Makeover edition

I thought I needed a proper make-over comparison.


Bathroom before:

Bathroom after:

Only a few things left to do now. Skirtings, windows, and top coat of paint. :-)

End of line special

Hello. It's been a while. 6 months in fact. I've been doing stuff, just not very interesting or pretty stuff. (Like fixing the septic tank.) But I've spent the last 2 days on my knees, so that warrants a post.

Ta Da! Bathroom floor.

I costed out the options, and basically, everything was too expensive. I wanted black and white checkerboard, but the roll vinyl was either too expensive, or the squares were too small. Plus, how to get a roll of vinyl in the hatchback and drive it 100kms? Too hard. So, vinyl tiles. Internet research showed Mitre 10 Mega was cheaper than Bunnings, so I drove out to New Lynn, where I was dismayed to find a really ugly choice of faux marble. In defeat I wandered off around the corner, where I happened upon a whole rack of END OF LINE STOCK. Even better, they had plain black and plain white. The problem was, there wasn't quite enough black tiles left. So I dug around a bit more and found some parquet ones. 88 tiles for $54 was the result. $3 per 6 pack. (Retail price, $12.98) Later, I managed to pick up another 2 packs of black tiles at full price in Hamilton. So add another $25.96 to the total, as well as a tube of No More Gaps to fill the floor joints, $7.49, = $87.45. Considering my initial estimates to cover the floor were around the $600+ mark, I think I did pretty well. Tools purchased: a block plane to shave down the bottom of the door for clearance, $24, and a rolling pin, $7.98, (the recommended tool for ensuring good adhesive contact). $119.43 total spend, around 8 hours work all up.

Mum thought I had been playing Checkers....

A good plan is the key!

Sink or swim

The $1 sink is in!

 

I'm so happy, I grin every time I pass the bathroom door,

(No longer sure those lime green towels were a good choice though).
I still have two "hot" taps though, since one of them is off the old sink. Had to smash the old sink to get it out, (whoever installed taps using no-more-nails can go to hell and die). Fortunately I know replacement ceramic labels can be purchased. 

The flow-on effect is that now I can top coat the walls, and get serious about flooring.

If I'd known the scale of the task....

My pantry before, (with doors removed). Stranded way off in the far corner of the kitchen. Doors difficult to open. Hmmmm. Think maybe I'll just knock up a new one out of this recycled pine I was given. I'll put it over in the other corner of the kitchen, where it's easy to access. I'll just re-use the old doors, because who wants to build doors?

Hmmmm. These boards are a little wonky. Oh well, that's just rustic, right? Uh oh. These doors have borer in them, would be a shame to put them on my lovely new pantry, and they are sooooo heavy. Maybe I can come up with a way to build some lightweight doors out of the same recycled pine? (Thinks about how to get around not having the right tools). Ok, got it! Screws! Glue! Set squares! Ok! doors built! Uh Oh. Where did that lightbulb come from???? Why is it right where the door will hit it when I open it???? Grrrrr.

Bugger it! Leave for the week to go off and work in the city. Spend whole week speculating if I can get away with moving the light fitting rather than cutting down the doors. decide that I'm going to have to cut down the pantry doors. Head home. Unscrew top of doors and borrow Dad's "renovator" power tool to cut through the glue. Cut down doors by about 10cm, then screw and glue back together again. Now there is a gap at the top of the pantry that needs covering, and hardly any pine left. Nail up the last remaining piece, even though it's crooked. I'll put some trim around the top when I do the ceiling, it'll be fine. With much difficulty and swearing, I screw the hinges in and attach the doors. One hinge is too stiff because I cut the rebate too deep. Pack it out in a hap-hazard manner. Ok, that'll do. Go to put up flyscreen over the door panels. Haven't got enough. OK. FINE. Go back to city to work for the week. 5 shifts over 3 days. Come down with a head cold on the last day, of course it's a double shift. Drag myself home and stay in bed for about 36 hours. Get up and contemplate pantry doors. Cut MDF board to fit lower panels. Looks crappy next to pine. Put wallpaper over it. It's ugly '60;s wallpaper that clashes with the wallpaper sample wall, but it will do for now. Then something finally goes right. I have just enough flyscreen left to do the top panels.

