wall down.

we finally ripped the wall down!

before.



after. Looks so much better and has a nicer feel (more livable). Please dont judge my messy house!





we found these whilst working, a sixpence and what apears to be part of a
pendant or earring.  does anyone know what the yellow stone might be
 (set in silver, well worn, but not a scratch on the face of the stone)?
Lev also found a small perfume bottle and a bullet today :)





lev wants to share how digusting our water is. that's
our old filter next to the new one (after only 3 months).



i painted the front door frame today. not yet finished.

the colours we're chosen for the door and wall. grey and grey!

painted the fence too. same colour just
necessary maintenance.

lev digging levels, preparing for the arrival of a friends dingo (digger)
 for the slab and carport.

finally some real renovations.

Well, sort of. Spurred on by a feeling of time running out (it's not, we just panic sometimes) we decided to make a start on moving the kitchen upstairs. This is a big job. We're slightly insane. Lev's still finishing the roof, lining up the concrete slab for the driveway and has a few more stumps to do first. But the kids went to bed and we pulled up the carpet.

before. lev pondering over pie. 'I hate that f@#$% wall'

'i'll do it dear'

the house has interesting history.

lev fitted a new light in our bedroom. as you can see
he cut out the first hole and found a rafter.
its bogged up now.

we need some input on our front gate. the original plan was palings but
we've since been considering boxed corrugated iron. like the one below.
tell us what you think, and you could win something.





little bits.

lev finished the second last side of the roof! no pictures though. can't be bothered. lev's been putting his hand to interior decoration and has made a few additions to the living room. The first is an old brass fire extinguisher found at the tip. He polished it back to brass, stuck some greenery in it. Then he stuck up some old fishing rods the fella across the road gave him.



brass fire extinguisher.



man decorating.

And we found an old chandelier at a garage sale. It's not really a chandelier, just a 3 light thing. Lev dismantled it before i could take a photo. I want to put it in the dining room when we've put our new kitchen in. i think it will look awesome.

eating dinner around our dismantled garage sale light.

Some other little bits.



abel in front of his new garden. he's growing
oats, quinoa, cucumbers, pumpkins, swedes.



my beautiful girls in their new locally-made dresses.

And to wrap up. Lev's working hard on the front gate so hopefully by next weekend we'll have a working gate that keeps the kids in. G'bye all.

gate those kids in.

We had a ball last weekend at our friends' wedding! That's us as glammed up as we'll ever be. Kids got babysat for the reception so we could relax and have a good night. Obviously not a good enough night because Lev was straight into hungover-power tooling Sunday avo. He must be getting frustrated with Illy bolting for the road so he's made a lot of progress on the gate out the front. Here's some pics.

lev dug the hole last week.

welded on some little bits for swinging.

big welder, little welder. (not sure if 4 year
olds should participate in welding)

pole in place. cementing still unfinished.



gate up.

 The gate is going to be covered in wooden palings and then painted to make pretty. We're thinking of welding a decoration to the pole as well. I'm excited. But Illy can still escape at this stage.

Meanwhile the roof remains really unfinished. Lev spent this afternoon removing the old tin off one of the smaller sides and he'll spend this weekend putting the new tin on.

And on a smaller note. Lev's been still at that stupid archway in the dining room. Stripping the paint. It's going to look nice one day.

And that's it for this week. Hopefully will have a new side on our roof by the next blog update. :)

Back from our little hiatus.

There's a few reasons we've not been blogging. Mainly because we haven't had a camera so there's been no photos to post, and no one reads a renovating blog without photos. We've also been pretty social lately, spending a lot of time with our buddies, bbqing, drinking and fishing and tomorrow we're going to a wedding (yay!). But we bought a camera so we're back!

Lev still hasn't finished the roof. A friend from NSW came and helped him do the front side of the house, so that's two sides done. We've noticed the difference with the extra insulation but because it's taken so long to get ridge capping, every time it's rained, we've had leaks down the walls. Not cool. We've got the ridge capping now, but Lev got sick so it's still sort of sitting around waiting to be done.

Here's some updates of what we've been doing otherwise.



lev's incredible productive vegie garden; zucchinis, snowpeas,
chives, pineapple, pumpkin, tomatoes, celery and...
cant remember anymore.







window seat where a linen cupboard used to be.
obviously there's no window yet.
and the seat still needs a lot of work.

 


stripping paint off our living room arches.
beautiful hardwood underneath blue, white,
green paint.




mabel monkey and hector giraffe, made for a fundraiser.





more wall, and a some roof!!!

happy easter all. we have been sooo busy. Lev finally got a chance to start on the roof. He spent a day just prepping for the big job. Then removed a quarter of the roof, one flat side. The tin that came down was so corroded and weak it wasn't funny. Then Lev put down some insualtion on the part that they hadn't already done. Then he laid the sisalation and finally put the tin back on. It all took 3 days. It took a bit extra because there was a rotten beam that needed replacing and he did some wiring because our new kitchen is going to go underneath. Here's the pics.

old rotten tin.





you can see the rotten beam... this is before insulation. lev did some wiring.

added insulation.

sisalation added.





new tin.


So lev's currently having a few beers with his friend after his big job. Well deserved. Meanwhile I had a stab at painting our front wall which Lev finished building. I painted the slats brown and it looks great. We've had a few issues with the green paint of the render. Firstly a certain person bought interior paint, not exterior (we're going to use it anyway, it's too expensive) then secondly, it sort of didn't turn out to be the right colour. But shh, don't tell anyone. Maybe no one will notice. It's just so hard to pick the right colour based on those stupid little cards against a rendered wall.

night session.

julia's turn.



nearly finished!



Lev built a wall.

Hello all. Been such a slow couple of weeks due to the horrid amounts of rain we've had. As well as discovering a few leaks in the roof (we've got the iron, just need some good weather), we also discovered some drainage issues in the yard. Here's a look.

we'll eventually cement most of this in and make a carport.

vegie garden drowning. not cool.

But despite all the rain Lev has still been working away at his wall. It's been a lengthy process because he'll start rendering and then it'll start to rain and he'll whip out his trusty airforce tarp, stand on the veranda and wait. But funnily enough, I said in the last blog we decided to do the wall to keep stray dogs out, but over the weekend we had our friends little staffy over for a sleepover, and the walls new job was to keep the dog in. The kids had a ball playing with Bella, she kept Jules and Abel busy for hours, while Illy looked on in constant fear. But she's getting better.

But back to the wall. Here's some pics and I'll get Lev to add his little bit about it all tomorrow night when he's not sleeping.

slowly rendering.



all it needs now is a bit of paint.

 And to conclude, I was walking up those god forsaken stairs to pick up a screaming child and kicked my little toe. I looked down and saw it was sticking out all wrong. It's so broken. It's the toe at the end of the bone I broke last time. It's bruised, swollen and really bloody hurts, and I feel really stupid.