A Post At Last!

 It's been some time..........I've had several years when I haven't done too much of interest in my house and garden renovation. Having got the house to a comfortable livable state, I was happy to sit back for a little while. 

I lost my mother last year, at the ripe old age of almost ninety-nine! She'd lived a long and productive life, but the last few years were not easy for her, so in some ways her passing was a relief. We all miss her. She left each of us a small inheritance and I decided to earmark a proportion of mine to some improvements to the house that had been a bit unaffordable. Here's what I've done with the money:

*Upgraded the indoor plumbing and replaced dated tapware

*Same with the electrics - had the wiring checked and had the "home handyman" electrical "improvements" (done by a previous owner - I know better!) replaced, upgraded and made safe. Such a relief.

*Had six inches of extra insulation put into the roof space - I had bats simply put in over the top of the existing inadequate layer of blow-in stuff. The house has been noticeably cooler on hot days and now that we are slipping into the cooler months, it's definitely holding the warmth in. 

*Had my electric hot water heater replaced. The old one was installed in 1976 - yes you read that right! It was almost fifty years old and still working, but I decided to replace it before it failed and flooded the garage. I agonised over what to replace it with, but acting on advice from a consultant, I replaced it with something similar because of the simplicity of the system. My other alternatives of solar and heat-pump h/w systems are quite complex and lots of things can fail. I have had installed a simple storage heater, but had it put on a timer, so it only heats the water when the solar system is working from mid-morning to mid-afternoon and when the electric tariff is low. In effect, it's working as solar h/w. So far, so good!

*Upgraded the solar inverter

*Had a mandatory upgrade of the electrical switchboard (required when any new work is done, and an old board is still being used)

Just recently my son made me some Tasmanian Oak kitchen worktops to replace the old Laminex ones that I'd refurbished in my first year in the house (expecting it to last a year - it lasted around seven!) We also reconfigured the kitchen a bit, removing an awkward shelf above the peninsula bench. That bench was also made a fair bit wider, creating a space for a couple of stools in the dining room. Just those few tweaks have made the kitchen so much more functional. 

I had to wait until after the electrician did his work to work on the hallway, which had been left as I found it. There had been a thermostat for an old oil-heater (long gone) on one of the hallway walls - where it had been removed there was a sizeable hole and exposed wires. Very scary. I didn't touch it because I had no idea if the wires were live. Turns out they were. Once the electrician had made that problem safe, I was able to patch the plaster wall and paint. I chose a pleasant restful blue/green and ordered a traditional hall runner. The ceiling was scrubbed and painted and I also painted to access hole to the roof space. It looks so lovely now!

That brings me up to date - I'm now sanding, repairing and painting the outsides of the windows across the back of the house - hoping to get this mostly done before the cold, wet weather sets in. Fortunately, a bit of scraping reveals them to be in pretty good shape. I think they are made from King Billy pine - an excellent rot-resistant Tasmanian wood. 

Winter Hibernation

Winters in Tasmania can be relatively long and cold compared with other parts of Australia (I'm not talking Canada-cold - it's really still relatively mild here), so it is a time when people tend to hibernate a bit and do things by the fireside. Then the days start growing perceptibly longer and things start to move in the garden. You think there is going to be an early Spring and WHAM! another Antarctic blast comes through and you realize that your thoughts of Spring were a bit precipitate. It's lovely and sunny here today, but I think we're about to get another cold blast, with snow and wind to remind us that winter hasn't quite finished with us yet.

 I've slowed up a little with renovations as most of the urgent stuff has been achieved. There's still plenty to do, however. (Does it ever finish?) Here's a list:

*I need to make a big push in the garden to clear up the remaining bits of impenetrable jungle and get a tree or two removed.

*I need some minor plumbing and electrical fixes, which will require tradies, as I can't do this work myself.

*The fascias on the backyard bungalow need replacing

*The painting of the windows and barge-boards at the back of the house will be completed this summer

*Fixing the side fences

*I have a few things I'm wishing to get done, one being the installation of a skylight or light tube at the dark end of the hallway near the bathroom. 

Meanwhile, here are some pictures of things that are blooming in my house and garden at the moment - you've got to love things that bloom in the middle of winter!

 SPRINGTIME! RENEWED ENERGY

It's been a good while since I made an entry in this blog - multiple reasons - I've been busy with other things; the house is pretty comfortable, most of the pressing work done, so the pace of work has slowed; money constraints; I've been a bit lazy!

 But things have still been happening around the house and garden and I'm pretty fired up to get on with other jobs inside and out as the weather improves.