That's it. It works well enough. My one-day job that turned into four days across three weekends.

In more lighthearted news, that night when I finished work, with a head cold? Couldn't get my car into the driveway because THIS.

Ouch. Hedgehogporn. This photo went viral on Facebook. And by viral, I mean it got 50 likes.

In bathroom news, the gib is up, and gib stopped. It was painful. And I forgot to take a photo. I'll take one when it's painted. Maybe when the coveing is up, Scotia? Architrave? Whatevs. I'm going to watch 3 or 4 episodes of Ripper Street, and eat chocolate cake.
Because I deserve it.

UPDATE: That 60's wallpaper drove me crazy real quick. So...

Ahhhh. That's better. Patchwork to match the wall. Also, cake!

Bathroom Advancement

I have a hot water cupboard, with a door!

(Soon I'll have a ceiling too).
The door is a wardrobe door that came out of a skip, but because it's narrower than an average door, it's just right. 

As a bonus, it also has a mirror.

Dead Bodies

I have come to the conclusion that there is a dead body in my house. A well hidden dead body. Possibly the smell has been disguised using some kind of science, which I am unaware of. It's somewhere near the kitchen, I think. It's possible that, when the roofers did their job, they hid a body up there in the narrow space between ceiling and roof in the extension.
How do I know it's there?

The dead flies of course.

I shut the house up on Tuesday. When I returned the following Sunday, all seemed well at first glance. I unloaded the car, put the groceries on the kitchen table, went to turn the hot water cylinder back on. The usual sort of thing. While in the lounge, I recognized the faint buzz of a fly in it's death throws, coming from one of the windows. I though nothing of it. Back in the kitchen, I was unpacking the groceries, putting milk in the fridge, etc. But when I turned towards the sink, I was greeted with the sight of a fresh battlefield.

Bodies lay dead or dying, writhing, buzzing. Some few stumbling around in confusion, but lacking strength. They seemed to radiate out from the kitchen window above the sink. The windowsill itself was a scene of horror, of grand magnitude. Flies had thrown themselves against the glass in an attempt to escape, until their bodies could no longer take it.

This was highly disturbing.

I can only assume they had hatched out of their maggoty forms sometime between Tuesday and Sunday, and lacking any food or water, became weak and death-prone. But, WHERE DID THEY COME FROM? I left no food out. I emptied the compost bin and rubbish before I left. The pantry was closed, and was flyless. No sign of any bad smells. No, the only conclusion is that THERE IS A DEAD BODY SOMEWHERE.

There are gaps everywhere in the kitchen. Between walls, ceiling, cupboards, and floor. These flies have crawled out of some hidden space and infested my food preparation area.

This has disturbed me more than the weta that climbed out of the gap between the wall and ceiling in the bathroom while i was having a shower. And that looked like this.

Roof!

It's taken about 4 months, but the roof is finally finished. Weather has been mostly hopeless. I love my fire so much. How did I ever live without one?

The rather scary, half naked house. Tin was salvaged from the mostly-good centre section of the roof, to re-use on the carport.

Despite having cleared out the massive birds nest in the roof when I moved in, in a little over a year, the starlings had managed to rebuild their home to massive proportions. At least another large rubbish bag worth of nesting materials came out of the rafters, including a turkey feather.

It took the roofer and his assistant 2 separate days to get just the iron on. I say separate because the weather packed in, and we had to wait a week for it to clear. The second day was spent on the difficult front section. He had to come back for a third day's work a month later. Why? Because the barge boards (also called fascia boards) needed to be replaced. So I called a builder and got a quote. $5,500. Ah. NO. I don't think so. If the roof cost $8,000 then I'm pretty sure there is no way in hell that replacing some bits around the edge should cost that much. We did it ourselves in the end. It was tricky, and time consuming, and I ended up buying a new ladder that cost more than the materials, and borrowing some equipment off a neighbour. In the end it was about $250 for wood, nails, and paint, and $280 for the ladder. We also ended up replacing only a small section of the sofit (that's the bit under the eaves), since it makes more sense to do that when I do the weatherboards.

