Renovations

Well renovations are still happening and we have accomplished a lot so far on as little money as possible. When you can do the manual labour yourself you can save heaps. Here Dave is doing the plumbing for the sink and also for the bathroom. He has cut a hole in the floor to make access easier and because he has arthritis so crawling under the house and the thought of running into a snake was a bit to daunting. We will be putting a floating timber floor in this area any way because the original timber floor wasn't any good in this section of the house.

The plumbing was fairly simple and straight forward, thank goodness.

Next we or should I say Dave looked to the old kitchen and started demolishing it with such glee. The tiles around the sink and bench top there are actually bathroom tiles and were a pain to keep clean, but with a few good hits with the hammer and pinch bar the cupboards and tiles come away with no problem.

The bottom shelf of the cupboard was actually the floor, not really good to keep out creepy crawlies.

Look! All gone :) Oh and the drain pipe didn't have an S bend but when straight down and angled out to the pit so all the smell would sometimes come right back at you (phew). We used to keep the plug in the sink for this reason.

Next! Was the stove which was where the old fuel stove used to sit but they built a little white box for it to sit in. It was ok but all the steam and splattering from the pots would hit the top of the cupboard because there was no exhaust fan. If you look at the picture above you can see all that black stuff at the top,well that is burnt sap because the people before us used to burn green timber. Dave said this is the cause of many houses burning down because the chimneys would catch on fire.

This is Sarabie, she is like my shadow and building supervisor, if anything is going on she has to be two inches from it. We will be knocking this brick work out and putting a door way in which will take you out to the laundry, bathroom and backdoor. At present we have to go out of one door to go around to the back of the house to go to the bathroom, which makes shower time pleasant as you do a bit of star gazing on the way through.

This is the new cavity for the stove Dave built (sounds a bit like " this is the house that Jack built" hehehe)

NOW! We are moving onto the bathroom, see the window on the left...that is the kitchen. The reason you can see Dave is that he pulled the wall down, he got a bit carried away with the demolition, just kidding. The outside wall was not straight and it would have cause a lot of headache for him with the tiling and moving the shower etc so he decided it would be easier to straighten this wall.

Here Dave is removing the shower so that he can turn it around to face the other way and make the bathroom bigger. The bathroom ceiling was really low so we raised it a little and it has made a big difference.

The shower was out and it was my job to clean it up and take all the glue off it.

The room was empty so Dave could now finish lining the walls and floor and move the plumbing. It all sounds so easy but we were doing this on those really stinking hot days of 45 degrees.

This is Sarabie doing a bit of surveying of the situation, just look at all that rubble out there.

The shower is finally back in and the plumbing is completed and all that is left to do is put the wall up.

Finished this stage, some time later I will show you how we will do the tiling, moving the toilet, building the vanity and finishing touches. We are lucky to have some nice marble for the floor that a friend gave us, very nice :)