frame. There was a good sized gap and the window wobbled! I wonder how long it'd been like that for? It's all fixed now, of course. :)

This is my current fermenting collection. Some have been up on that shelf for nearly 3 weeks, and others were done only yesterday. I can't wait to try them!

It's a beautiful clear Autumn day - lovely in the sun, but it will cool down again tonight. Hopefully I'll have more renovations to blog about soon. It's getting down to mostly painting now I think.

Until next time!

Happiness is a..

I just had to share a happy photo with you all!

Marty - thrilled with his Ukulele. :)

It looks like I never did update you with pictures from the roof in the loungeroom - or the painted fence! How slack am I?

The loungeroom is waiting on our good electrician friend to hook up the light and a power point, but is looking much more habitable now. Ross and I painted the roof and arcs a lovely shade of .. white. Ok, not very exciting, but that's what the other rooms look like as well.

Painting the picket fence was painfully slow. I wouldn't recommend pickets to anyone! (Well, unless they never needed painting or replacing.) On the plus side, they look great now!! I'll get a photo tomorrow. No, really, I will. :)

The chooks are just finishing up their annual moult. Just one left to feather-up and they'll be set for winter. We've been getting 0 eggs per day lately - and since we didn't produce any chicks this year, we'll not expect any eggs this winter either.

Otherwise, we've been enjoying expanding our food choices recently. We're still gluten free, but we're eating onions, garlic and different fruits and vegetables that were on the "avoid" list on our previous diet. The previous diet worked wonders for all kinds of health issues I was experiencing, but I felt it was time we moved-on, since it felt like we'd be restricted long enough (and my health wasn't quite perfect still, despite the restrictions). I'm happy to report that we're all feeling great and everyone in the household is happy and feeling more healthy every day.

Infact, it's been so much fun making sauerkraut and pickles and big lots of stock/broth. Ross has been making milk and water kefir and cooking up new and different foods for dinner. We tend to avoid too many starches and grains, and I'm especially avoiding sugar (except a little honey). I'd call it a relaxed version of the GAPS diet I suppose.

Anyway, everyone's gone to bed, and the fire has well and truly gone out for the evening. Have a good night and I'll update again tomorrow!

So it's Wednesday..

Yesterday didn't turn out as planned, but there was action today!

All hands on deck to put up the plasterboard.

With the ceiling put up, they even got 3 of the cornice bits installed before home-time.

We're hoping for an early start tomorrow morning to finish it off. I hope the hardware store has the rest of the architraves we need now. We've been waiting for far too long for them to arrive. I might have to take a 30 minute drive to the next town to get the remainder just so we can finally finish the job.

Oh - and it's worth a mention that we did a good amount of painting on the front fence yesterday. It's looking fantastic.. but there are a few things to finish there before the final pictures are taken. Since we're finally getting some rain, we're happy to wait to finish painting. :)

The list..

We're getting through it!

To help us along, we created a small table saw using a circular saw mounted to the bottom of a table, which we made from the bottom half of the old back door. You also can see the shed window.. The old one is the rotted bits of wood below it, and the new one is all finished now. It only took a couple of days and about $40 for the new glass, and another $40 worth of wood.

Marty sanding the step

The finished product

 This is the step between the loungeroom and the kitchen. It's such a beautiful piece of wood - this one was found in our pile. (We don't throw much out around here if we can help it.) Turns out this use to be the mantle piece for the loungeroom before we ripped it all out. It had liquid nails all over the back of it (That's how it was held up! Can you believe??) and it was painted white - really badly, I might add. Such a beautiful piece of wood - what a waste. I hope it enjoys it's new position in the house!

