Hi and welcome to my blog – this is my story about the house that I have bought and the renovations I am doing. 

I am Australian and live in central Victoria and have been improving houses all of my life. Mostly they have been my home but occasionally they have been investment properties. I love change and have a tremendous urge to make things beautiful. Now I have to be very honest and tell you that I am hopeless with tools, mechanical equipment and really anything that is useful.

However being a woman of the 21st century I know how the find the number to ring the person to fix it – whether it is one of my children, a fabulous friend or a professional.

I know men find this quite ridiculous and I am often smirked at when I call myself a renovator – but I think if there were not people like me with the vision then none of these professionals would have a job.

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 So keep all of this in mind when you read of my adventures of house improvement. The other thing I need to tell you if that I am not very patient – so if I have an idea – things start to move – by things I mean furniture, pictures (although I have been known to start knocking out the wall before the furniture was moved)or plants. You will need to read my blogs to hear about this one.

What a week it has been.  The windows arrived about 7 days ago.  A couple of friends who conveniently are builders came to help get them off.  Then they worked like madmen and installed them.  The walls are made of the old fashioned type of plaster – small strips of timber with the concrete like substance and it looks like horse hair.  Pretty easy to knock out but again “the mess”.

Not being a builder myself I am fascinated with the process, there didn’t seem to be too many hitches, and the size they cut for the window was exactly the size of the window – amazing.

The windows are in great condition – no glass was broken and the windows all operate just fine.  Lovely.

It took about 3 days to install, mind you these were 3 really long days.  My job was to keep the food up to them and make necessary comments throughout the day!!!

Have a look at the photo below – the pile of dust.  I know I said that I wouldn’t do this again – but it is so exciting.  I can see the lounge room as it will be already in my mind. 

The 3 windows went into the lounge room, the spare bedroom and I had managed to buy a window to fill in the width of the bathroom wall replacing a little lovre window that didn’t work and looked shocking.  So you see this mess is now throughout the house.

I am sick to death of cleaning as I have said before this dust just lingers – lucky today is Melbourne Cup so The Love of My Life and I are off to Tahbilk Winery for a lovely lunch with a big glass of wine.  Good luck with your bets.

Hello  I haven’t written for a while – just want to spend time out in the garden.  The weather is at its most perfect- just perfect clear skies and warm weather and with the introduction of day light saving it allows for time in the evenings to do things.  I have been buying plants and taking cuttings from neighbours and friends.  I especially like buying the half dead ones from the nursey because I know that they can be rescusitated.

I have also managed to clean up the mess from removing the wall.  I hope that I never go through that again.  The dust is still lingering – I just choose not to see it.

I have been working on how to get my lovely big windows to my house.  If you remember I have bought them secondhand from a shop located 100kms away.  They have  agreed to keep them until I can move them.  Of course this is killing me as I want them here now and installed while I am out shopping!!!  I did have a minor freak out thinking that I may have bought rubbish and that they weren’t good enough, but after a visit they are perfect and I won’t even need to replace any of the glass.  Here’s hoping they are all in one piece when they arrive.

So after much searching I have managed to borrow a car trailer from a friends friend (thank god for friends) and have made sure that the shop will have enough people there to help load.  The windows should be arriving during this week.  yyiippeee! 

I don’t know how we will get them off the trailer but I will worry about that later, meanwhile I am pottering in the garden.  HHmmmm just bliss

I love gardening and love the cottage garden look – I know this is not a practicial garden but really nothing of me is practical.

I also love the no dig garden – so luckily my best mate owns a farm and agreed to bring down a ute load of cow manure in exchange for a meal at the pub.  Easy.
To start this process you need to lay a lot of newspaper over the ground.  I have collected every newspaper for weeks now and with the tap strickling start laying thick wades of newspaper overlapping all over one half of the garden.

I can hear you saying now – WHAT the tap is trickling with water restrictions firmly in place. I can assure you that I am very conscious of water and just had the tap trickling to damp the water as the wind had a firm hold that day.