When I re-did the kitchen a few years ago, I had it in the back of my mind to refresh my pine dresser so it looked more like it belongs. In the late 70's/early 80's after we'd moved into our self-built cottage, the thing I desired most was a pine kitchen dresser. Money was pretty tight with two small children, so I had to save for a long time to get it. It served well for all those years in the Exeter house, but when I moved here, it seemed very out of place, especially after I'd painted the kitchen and dining room in light colours. The old pine dresser had yellowed over the years and definitely looked dated. It's taken me about four years to get around to doing what I've been intending to do, but finally! it's done. I painted it in a soft French Grey with blue undertones and I scraped back the edges once it was dry.

Having been on the verge of throwing it out several times, I'm now glad that I didn't do that........I love how it looks. I left the doors off because I liked the look of the open shelving much more. The final picture shows what it looked like before.....forgot to take a picture of the whole thing.

Now, onto re-doing the chairs and the base of the old deal-topped dining table.

                                          

Spring Comes To The Garden

In the strange year that is 2020, it's good to know that some things don't change......like the inevitability of the change of seasons. We had a weird winter this year with the almost unknown phenomenon of a quite heavy snowfall in Launceston. I'm still discovering things in my garden that were broken in that storm! The sound of breaking branches woke me in the middle of that snowy night and I rushed outside in pyjamas and gumboots to take a few photos of this once-in-a-hundred-year event.

But, inevitably, spring has rolled around again and quite early this year. The blossoms started to appear almost a month early and the blooming has been wonderful! I'm hopeful of some good fruit yields this summer with lots of blossom on the plum and apricot trees as well as the berry bushes.

Maybe spring is my favourite season - I like the changeability, the wind, the increasing sunshine and longer days and the way there are noticeable changes day by day. 

The backyard is just bursting into leaf - in a few weeks this will be green and shady and I will be regretting that I didn't dig more and sooner for vegetables! It ALWAYS catches me by surprise. 

 

Small Things

I must admit that small things give me a great deal of pleasure: a house filled with the smell of bread baking, a tree bursting into blossom, a contented cat asleep by the fire, home-grown vegetables and fruit and a line full of washing flapping in the sun and wind...........

About that last thing -  When I moved into this house coming up to five years ago, I found that the original washing line was quite decrepit, with broken wires, bent arms and it was stuck halfway down an inaccessible ivy-filled bank. I promised myself in those first few weeks that I would replace it. Soon.

As things panned out, there was always something more pressing to be done and money needed for other things, so it's taken almost five years to get it done! In that time, I've been drying my washing on a couple of clothes horses, which blow over in a gust and don't ask me about sheets taking days to dry! Oh, yes, I don't have an electric dryer for several reasons - expensive to run, prone to starting house fires if you are not ever-vigilant about cleaning the lint filter and the clothes just don't smell like sunshine. Yes, I'm an obstinate old biddy! 

But done it is now - I went out and bought a Hills Hoist (this is still the original company that designed the first rotary clothesline here in Australia, though I imagine they are manufactured offshore these days, like pretty much everything, more's the pity). I had to dig quite a deep hole to house the socket which has been concreted in place.......it's not going anywhere! So it's standing proudly in the middle of my patch of lawn and I dried my first load of washing this morning! It's removable, so when I want full use of the lawn, I simply have to take it out of the socket. Ah.......the pleasure!

A Golden Egg!

Having comfortably housed my three chickens and supplied them daily with nutritious food, I was happy to wait a few months for them to start laying...…..I really didn't think I'd be getting any action in the egg-laying department until August at the earliest. Imagine how delighted I was when I arrived home yesterday to hear the hens making a big fuss - that special sound they make when one of them lays an egg!

I went to check, and sure enough, there was an egg, still warm.

I hope this isn't just a one-off teaser - I won't count my chickens just yet!

I call this a golden egg, because with all the accumulated costs of housing, feed, bedding and the meal-worm farm, I estimate it must be worth its weight in gold!

I think this is the lady responsible:

A HENHOUSE AND RUN

The block my house sits on is quite large - there is quite a big area down the back that has been terraced flat, with old sheds, pergolas and a HUGE brick barbecue. Of course, like everything else it is wildly overgrown and weedy, but it had to wait its turn for a look-in while I dealt with more urgent projects.

The opportunity arose to give a home to a small flock of chickens when the owners (my son and daughter-in-law) had to relocate to the other end of the state for work.

That precipitated work starting on this back garden wilderness, because I needed to house the chickens safely - I'd had it in the back of my mind that a couple of old aviaries down there could easily be converted into a chicken house. So that's what I went ahead and did over three days.

The old aviaries were fortunately very soundly built, so they only really needed cleaning out and the addition of roosts and nesting boxes. Then it was a matter of clearing away weeds and growth to put in the run using star droppers and heavy duty chicken wire, with a treated pine fence post at the corner. 