Next came the saga of the loungeroom ceiling. Gary the builder, Marty and I all decided that it really should come down, so Ross and Marty got completely black and disgusting and pulled down all the pine covering to see what was underneath. Turns out that whole side of the ceiling was being held up by only the one corner. Yikes! With some very industrial props, the ceiling was pushed up to where it needed to be, and we attached everything together again using saddles and big long screws. (The old nails had fallen out long ago..) This roof isn't going to move again, that's for sure! As a bonus, we've got quite a lot of extra head-room in there now! haha

BEFORE! Note the height of the ceiling relative to the window

After - much more secure.

 Gary the builder has been busy putting the architraves up!

We're all going to be here for Tuesday when we'll help Gary put the ceiling up. Pretty exciting!

There's still plastering and painting to do of course, but it really feels like the list of renovations is finally getting shorter.

Now there's more to do in the lounge!

The roof in the loungeroom came down the other day, and it took some doing. Ross and Marty and a couple of pry-bars did all the work. The original roof is still up, and we're happy to leave it that way. We just couldn't work with the wood that was covering it, because it only went as far as the walls were that we took down already.

There isn't much we havn't done to that loungeroom now. From foundations, to sub-floor, to floor and plastering, and now just the ceiling and architraves left to go. Oh, and a lot of whitewash I imagine!

Momentum

Apologies for the lack of posts lately. I'm seriously lacking some inspiration for updating on our progress. The good news is, at least, there is actually some progress being made!

This was how it looked late last month.

The kitchen is pretty much finished now. There are a couple of touch-ups to do, but I have officially put the paint away and cleaned it all up. The house no longer looks like a painting/construction zone, and the kitchen is functional and quite pretty as well. I'm very happy with the colour!

That picture still needs hanging up.. and maybe we should move the little cupboard more towards the centre there. The wall colour seems to change from a cream colour to a yellow colour, depending on the light.

Oh and not only that, but the spot near the stone that has been missing wood since we put the Bakers Oven in, has finally, unbelievably got wood in it!! I've still got to paint some linseed oil on it, but check it out!

There has been progress made in plastering as well. The loungeroom at the front of the house is *almost* done on two of the walls. You really wouldn't believe just how much lime plaster these walls needed. We've done at least 2 coats on them already, and another coat is needed for finishing it off. It's so difficult to describe, so I think I'll just let the pictures do the talking with this one too.

It took quite a long time to get the liquid nails off the wall, the lines are still evident. The skirting board is new as well. It won't be long until it's attached to the wall properly.. but even now it gives a finished feeling to the wall. It's going to look great.

 

This wall has looked so bad for so long. Would you believe since April 2009? The comparison is only a click away! It's almost weird to see it look like an actual wall.

Ross is still here and helping out, and it's been great having him here. He's turning into quite a good plasterer as well! :)

I'm feeling the momentum to get these annoying projects out of the way. Once the front loungeroom is finished off some more, we'll concentrate on the other one. Nothing has happened in there for quite some time, but it's a big job, and I wanted to get better at plastering before moving onto that one. (The plasterer that was helping us seems to have run and hid. I can understand that!!)

Until next time!

My most favourite kitchen photo yet!

Having my brother, Ross, here to stay over Christmas has inspired us all to get renovating again! These last few days have been concentrating on painting the kitchen, and I am thrilled with the results. I'm trying to find a 'before' photo to compare it with, but we havn't really taken any photos of this spot since the Bakers Oven went in!

We chose yellow to make the room more cheerful. The sun shines in here only in the late afternoon in the summertime. (Which is why it looks so pretty right now!)

Otherwise Ross and I have done some more plastering of the walls in the loungeroom. That doesn't photograph so well, so I'll wait until it's finished to show it off. There's a bit more to go yet though! We've also been painting and repairing the picket fence out the front. It's been a bit too hot to finish that one lately though.

We're going to miss Ross (and his cooking!) when he's gone. Hopefully he comes back to visit again really soon. :)

Painted and reinstalled

One small step for Marty and Manda.. many more to go!

Renovating with Roosters

Victor is a funny rooster. He loves to come and check out the happenings, even in OUR side of the yard! Especially if there's a bucket involved.

