Fencing

What do you think normal people would choose to do in the days leading up to a three-month overseas holiday?

Pack?

Sort out bills?

Say goodbye to friends and family?

Build a fence?

No, that last one is just us. Because we're crazy. Surprise!

Our next door neighbour paid us her share for a new fence between our properties months ago. We demolished the old fence, ordered the materials, even dug a few holes with our sub-standard digger equipment before returning it. But with so much going on, we still hadn't actually started building the fence.

With our holiday looming, we decided we absolutely must get the fence done before we leave. So, first step was cutting away some of next door's concrete driveway that impinged on our land. We had yet more equipment fun getting that finished, and went through about three concrete cutting machines before we got it done. Do you think it's just us that machines hate?

And then it was time to dig in new post holes with yet another hired digger machine. No boys were available to help Tom with that, so I had to step in, man up, and hop on the other end of the two-person machine (which is why we have no photos of that process, because I was too busy sweating and trying to keep my arms from being ripped out of their sockets). That took most of our last Saturday, and finally, with two hours of noise-making time left before the 6:30pm curfew hit, we started the concrete mixer up to start installing the fence posts.

And then the concrete mixer broke.

Determined not to waste the time, we hopped on the phone and begged our old over-the-back-fence neighbour to borrow his, sent Daniel off to get it, and started cutting the sleepers to size and positioning them along the boundary to retain the neighbours' driveway properly.

Allie kept an eye out, as always.

We managed to get almost half of the posts in before we had to cut the noise, and finished the rest of them over the next few days.

Then we waited for the concrete to set, and what do you know, it was the morning of the day we were to leave on our holiday, and we still had only a shell of a fence. It was time to get those panels in. And quickly!

Fortunately that part of the process was the quickest, and instantly gratifying. An hour or two's work, and magic! We finally had a fence!

That done, we could move onto actually preparing to leave the country in a few hours! Talk about cutting it fine!

Plans They Are a'Changin'

Wow. So much is happening right now, there's been no time to blog about it!

We've got three sleeps to go before we hop on a plane for our Europe adventure, and I think I may just be reaching the point where my excitement is outweighing my anxiety. I've been freaking out about all of the things that need organising in preparation for our departure, and I think I may just be getting a grip on them. So bring on the holiday!

In the meantime, we've made huge leaps toward getting the house more habitable. The kitchen has been a giant leap. We've positioned most of our second-hand cabinets in the positions I planned in this post, but realised that there were a few major flaws in my plan. I had a feeling this might happen. Measurements are all well and good, but nothing solidifies (or ruins) things like actually putting something in a space and seeing how it feels/looks.

So... our kitchen has now gone from this...


To this...


It's certainly not perfect, but it's a lot more like a kitchen, isn't it?

You'll note that we've got the essential electric frying pan (referred to here) sitting on top of the stove in pride of place. Although we've got the power connected now (thank goodness), the stove top is gas, which isn't connected yet, so we're still overusing the fry pan.


You might notice in the above two photos that I've got a few little paint sample cards taped to the cupboard to the left of the oven. And yes, I'm thinking of going dark for the kitchen cupboards. Still thinking about that one.

So would you like a little tour of our kitchen?

Here's the area directly to the right when you walk through the doorway. The big fridge is exactly where I planned for it to be, but contrary to the plan, the dishwasher (not connected to anything yet) is now living next to it, where my original plan said the wine fridge is supposed to go.


This is because we realised how tight the little corner near the sink would be if we tried to slot the dishwasher in near it. It just isn't practical. So the compromise is to put it next to the fridge. It won't be as convenient for loading it from the sink, but it makes the most sense for the kitchen layout.

If we keep moving to the left of the fridge, here is the corner to the right of the stove. Almost exactly as planned, except that we plan to put the wine fridge to the right of those higher cabinets there. I do have some reservations about that, not the least of which are the fact that it's pretty high up, and the wine fridge is deeper than the cabinets. Hmm...

You can see the wine fridge currently sitting temporarily to the left of the corner cabinet. Eventually it will come out and the stove will move over so it's centred in the space properly. We'll also eventually build some little shelves to go to the left and right of the stove.


