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!

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!

A Frog Pond

During the summer, my neighbour gifted me a fibreglass pond which she'd taken out of her garden and no longer needed. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it...…...I had a kind of weedy desert where I looked out onto the garden from my dining room window - it's a fairly shaded area, so I thought it would be a great spot to establish a fern and shade-plant garden. So with the free pond and a bit of rock shifting and digging, that's exactly what I did...…...I bought a few plants and shifted some from other parts of the garden where they'd been struggling to compete with other plants. I'm happy to report that everything is growing well and looking lush. Now the frogs just need to move in. 

On that point I heard some frogs in the garden a few nights ago for the first time ever.....I hope it's not too long before they discover the wonderful home I've created for them. I've still to buy a little solar water feature so I can have the sound of water as well.

Oh yes - I'm also planning to make some small pieces of sculpture for the pond surrounds using a cement based sculpting medium that I bought a while back.

Blue Door?

I have a confession to make…….there IS no blue door, except in my imagination. It is a virtual Blue Door. But there will be a blue door one day - I will eventually paint the front door blue. Meanwhile it is varnished wood. Painting it blue is not an immediate priority. The glass side panels had to be replaced when I moved in, because they'd been broken at some stage and a kind of repair effected with odd-shaped pieces of perspex and silicone - very creative, but not very practical! I called in the glazier and had those panes replaced, along with the two mock stained glass panes with a rose design in the door itself. I had the panes replaced with plain frosted glass - much more stylish! The small entrance hall was the second room that was repainted, followed by the toilet. A lovely coat of white paint to replace the tired, dingy, dirty blue that it was, has freshened it up considerably for now. At some stage in the future, I will replace the floor-covering - I don't like this mock slate tile vinyl floor-covering, which is also in the kitchen. Both of these spaces now just need some artwork on the walls.

When I'm feeling particularly energetic, I tackle some of the big outside jobs - there is a lot to do, but bit by bit I'm getting there. When you look out the back windows, the garden looks smallish, but this is deceptive, because there is a whole lot going on that you can't see - a lot of which will have to be ripped out. Like the house, the garden has been neglected for a number of years and it is overgrown, overcrowded with a number of inappropriate (for a suburban garden) trees that will have to go.

To make tackling the garden a little less daunting, I decided to just start working from the house outwards in manageable bursts - otherwise it could simply become overwhelming. 

The first job was removing a green steel gazebo affair right outside the back door. It was covered with several layers of rotting canvas roof and festooned with a tangled mass of electrical extension cords, double adaptors, fairy lights, plastic butterflies and rusty electrical lanterns. With much of this electrical stuff exposed to the weather, it was really dangerous! I just pulled the lot down…..

…….and threw it out. A few weeks after moving in, the garden looked like this:

You can see the metal gazebo structure still in place. It was very rusty and rickety and not worth keeping, so I began to cut it up with a metal cutting attachment on my grinder……then I discovered that it was so weak, I could simply break it up with my bare hands - much quicker!. I've removed dead shrubs and trees and the two huge pittosporums in the right of the picture and opened up the garden to more sunshine, light and space. It's looking like this at the moment:

I've established a vegetable garden, planted fruit trees and generally am well on the way to establishing some order into this once-beautiful garden. Sometimes I feel like Mary Lennox from The Secret Garden with all the discoveries (both surprisingly good and surprisingly bad!) I am making as the seasons change!

Moving on…….

At the end of 2015, I sold the house my late husband and I had built in the mid 1970's - and added to over the years as needs changed…….additions which included my large, purpose built studio. But the property was out of town and on five acres and I was finding it all too much to keep maintained after Bob died very suddenly in 2013. So I let rationality over-rule my heart and I bought a solidly-built sixties brick bungalow in West Launceston and made the momentous move. This is what I left behind, with a few regrets but a desire to forge a new and different life for myself.

A few views of my old house

The actual move was a bit - no, a lot - fraught, because the previous owner for reasons known only to herself had not done a thing about moving out when the settlement day finally arrived (and I'd given her a month extra at her request!) So I gave her a new date. Then another one. I had to extend the date with the company that was storing my things and put off the changing the utilities into my name for more than a week. It was a stressful nightmare, but eventually the house was vacated and most of the previous owner's things gone. Then another nightmare began! Not a thing had been cleaned………for about ten years. The house was filthy and reeked badly - so much so that I just couldn't sleep in it for a few days. Some good friends mucked in and with a lot of scrubbing, ripping out of old, stinking curtains and carpets, the reek level was reduced to tolerable and I moved in.

There were a few urgent problems with plumbing and glazing that needed immediate attention, such as these strange solutions to leaking taps - the wadded cloth, wire and old-hammer-jammed-in kind of solution! You gotta laugh!

"Imaginative" plumbing solutions!

It's hard to describe the smell of a badly neglected house, but it could probably be best described as the smell of abjection and it is a tangible manifestation of a life gone wrong. In the mix are things like animal excrement, stale nicotine, dust, dirt, grease and old food. It seems to permeate the very fabric of the house and it simply seeps and oozes out. I must admit, in those first few days after moving in, I was having serious doubts about what I'd taken on, but what I'd seen when I'd inspected the house was a solid building with good bones and a once-beautiful, but seriously neglected garden. I KNEW I could make it into a lovely, inviting space with a lot of hard work. My friends probably thought I was mad! But because this house was so badly presented for sale, I got it for a bargain price. Simply fixing the plumbing, ripping out old tatty curtains, taking up smelly carpets and scrubbing surfaces probably added $20 000 to the value before spending much at all. Once I'm finished with this I imagine the house will be worth $50 000 or $60 000 more than when I moved in, without me spending much more than lots of time on it. I don't have unlimited amounts of lazy cash, so this reno will be done on a very strict budget, with me doing much of the work myself.

Initial cleanup - a few pics.