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!!!!!

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.

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.

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 won’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 Love 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 window made up of loovers and glazed glass.

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 south and as I have mentioned they are huge.

this is the wall to be removed

The Love of My Life came to visit, along with my daughter – and we started discussing removing the wall. This is the wall between one of the bed rooms and the small room which will be my office .  I want to have the wall removed to turn it all into one room which in turn will open up the room.

Anyway daughter and fLove of My Life and I started to bang at the walls.  We discussed that there would only be one electrical wire at one end which we will stay away from until the builder arrives.

Trust me bashing down a wall is terrific fun – that is if you can stand the dust, mess and absolute caos.  I managed to cover the furniture in the family room while all of this was happening.

The walls are very old and are made of small slats of timber filled in with something that looks like concrete and horse hair.  We were disgusting after a few minutes absolutely covered in dust.

After we had been at it for a few hours, Love of My Life had to leave – hmms just when the cleaning up is about to happen.  Daughter and I shovelled the mess into the wheelbarrow which I could barely lift to haul outside into a skip which I had waiting. It feels like we have been doing this for days.  I have muscles hurting that I didn’t even know existed.

Removing the wall took a number of hours over a number of days but removing the debris took the longest.  I honestly thought that we would never get to the end of it.

The store room is completed – this is so good!!.  After living with my things in boxes for a number of weeks, now I will now be able to access them.

My plan all along is to have the fridge located in the pantry, as there is no room in the kitchen or the dining room for that matter.

Many years ago when I was looking for a new fridge I had 4 teenage children and it seemed as if my whole life revolved around them needing to eat.  So I searched for and consequently bought the biggest fridge I could find.  Needless to say they all eventually left home and all that remains in my oversized fridge.

I told the builder this plan – it seems that I had not thought about the 3 metre wide chimney that is sitting behind the kitchen.  Therefore the door size  to get the fridge in is restricted.

Now I can tell you that it took one builder, one apprentice, and one electrician to manipulate my fridge into that pantry.  Saying that: they had to remove the arcatraves and the skirting board to get it in.  Plus I think there was some damage done to the apprentice in the process.

The fridge is in – whatever am I going to do should I decide to leave this house.

In the little lean-to attached to the house there is a very old unused for many years toilet and bath.  (2m x 3m).  The bath has a cover over it which freaks me out.  I have visions of finding a past owner or the like lying in the bath. There is no way I am going to lift up the timber.

Anyway about the idea.

This outhouse is connected to the kitchen on the inside.  So I have walked around, examined it and now think that I could fill in the doorway in the lean-to, remove some cupboards in the kitchen, put in a new door and fill with shelves.  Hey presto there is a walk in pantry.

I contacted my friendly builder (I think he is friendly as he knows there is lots of work coming his way) who comes around and confirms that this can be done. He is happy to do the job (of course!).

By the way, he lifted the timber to only find a very old bath.  I am a little disappointed as I had imagined all sorts of things that could have gone on over the past 100 years in this house.

Life in my old house has taken on some semblance of order.  My first job was to pull down the curtains and threw them out.  This was really satisfying especially after taking down the ones in the hallway (see previous blog) and I have convinced myself that the house now looks much nicer.  I can tell by my visitors faces that they don’t agree and that they think that I am a mad woman.

Most of my things are still packed and there is a little lean- to attached to the west side of the house so am able to keep a lot of things in there.    The original lounge room is going to be turned into a bedroom and the 3^rd bedroom into a lounge. There is a wall between the little office and the 3 rd bedroom which I am going to remove.  This will open the house up- I can see it in my mind and constantly visualise it.

One evening prior to Christmas I started on the wall paper in the hall way.  I started with bought wall paper remover the spray on sort and after purchasing 7 bottles I was given the hint that hot soapy water did the trick.  So using the spray bottles I just fill with hot water put in a squirt of dish washing liquid and spray it on a small patch at a time, when it is really soaked through the paper will come off easily using a scrapper.

I did this most evenings until wrecked then fell into bed so have lived in a sticky mess for a couple of weeks now.  But what a difference it has made.