Getting this all done has prompted me into really getting stuck into taming the jungle - lots of growth to remove, a couple of trees need to be gone, some of the sheds are redundant and will be dismantled, there is tattered shadecloth that needs removing and once all this is done, I can plan I rather lovely outdoor cooking and dining area. I think it will take me until summer to get it done, doing a bit on most days. There is a lot of concrete, but I think I can incorporate it into the design, by using potted plants and paving. 

And that barbecue...…...I don't think I'd use it much as it is, but a pizza oven - that's a different proposition altogether! I think I'd like to remove the barbecue and build a pizza oven on its concrete plinth. I've been reading up about pizza oven and I think it is something I could manage. I can almost picture it now...….hanging out down there with some good friends, cold white wine, shady spot with comfortable seating and home-made pizza cooking away in the oven! That's a promise to myself for six months down the track.

I had been dreading this job, but now I'm kind of looking forward to it...…….how do you eat an elephant? One small bite at a time!

Recording A Journey.......

As well as keeping this blog, I have been keeping a record of my home renovation journey in sketchbooks.
In them are notes and sketches outlining plans and ideas, then I record with photographs what I actually ended up doing with each project - they don't always end up as I initially planned, because things can change along the way.
I'm also keeping a record of what I spend, quotes given by contractors etc.
Now I'm into the fifth year, I have filled one book and I'm a good way into the second...….I wonder how many I'll end up filling before this project is finished?

With the change in seasons, here is the view as I'm enjoying it at the moment in all its autumn glory! If you can't afford a view of the ocean or the mountains, at least you can create your own small, private view that is every bit as wonderful!

Autumn Arrives at last!

We're had a mild, rainy autumn with not even a frost to date, which is unusual. As a result, autumn has come late to the garden with the trees only turning now just a week or two away from "official" winter.

But now the trees have turned and the leaves are falling - time to hunker down and get on with a few inside jobs!

On the list are a few things that I want to get completed this winter: Firstly, I want to make the roman blinds for the dining room. Secondly, one wall and the ceiling in the hallway need painting and the other wall needs new skirting boards. The inside of the loungeroom window needs stripping and painting and I'm sure there are other things that I will find to do!

Back Porch

I have a tiny porch outside the back door, which opens off the kitchen - it shelters the back door from the worst of the weather and that's about it! I decided to paint is as the last outside painting job before the colder, wetter weather of winter. The rest of it - the back windows and soffits can wait until spring.
The porch looks very much refreshed with a few minor repairs, holes filled and the paint job!

Here's an update on the frog pond...….with everything growing nicely. No evidence of new permanent residents yet, but I'm hearing them often at night.

A New Front

I finally finished repairing and repainting the big windows across the front of the house and now the scaffold has been taken down, so I can see how it looks. 
I like the colours I chose - these blues go well with the terracotta bricks, I think. Orange and blue are complementary colours (opposites on the colour wheel) so they always look good together. It replaces a nondescript, rather pustulent shade of yellow, which did nothing to enhance the appearance of the house. Probably, the windows and trim would have been originally painted white, I think, although when I was scraping and sanding, there was evidence that a bilious green had been used at one stage. 

I'm going to paint the little back porch in coming days, weather permitting, then that will be it until next Spring/Summer, when I can finish the windows at the back. There is always more re-pointing to be done, which can be done at any time of year.

As winter approaches, I'm pulling out the last of the summer vegetables and digging over the remaining beds to plant things that can grow over winter...….the plantings I've already done are growing well - indeed, I've already started using some of the Asian greens.
Goodbye summer vegetables for a few months - these zucchinis are the last!

The last of summer meets the first of winter in one dish - stir-fried ginger, soy and garlic zucchini with Asian greens. Delicious!

Repointing is FUN! Who knew?

While I was up on the scaffold in recent weeks to paint the windows and soffits on the front of the house, I noticed that some of the mortar in the brickwork at the sides of the gable was loose, cracked and falling out in places. I thought it was a good opportunity to have a go at repairing it while it was still accessible from the scaffold. It was high up and in a place that wouldn't be too noticeable if I really botched it!

So, armed with tools, mortar and new-found knowledge from Dr. Google, I launched in, expecting to find it an odious task...…...Well, surprise of surprises! I found it unbelievably satisfying to rake out the loose old mortar, clean out the debris, damp it down and re-point it with fresh mortar. It took a bit of practice to get the technique right, but I think I did an OK job of it. I kept it damp while it dried off, as recommended and this morning when I checked it is still intact and good.

Now I'm looking forward to repairing a few other places where the brickwork needs re-pointing!