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.