And now here we are on the left of the stove, with my little test paint cards.


Moving further to the left, and we've got my beautiful hutch. Won't it be fabulous painted?


And turning once again, we've got the little kitchen island (and a lovely view of the cleaning products under the sink).


My original plan had this cabinet being chopped up so that we could fit the dishwasher in the middle of that space, but it works so nicely in its current form, that we want to try to use it that way. We'll just need to sort out a corner cabinet to house a proper kitchen sink (not the laundry tub we're currently using).

And now, have you been wondering what the cause of this silver fox photo was?


It was the day that Tom pulled out the marble benchtop that we got with our second-hand kitchen cabinets and cut it to size to fit the new configuration of the cabinets.


Not only is having a benchtop wonderful (it's quite difficult chopping things up and serving food without one), I certainly appreciated the opportunity this gave me to trawl the Internet for pictures of George Clooney looking foxy. *sigh*

So that's our kitchen as it stands now! With Europe coming on there's not much going to happen to it for a little while, but I'm itching to get into it once we get back! All of that exposed timber just makes me want to reach for a paintbrush!

Patience, patience, there will be many distractions over the next few months to have me thinking of anything but paint colours!

Dreaming of Europe

I've got so many different house-related projects 90% finished, so have so much to tell you, but right now all I can think of is the fact that Tom and I will be jet-setting off to Europe in a little over a week (is it really that soon???), so rather than images of furniture and paint colours swimming around in my head, this is what I'm dreaming of:

sourced from Deep Dish Dreams

sourced from FAQs

sourced from Ashley's Nutrition

sourced from Sodahead

sourced from Dreamstime

sourced from Lepatissier Chocolatier

sourced from Good Housekeeping

sourced from Coffee Devotionals

Who cares about discovering that the roof is leaking (above my beautiful bedroom ceiling at that), cupboard doors that won't fit properly, a complete lack of working powerpoints in the kitchen, and a similar lack of any plumbing to our new bathroom?

Not me!

I'll be sipping Turkish coffee within a fortnight. Siiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

We Gots Power!

Isn't that the most beautiful sight ever?

If you don't think so, read this post and then answer again.

Yes, that's right. Almost FOUR months after we moved out of our house to allow the house raising to begin, we can FINALLY flick a light switch and actually create light! It's magical.

It started with the arrival of the meter box guy. Allie wasn't as excited about it as we were.


In fact, she thought it was so uninteresting that we needed a different game to occupy us - ball?


The council men arrived to control traffic...


The up-the-ladder guy climbed up and attached a power cable to the front of the house (we had some very stressful moments when it was called into question whether our original incompetent electrician had installed the ibolt in the wall correctly.


And then we waited. And waited and waited and waited and waited, because this happened.

sourced from yhen1027

Finally it stopped, and the cherry-picker man started ascending towards the heavens.


And after much, much mucking around (and a scare when the wrong wire appeared to be getting power), we... officially... had... power.... connected! There are no words to express how that moment felt. Here are the pictures:






Beautiful, huh?

My Latest Breakdown

It may surprise you to know that I'm usually a fairly level-headed, rational person, given how many mental breakdowns I've shared lately in relation to our renovations. What with possessed machinery, house-not-raised-high-enough discoveries, and many many MANY problems getting our power reconnected, our sanity is certainly being tested. Sadly, the more time passes, the more frequently things seem to reach a nightmarish level.

I only hinted at a fairly massive emotional outburst I had only just over a week ago when we decided to move back into our house - without power - but I had another one this week! Yikes. I really am going insane.

sourced from Zimbio

This time, I think I finally understand what most people have been referring to when they have said to me "you're living in the house while you're renovating?!" with wide eyes. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather be living in this house than any other house right now (except possibly our last house, which we all still dream of whenever life gets extra inconvenient). But this week, I'd reached my limit.

I've had enough of having to climb over stacked dining chairs and my clothes and toiletries in order to get into bed at night, and of eating in our living room atop a dirty, dusty blanket watching a TV that's sitting on scaffolding, surrounded by tools and boxes of tiles. I need a bit of normality now. It's been long enough.