So here is my lovely new roof, with lovely black guttering across the back (extra large), very stylish.

Here is my lovely new barge boards and flashings installed. They are narrower than the old ones, since the price difference was $13something a meter, or $5something a meter. You do the math.

So there we are. Although I have the guttering for the front of the house, (a freebee leftover from someone mum works for), it's not going up for a while, because there are powerlines in the way making it difficult. I have to investigate having them put underground. $$$.

Goals for the summer: Bank balance recovery. And getting some boards on around the bottom of the house. Maybe renovating some windows too. Dad got one out of a renovation across the road in exchange for some beer, so it might go in the kitchen.

Also, I should mention, I got insulation in the roof. I bought it at a cost of $830 (10 bales), and it was installed for a box of beers. It is awesome having an insulated roof! I should get on to doing the floors too.

Not Much.

I've just been to see this movie.

It was really good.

I still don't have a new roof. It was supposed to get done at Easter. But the weather refused to co-operate. It's still refusing to co-operate. It will be mid-May at the earliest, weather permitting.

So, while saving my pennies, I'm plotting. Garden plotting, and fiction plotting. Including a possible story about my house. So that will be .... interesting? Difficult? Odd? I've been looking at doing this thing called NaNoWriMo, which is a thing where you write a novel in a month. Well, 50,000 words anyway. Seems nigh on impossible to me, but people do it! 1666 words a day. Freaky. The main event is in the month of November, but there's a sort of mini one in July, so maybe I'll give that a go as a warm up.

Some of my stolen hedge has survived. Some of it hasn't. (well, not "stolen", just reclaimed). Lucky I put a few plants in pots for just such an eventuality. One of my feijoa trees is doing well and has fruit, but the other suffered from some sort of disease and had to be sprayed. No fruit on that one. The lime tree is doing well in it's pot, 3 fruit! And the mandarin tree has a single mandarin on it. It will probably be heartbreaking when the frosts come and I see what survives and what doesn't.

By the way, I built this bench seat. 

I think it's pretty good.

That is all.

Storm repairs and a new toy.

I got a new tool a while back, but haven't had an opportunity to use it until now. I think it's called a Dremmel Trio. It's a router/sander/cutter, and I was keen to get routing. I had planned this to be a practice sign, but it turned out ok.

Cyclone Lusi had a bit of fun at my place. That's the carport covering all screwed up.

And that's my rotten fence. It had a very large wasps nest in the middle as it turns out. It's ok now because I did this.

No palings yet. Might use bamboo. At least it should be enough to keep the cows out when they get through the farmer's fences. I don't mind the cows, but they produce an incredible amount of shit, which isn't fun to stand in.

I've done all this in the past 24 hours, (including trip into Huntly to buy wood for fence) and also written a chapter of something of no consequence. I think this makes up for the weeks of procrastination. Well, no, not really. Maybe. Sort of.

Anniversary!

One year ago today I took possession of my little house. Much has occurred since then. I have to remind myself how far I've come, because lately things seem to have stalled. But it's only a matter of perception. You can't work tirelessly all the time! Life would be boring if you did.

Let's review;

The house has been re-leveled and partly re-piled. The garage has three new doors. I have a new back step, a vege garden, fruit trees, and outdoor furniture. A tree has been cut down. The bathroom walls have been insulated and re-lined. A working shower has been installed. The lounge has been undercoated and partly skimmed. The outside of the front door has been stripped, undercoated, puttied, and a glass panel replaced, and weather strip fitted.
Loads of other stuff has happened in the past year too. Some of it brilliant and some of it pretty awful, but that's life and we live it the best we can, and we work with what we've got. And what I've got is a great boyfriend, a wonderful family, and some pretty awesome friends. You know who you are.

Separation of Church and State.

Right then. I've had to start a separate blog for my fiction scribblings.