The fireplace surround is almost ready for painting. It took a lot to take the grey paint off it, then some black paint, and under that we discovered it originally had a marble-look. How interesting!

Sadly it's only being painted black tomorrow. Nothing so fancy as marble! Hopefully we'll get to put it back on the wall as well. We'll both be glad to get that little job done.

Until next time!

Finished projects

The bathroom is almost finished now. I've only a little painting to do around the door, the door itself and I still need to put up another towel rail on the door.. Little things in comparison to all that has happened in this tiny room!

What do you think?

The floor tiles look shiny only because they're wet - I had to clean the floor before the glamour shots! :)

Showering in there is so many million times better than the old bathroom. I couldn't count the ways! For starters, it's nice not to have to climb into the bath first.. there's more room to shower now.. it's not cold or draughty.. there's a fan.. and there's definitely no mould!

The few minor things aside, we're happy to consider this project finished. :) I'll be busy doing those smaller things sometime in the coming couple of weeks - since I need to keep busy with Marty away visiting Mom in the US!

So, while the cat's away (so to speak..) I took the opportunity to go shopping! Ok, I'll be honest. I don't like shopping and it was really difficult making a decision - I would have much preferred Marty to be making it.. BUT.. I took a chance on a cheap $79 Billy Bookcase from Ikea.

I put it together by myself (although the instructions do say it needs 2 people), and hey presto, it fits perfectly!

Guess I'll have to get another for the other side now. But first I have to fix the plaster on the wall.. and paint the fireplace sorround.. fix it back onto the wall there.. could do with some new carpet too.. oh, but the floor needs a little TLC first.. and.. and..  you get the idea!

I'll keep working on it.. until next time!

The first shower

The bathroom isn't finished yet, but even so, we took our first shower in it yesterday. It was a very long and lovely shower! :)

I feel brave enough to show some pictures now, if you'd like to see..

This picture is from yesterday - the blue tape is from when I was painting.. it's gone now though.

I got this today to fit in that empty corner. My poor plants aren't looking very happy after spending so much time in the spare room where I've forgotten to water them!

Got a bit more work to do yet.. a little bit more painting, I have a new shower curtain that needs the hem sewing, the heater/light/fan needs to be installed, need a towel rail, toilet roll holder.. that kinda thing. At very least we can shower! It's a lovely feeling.

The Bathroom

There's a TV show called The Block, where the contestants are given a week to renovate a room completely and are then judged on the outcome. After the last four weeks renovating the bathroom here, I have absolutely no idea how they do it all in only a single week.

The whole room was pulled apart, walls, roof and floor - all gone. I didn't take any pictures. Instead I'll wait until it's finished (or at least, in a usable state). I'm not sure why.. perhaps so it gets finished! Maybe I feel like if I take photos, it'll sit like that online forever.. like the middle two rooms floor!

The plumber and "sparky" have played their parts, but the builder has been here almost every day working hard and doing the bulk of the work. Marty and I have been helping (and showering at work!)

The floor is in, as are the walls and the roof. Insulation has been put in all around. The waterproofing membrane is painted in the shower area, and the tiles are almost all in. The grout is next - being done this weekend by me.

We have a new toilet ready to install, a vanity unit on order, and a fan/light/heater unit ready to put in too.. it's coming along!

But no photos yet. :)

Keeping warm

I couldn't bring myself to take photos of more plaster. BORING! :)

Instead, I have here, for your enjoyment and ours, a picture of warmth and satisfaction.

The fireplace is almost complete. It took a lot of work, surprisingly!

The plaster is whitewashed, but we didn't want it stark white, so we added some colour. We decided to try making it dark by adding creosote to the whitewash, which turned it into a coffee/grey colour, and dried a sandy cream. Not entirely what we had in mind, but it does look good!