After the newspaper is completed overlapping and covering every piece of the garden – we shovelled cow manure all over it.  This took quite a while as I was using muscles that I did not know existed and had to have lots of rest stops.  When we had finished and I was wrecked the manure was about 6 inches thick over the newspaper.

The next trick is to cover the manure with pea straw, which makes a huge difference.

I want to replace the window in the room, which will become the lounge room.  The current window size is one of those small sash windows which don’t open.

The quote from my friendly builder is about $3,000 and another $1,000 to install.  Ouch!

The Love of My Life took me to Macca’s Demolitions in Echuca  (located in north Victoria) where they have a myriad of old things and in particular windows.  I had planned to buy 1 window and ended up buying 3.  Have I mentioned that I am a terrific shopper (terrific is my words not probably what The L0ve of My Life would say).

Two of the windows that I have bought are huge and I now want to replace the window in the guest bedroom and the other one is a perfect size window for the bathroom, which currently has a poxy little windows made up of loovers and glazed glass (poxy is a technical term!)

The price was $900 for the lot.  What a bargain. They are all aluminum and have fly screens.

Now the problem will be how do I get them to Seymour.  This is over 100kms and as I have mentioned they are huge.

Meanwhile I have received letter from my surveyor this week with a letter from the Council saying that they had received my planning application – it seems that  Council will undertake a preliminary assessment of my application and will ask for more information should they need it.  Council is required to make a decision about my application within 60 days of receiving all of the information.  This is now 3 months since I first put in my application.  I had been told that it would only take 3-4 months for a planning permit to be granted and we are now up to month 3!!!!!

Good tradesmen are busy – they have a lot of work on, and to get them to come to you when you need them; you need to develop a good rapport with them.  Provide coffee or drinks, be grateful for what they have done or fixed and the most important or all – pay them on time. 

This will see them come back to you when you need them especially in an emergency.

There is a Australian Government grant available at the moment to insulate your home.  I received a notice in my letterbox and after following it up have found that the grant will cover up to a 10 – 15square meter home – any bigger than that and there is an extra fee which was about a couple of hundred dollars.  This is a great opportunity.

The guys arrived this morning and after much searching they found access to the roof.  With newer homes this is usually through a man hole from inside your house but as my house is over 100 years old, this entrance is on top of the roof and located next to a chimney.

Some parts of the roof – particularly over the kitchen and family room is not accessible at all.  My understanding is that the section of house that has the bedrooms and lounge room is the original house – the kitchen was a separate room and then some time over the past 50 years they have joined the two together.  This makes for a very interesting roof and an even more interesting ceiling line in the house.

The guys installing the insulation said that this will make a huge difference to the heating of the house and in particular I should feel the difference in the summer.  I am looking forward to that, as last summer was a doosey.  Where I live in central Victoria there was about a week of over 40 degrees.

So if you need insulation get in contact with your local supplier and they will fill in the paperwork so that there is no or minimal cost to the homeowner.  If you have a rental property there is a different criteria.  Either way it is a good deal – follow it up.

Be patient – tradesmen are not tidy.

Most will leave their disregarded materials everywhere and anywhere.  Take this as part of the job, if prepared for it, it won’t cause you so much grief.

Had a few cross words this morning with the Love of My Life over doors – can you believe this?

I just mentioned in passing that I was going to get a handyman to come and measure up and replace 2 doors that lead to the bathroom and the laundry.

The Love of My Life suggested that I go to a secondhand place and find some antique doors – you know the sort – heavy with 4 panels.  I reminded him firmly that we had already tried this and couldn’t find the right size door.

I also reminded him that we have spent many hours trying to get the paint off ta similar door that we have which we hoping to use in the house.  The hours spent trying to remove the paint successfully has been hopeless and I believe a total waste of time. Also if I am honest it has not been too successful – we will need to spend more hours finishing it off.  Notice how I say we……

Why do men feel the need to have to come up with a solution?  Why can’t they just act like a woman and agree or even discuss.  Any way I don’t think we will talk about doors for a while.