I couldn't figure out how to preserve formatting when I copy/paste to blogger, and space is very important to me. So I've got a Wordpress blog now.

Cease Upon The Midnight

No more interrupting Sockmonkey Orphanage with nonsensical ramblings.

Well, no more than usual, and no more combing through a bit of writing to insert paragraph breaks and line breaks. The orphanage returns to the realm of reality based drivel. YAY!

In house related news, I got a quote to get the roof re-ironed. OUCH. But family have kindly offered an inetrest-free loan to help me out. So I guess I'll be climbing a little further into the debt hole.
Still daydeaming about painting a mural on the garage doors.

Another bit of writing...(suicide references, guns, and Sherlock Holmes, I'm probably on a watchlist now)

* * * * *

I Will Follow

* * * * *

The smell of the gun is like a part of him. His fingers know it well. They make their own path.

Coherent thought is not required.

The gun is not dirty. It has seen no use since he last cleaned it. It is a ritual.

A meditation.

He knows the flesh this weapon has torn. The catalogue of lives it has cut short. He sees them.

They tick over in his dreams, like a stuttering film reel on the back of his eyelids.

The report of the muzzle wakes him, short of breath, with a cry in the darkness.

Except that's not what wakes him these days. When he can sleep at all.

It's the sensation that he's falling.

The sound of a body.

Meeting the pavement.

with force.

* * * * *

The flat is clean. As clean as it's going to get.

Plastic sheeting folded neatly in the draw next to his bed. Ready to be laid out.

Beneath them, his documents.

His good shoes are polished. His suit hangs on the back of the door.

He's not exactly sure why he bothered to get his hair cut.

His own thought process eludes him.

He lubricates the moving parts of the gun. It comes together again in his hands.

Like a slow explosion in reverse, until he is holding it in his hand again. Complete.

He brings the muzzle up to his temple, experimentally. Not loaded.

The metal is warm from handling. It leaves a trace of gun oil on his skin. He feels as though he is looking down that barrel at himself. Far away. Abstracted.

He places the gun on the table before him. Wipes fingers on the towel. Presses the heel of his hands to the dark circles beneath his eyes. Breathes in. Breathes out.

Breathes in.

How many more breaths?

Somewhere, a phone is ringing.

* * * * *

“Hello Lestrade.”

“Is that you Mycroft? “

“Of course. Listen old chap, I think you should give John a call.”

“...”

“It would be in your best interest to do it sooner rather than later. Oh, say, in the next two minutes? Maybe pop round for a chat.”

“... … ... alright.”

“There's a good chap.”

* * * * *

END

* * * * *

John's gun is a Sig Sauer P226R. I watched a seemingly endless video on how to clean it. It looks quite sexy. The gun. Not the cleaning. I also read a fairly long theory on how he could possibly still have his service revolver. I'm probably on some kind of watchlist now.
P.S. - The riding whip Sherlock uses to beat corpses, is apparently the "Mark Todd Braided Leather Riding Whip" How about that? 

If this is all greek to you, then my little bit of writing probably made no sense to you either.
:-) So, to explain in a sentence; Mycroft has hidden camera's watching the flat that John and Sherlock used to share until Sherlock jumped off a building, and John was a bit unstable to start with, so....yeah.

Would you get your hair cut, if you were planning to shoot yourself in the head? These are the questions that haunt me at 2am lately. That and the motivation of cross-dressers.

Yes. I am working on a purely original work of my own, not just these little emotional exercises I set for myself. I have three character introductions so far, but I'm only happy with one of them. Might get around to posting that one day too.

Bit Of Writing. (Not house related for a change)

* * * * *
Somewhere Between.

* * * * *
It's not a loveseat.
Of course the term makes him uncomfortable. He wishes it had never been referred to as such.

It's just a two-seater sofa.

A two-seater, in front of the telly, in the small basement flat he shares.

It is, at least, comfortable. If small.

It's worn fabric has cradled other bodies, before theirs.
Sun faded, to the colour of a ghost's eyes. It's previous rich denim-blue, still visible under the cushions.