The Nectre 15 went in soon after and we lit a fire. Because we hadn't blocked the chimney yet, the heat disappeared up through the night, and we were left feeling less than warm. It just wouldn't do - we had to take the whole lot out and start again.

Of course, it took us 3 tries to get the cement sheet to fit inside the chimney just right. It wasn't easy! The chimney is anything but square, so we have brackets attached to the sides and the cement sheet sitting on them. It's all screwed down and sealed up with heat-proof silicone. Then the Nectre 15 was put back inside and.. well.. that's the short version anyway!

So now we're keeping warm, and I can fix up the whitewash tomorrow (I still have spare). I've been really impressed with the quality of the whitewash. It doesn't come off on clothing, it makes the plaster look smoother and finished. I believe it all comes down to using a quality slaked lime.

You'll probably notice a four-legged friend in the photo too. That's Coco, a 7 year old Australian Bulldog. She'll be staying with us for a while, but she has some big health issues. She's just starting some pain medication and hopefully will be feeling better soon.

Until next time!

Another coat

It's getting colder.. and although I'm not putting another coat on me, I did get another coat of plaster in the fireplace.

It's getting there, hey! Not bad for a beginner at finishing coats. I used a wooden trowel and a pretty wet lime plaster mix of 1 part lime to 2.5 parts sand. It'll be a lighter shade of whatever-that-colour-is when it dries, but we are planning on painting it with limewash anyway.

Our plasterer is popping over tomorrow to "finish" one of the walls in the loungeroom. "Finish" is a funny word around here, so excuse my chuckles. :) I'll be sure to take some pics. You'll be getting tired of wet plaster photos soon!

Until next time!

Going conventional!

Dear old chest fridge lasted another week before giving up the ghost. It became clear that we really had to find an alternative. It's funny though. Trying to think of an alternative is what gave us the incentive to try the chest fridge in the first place!

To quote Clint who told us on a forum;

Great idea, but unless they have radicaly changed the construction materials in the 20+ years since I was a fridge mechanic, they are doomed to a relatively short lifespan.

You see, ice doesn't cause rusting, only liquid water does. So most of the chest freezers for the last 40+ years use "bundy" tubing (rolled steel), since they are always frozen.

After a few years of use, moisture from the foam and air builds up around the pipes. This is not a problem, so long as the pipes stay below 0 degrees C. But as soon as its above 0, they start corroding.

This is why turning off a chest freezer and storing it for a few months would often result in it springing gas leaks and irrepairably failing. The frost becomes water, and corrosion takes off.

..and that is exactly what we think happened.

So, we're conventional once again. I got a new little 210 litre fridge/freezer which uses 360 kWh/year.

Initially we thought that .2kWh per day (about 73 kWh per year) was pretty good, but we found that we still needed a freezer, so we've had a small chest freezer running as well. It claims to use 262 kWh per year, so that amounts to about 335 kWh per year in total.

So, if we turn off the chest freezer, our usage won't increase too much. Still, we both miss the chest fridge. It was very quiet! *sigh*

Another way we've become conventional lately is the recent purchase of a ride-on lawn mower. Our first mower! I'm mostly amazed it's taken us this long. The scythe will still be used for edging, but the bulk of the grass is getting far too thick to be enjoyable anymore. It may be a sign the chooks are adding some fertility to the back garden, since nothing but woody weeds would grow before. Now a thick covering of a running-style grass has taken over, and although it looks nice, it needs maintenance.

It's quite an old mower, somewhere between 1984 and 1986. It needed a few parts to get it working again, but now that it does, we're very happy. It's another project that we've jumped into the deep end with, learned a lot and had our hands in grease for. Lots of fun. :)

Oh, and one more thing! We've recently had professional help!

A plasterer! He's very quick, willing to work with our lime plaster, and Marty knows him from work. Brilliant! It's certainly looking more like a loungroom now. We have a few more "holes" to fill before he comes back to put down another layer, but he's very keen, so we'll have to do that this weekend.

Until next time!