So... now that the tiling of the bathroom is finished, I figured there was no real reason why I couldn't have some normality! We're not cutting out any more walls yet, we haven't got tradespeople tracking through the house, we can totally have normal again!

A key part of this is furniture. I've been searching for some time for new lounges for our house. We couldn't fit my favourite lounge from our last house into the new house - the doorways aren't wide enough. So we had to make the very sad decision to sell it a few months ago.


Tom had a workmate who was moving interstate who needed to get rid of his lounge suite, so at least we had something (for free), and there wasn't really anything wrong with it except that it's too big for our lounge room. Here are Daniel and I sitting on it on the very first day of our house raising process.


We currently have three walls in our lounge (the fourth is the dining room), each of which has at least one doorway in it, meaning that we don't have any walls big enough for a 3-seater couch to sit against them. And the room isn't big enough for us to float lounges in the middle and walk around them.

So! As I pondered and pondered and pondered how to furnish the room, I realised that we could just about manage to fit two 2-seaters facing each other along the two sections of wall nearest to the dining room. Not ideal for TV watching (which would be on the third wall), but not unworkable, and much better for conversation.

And so I started trawling Ebay and Gumtree for secondhand matching pairs of two-seater couches. And let me tell you, they're rare! Most people get one two-seater, and one three-seater. And that ain't gonna work for us! Daniel would have to climb over the three-seater to get to his room (the section of wall I'm talking about is on the left, where the ladder is in this photo. It doesn't look very big, but it's big enough. Just.


And FINALLY, I found these:


They aren't your typical big-furniture-stores-that-shall-not-be-named cheapies (not that there's anything wrong with them of course!), they were initially purchased from Myer, which makes them a bit better quality. They're in excellent condition. They look virtually brand new. I offered $400 for the pair, and got them! Hooray! Bargain!

Particularly since we're not going to live in this house forever, I see no point in investing big dollars in brand new couches that probably won't necessarily suit us long term. Plus with everything we've got going on (and the fact that I hate having to tiptoe around things to make sure I don't damage them - I'm a bit accident prone), we'd rather not feel like we need to protect them with our lives. A low $400 price tag solves that problem.


And so I got my wish. We moved all of the tools out to the shed, I mopped the floors, and then I could start on the furniture. I moved my dining table into place in the dining room, moved the dining chairs out from our bedroom, rolled out a rug, unpacked cushions and ornaments, and sighed with happiness. We have a dining room and a lounge room again. We are officially civilised people with couches once more.


And it feels SO good.

Really, it doesn't take much to make me happy, does it? Just a tool-free living room with furniture in it!

The Way We Live

I announced a week and a half ago that we decided to move back into our house, even though the power wasn't reconnected. Fortunately we can run the fridge and lights and one appliance at a time off an extension lead running across to the neighbour's house, so we're surviving.

The morning routine is like a game of musical chairs (or power cords) between the toaster, the kettle and the microwave, and let me tell you, I'm getting very creative with the meals I can make with an ancient electric frying pan (it used to be my grandmother's), the rice cooker and the microwave - but only one at a time, of course!


But what's a little inconvenience in return for having your own space again? I'll take it any day.

The one... just one tiny thing I'm struggling with? Cold showers.

Yes, I know. I said I could put up with it (and I'd definitely still take it over moving out again), but the novelty's wearing off.

It didn't take me long to stop using the shower head and start bathing the old fashioned way using the bath tap.

sourced from Urban Homestead

Actually it's nothing like that. Because the shower head is pretty old, it sprays in all kinds of directions, meaning that no matter where you stand, you get sprayed by one errant squirt of cold water. Cold showers are one thing. Tiny cold squirts that you can't escape are another!


So I have adapted. As the mornings get chillier now that we're in Autumn, I'm dying for warm water! So...I've discovered that I can boil the kettle and conduct a thorough wash with a single bucket of water! It's primitive, but it's sooooo much better than a cold squirty shower!!!

I've even managed to wash my hair successfully and shave my legs! Think very much like this:

sourced from People of Appalachia

For a girl who's never liked camping, I think I'm doing alright. That said, really, it's getting a bit old. Bring on our next power company visit (hopefully our last) this Friday!!!! We'll have to have a hot water party!