Wide arms for elbows and hands. Precarious cups of tea, never yet spilled.

It fills the space available, which isn't much. Almost seems dwarfed by the flat screen TV opposite, and the ottoman where they rest their feet and newspapers.

At first hesitant, they circled each other in this tiny space. Learning to gauge the exact presence of the other. Positions and angles of limbs. Reactions smoothing out.

Within days they had developed the rhythm. An easy dance. Pressing against each other in passing, The kitchenette their ballroom. Slippers and socks, their dancing shoes.

So quickly they slipped into each others pockets. Until small touches were the braille they used to read each others moods. Blind to the development of the secret language between them.

Evenings and lazy Sundays spent, thigh pressed to thigh, shoulder to shoulder. A hug without an embrace. Clinging to each other without realization, as they both navigate a world populated by ghosts.

Getting a bigger sofa, is never, ever, mentioned.

* * * * *

I'll be honest. It's a fan fic. But you will have to guess the fandom, and the characters if you are so inclined. I posted it because I thought it might just possibly work as a stand-alone piece? There are probably still a few lines that don't have the resonance they should, without a knowledge of character history. But, meh.

I've been spending long hours writing lately (though not in my blog!), and reading. The great thing, is that it doesn't cost any money. Which I am supposed to be saving to get the roof done. So, in a way, this is actually me working on the house! Bit anti-social though. Especially since this is the first piece I've let any of my friends even see.

Yeah, sorry about that.

January

It's a stormy sort of day in Pukemiro. The wind rushes up the valley, and you hear it roaring in the walnut trees before the gusts reach the house. So far only a few spots of rain have fallen. It's a nice excuse to stay inside, and a nice break from the hot muggyness.

Not a great deal of progress over the holidays. I've been busy with work and family. One half of the lounge got re-plastered and re-undercoated. Weeds have grown everywhere. Lawns are being constantly mowed, but I enjoy the exercise, I can't stand the gym, I need to be doing something productive if I'm expending my energy!

I haven't seen pukekos or turkeys for weeks now, although I've heard the pukekos in the night. The grass across the road has grown so long that the wind running through it looks like waves across a lake, except it's all a sort of golden syrup-y brown colour. Instead, I've had a family of quails visiting. In the morning three of them walk in single file down the road, calling to each other, and in the evening they walk back again, sometimes crossing the front lawn, and panicking when they lose sight of each other in my "weed strip". (That's a sloped piece of lawn right by the front fence that's too difficult/dangerous to mow. I've let the daisies and dandelions grow there because I don't know what to do about it.)

I came up to the house last week to find this little hedgehog asleep under my tomatoes. I have no idea how he got under the netting, as I could find no gaps! I didn't know if he was trapped, or how long he had been there, so I raised the netting and put a dish of water next to him. He just opened one eye at me and went back to sleep. When I went back in the evening he was gone, and the water was untouched. I haven't had slug bait down since I first planted everything, so he's welcome to feast on those slimey critters. I just wish I knew how he got in!

I picked up a BBQ plate from the op shop before christmas. It turns out to be just the right size for my gas burner, so now I have an indoor BBQ. Very handy when it's windy. I've been grilling the courgettes from the garden. One of them got away on me when I was away for a week and a half and turned into a marrow. I sliced it up and layered it with mince and pasta sauce, and cheese sauce. It took two bloody hours to cook! But it was delicious.

I've made this wall hanging to cover the strange bit of wall in the spare room where a doorway has been badly filled in. It's not proper door sized, so must have been a cupboard tacked on the the back of the house, back when it was a two-room miners shack. In the corner you can see the old wallpaper. The last owner must have painted around a cupboard that was there, but he demolished it before he left.

Dad mad me this lovely little chopping board for Christmas. Isn't it sweet? Mum always calls it "The little house". It doesn't seem that little to me. The rooms in this 1920's cottage are bigger than the room's in mum and dad's 1910's transitional villa in Auckland. But they have nine rooms, (and an awkward layout from when the house was two flats), where I have five rooms.

The pink dahlias are finally starting to bloom. I was beginning to wonder if I had killed them all off. I bought my china doll tree inside last week. It's been struggling outside since I bought it down here. I think it's the wind it doesn't like. It's perked up since it came inside. There are all these plants I want to grow, but I keep having to stop to consider if they can deal with frosts, and wind, and summer droughts. No drought this summer though, not yet anyway. There seems to have been rain every week since I planted the vege garden (yay!). Those water crystals I used seem to be working really well too. Much as I like the idea of an organic garden, right now it just wouldn't work, with me not being here all the time. I wish I could have chickens too.

One day.

December

Uses for a wallpaper sample book:
uhhhh... wallpaper? Suddenly the kitchen is much more bearable, and it's only up with blu tak so, whatever. I like it.

It's amazing what you find in a skip. Like these bed ends. Exactly what I needed! I'm just not sure how to attach the wooden side rails that I found in the inorganics. Errrr, requires more thinking. And also a trailer or something, because I can get them in the hatchback, but I can't close the boot! Arrrgh.

Naughty little Trademe purchase. A sewing machine from the same era the house was built. I was given a modern sewing machine, but it's kind of yuck to use. The whole thing shakes across the table with a plastic rattle and buzz, and the foot pedal slides across the floor underfoot. I'm used to Mum's old knee lever Bernina, which is on it's last legs. This Singer does straight stitch, and that's it. It doesn't even do reverse. And it's a joy to use.

I went to a giant demolition yard, and found some brackets for the pink sink! They cost $20 freakin' dollars. My $1 sink is now a $21 sink.

My Mum has weak elbows from old work related injuries. This makes it hard for her to lift things like 2 litre milk bottles. At her place she uses a milk jug. At mine, we now use an old milk bottle. I put a standard milk bottle top on it by cutting away part of the inside spiral so it just pops on and off.

Finally got around to getting some paint on the gib behind the shower. Well, actually, Mum did it. That's her, just finishing up the bottom corner. Suddenly it's starting to look like a real bathroom. From a certain angle.

These guys finally made the move. So far they have made it two whole weeks without being stolen. Gatepost gargoyles. I've also re-plastered another section of the lounge walls. Now it's half done. It was three quarters done when it was suddenly decided that I should do the piles. Then all the walls cracked along the joins. Now I have to do them all again. On the up side, I am getting much better at plastering.

Nights in Pukemiro are still blissfully cool. It's much easier to sleep without Auckland's crazy humidity. And sleep is what I'm going to do now. ZZzzzzzzzz

A bit of backtracking.

There are a couple of things I forgot to mention.

This is the carport. The much less leaky carport. Clever uncle Phil works in a timber mill, where they use these giant sanding...belts? I guess you'd call them? So he was able to grab some used ones that were going to be thrown out. They have a sort of rubber backing. He sort of stapled them to the carport roof. Ta-da! Now there are only one or two bits where it leaks, where the belts overlap. Much better working conditions for power tools now. (Don't look at me like that! It's only temporary!)

Also forgot to mention my other uncles genius idea. Getting bits of tin out of a scrap bin.....

....in order to patch some of the bad holes in the weatherboards! This resulted in at least one pair of birds being ejected from their nesting site. Unfortunately not the very noisy stomp-y ones in the roof over my bedroom.

I knocked together a seat for the kitchen out of bits and pieces too.

In garden news...

Started picking my lettuce and spinach already! And those tomato plants have flower buds starting on them. Crikey!
When I planted this garden, I kind of forgot I had already planted a tray of various seedlings. Instead of wasting them, I decided to build another garden. Not sure how wise that was.

Here they are all covered in bird netting. Cucumbers, courgettes, more lettuce and more spinach, and more tomatoes.

...and here is the strange frame I made to hold up the netting and for the cucumbers to climb. Will it work? We''ll see.

The feijoas have flower buds. I wonder if they will come to fruit? They haven't been in the ground long.

I admit, I've been raiding the green waste dump again! Picked up some bromeliads, succulents, and possibly some kind of dietes? I will have to wait until they flower to find out!