The Garden Whip Around

There are only a few things happening in the garden at the moment but when I took a wander the other day I took some photos.

Our blood orange is loaded with fruit and the poor little tree is groaning under their weight.

Our Kaffir Lime is the same age as all our other citrus but is twice the size and twice as healthy.  It never seems to be affected by bugs when the other citrus are and it is fruiting for the first time this year.

This cherry tomato is self seeded and is growing like crazy even though we have had some cool nights, down around 2 degrees c, it is flowering and fruiting and it produces quite large cherry tomatoes which are about the size of an Australian 20 cent piece.

Sometimes growing pak choy can be a challenge here as the grasshoppers love to eat it and usually just leave a few stalks sticking up in the air.  This year I tried again and sowed a lot of seeds close together and they have done really well.  I am just thinning them out a few every day and adding them to dinner.

The late beans that I planted have climbed up their frame and are starting to flower.  Hopefully we will get a good number of beans before the weather really gets cold.

In other areas of the garden we have been topping up the mulch and we have planted some native grasses all around our water tanks.

Everything in the shade house is growing so well since the rain we had last month.  The little native violets are growing so well they are about to take over the path.

We have also gotten another job ticked off "The List" - installing garden edges.  We have used granite rocks that we collected from a local council dump which did some of edges.

And we used hardwood timbers slabs and old fence posts to do the rest of the garden beds.

It is such a good feeling to have this job done as it means we are pretty much finishing all the jobs on the list, not that we will not find other things to do.

What's going on in your garden?

A Bathroom Make Over

Well the renovating is nearly over and our biggest job has now been finished, the bathroom.
This was a big job and it involved completely gutting the bathroom including stripping the walls back to the stud work.  We spent a couple of weeks showering in the backyard with our camping solar shower and for the few days we were without a toilet we borrowed a camping toilet from friends.
Our bathroom was the ugliest room in the house so we were not sad to see it go.

Here are the before shots.

Our toilet was surrounded by a piece of lino but it was just cut to fit around the base of toilet but it was just sitting there and looked very second rate.

Then there was the fact that our toilet was on a weird angle so you were facing the corner when sitting on the throne.

Our bathroom is a good size but it was just slapped together by a previous owner.

The floor in our bathroom was just unfinished concrete which we covered with a bamboo mat.

The vanity unit was old and all of the basin was scratched.  We had replaced the taps when we moved in and so were able to reuse these in the new bathroom.

The bath surface was all cracked and scratched.

The tiling around the taps had never been done properly instead the tile had just been cracked to allow space for the taps.

The shower head was supported by a piece of garden hose.

The window frame was water damaged and the plaster board was cracked.

The sealant around the bath was messy and grubby.  Because the bath was so uneven the sealant had been used to fill in the gap.

And here is the finished product.  The walls are pale grey, the tiles around the bath and shower are white and the floor tiles are a charcoal colour.

We constructed a partition wall instead of installing a shower screen.

And we now have a nice new straight toilet.  We installed a new toilet suite that uses less than half of our old one and only cost us $59 so it was worth doing.

Hubby did all of the work himself except for the tiling and he did a great job.  The bathroom was more than 10 cm off square on one wall and that had to be squared up so our tiling did not look funny, the whole room had to be re-lined and the window re-framed.
We are so glad to have it all finished and the total cost came in at just under $4000 including the professional tiler.

This is the last big job we had to do and we are now on the home straight.

A Driveway Upgrade

Back in 2009 when we brought this house there was no driveway at all.  It was just a couple of tyre marks on the grass.  I tried to find a photo but do not seem to have any.  We had a load of gravel, about 3 cubic metres tipped in a pile which I then spread by hand (never again) to give us a straight driveway from the street to the garage.
A year later we extended the gravel towards the house and into our newly rebuilt shade house, this I do have photos of.

Originally the area between the house and drive way was grass with a few pavers
which we put in at the same time as the first lot of gravel.

Another cubic metre of gravel was all it took to link the driveway with the house.

The gravel driveway made a big difference and we were no longer getting muddy feet trying to get inside. But there was never a proper edge and over time the gravel crept into the lawn and the lawn into the gravel.  So hubby gathered up a whole lot of stones we had lying around and made an edge to hold the gravel in place. He also took the opportunity to straighten the edge and level out some of the lumps where the dirt kept coming through and growing weeds.

Of course the number 1 helper is always involved.

Then we got the new gravel delivered which this time was not dumped in 1 big pile but spread out a bit, and it was Hubby who did the spreading this time.

Nice new edges the keep the gavel where it should be.

We are really happy with how it turned out and this just makes the front of the house look so much neater.

Hopefully the gravel is now thick enough to keep the weeds down too, time will tell.

Bedroom Makeover

While I was in New Zealand at the end of last year Hubby spent the time at home renovating our bedroom.  In his words "he didn't want me there putting my 2 cents worth in".
Anyway he did a great job lining the room to cover the external timer cladding (our room is an addition to the origional house) and the ugly brickwork.

The old air conditioner fell from grace...

Into the garden below and was added to the dump pile.

The wall containing two old windows that used to be the out side of the house was packed out with blocks.

Then it was clad ready for plaster and paint.

The end wall of bessa bricks was prepared ready for cladding

As was side wall around the windows.

Then the whole room was clad and the windows were framed.  Then the gaps were plastered and sanded.

Finally the entire room was given a coat of paint that matches the rest of the parts of the house that have already been renovated.

Then new curtains were added and new carpet was installed.

It feels really good to be making these improvements to the house.  Even though we are moving to NZ in the next few years we are able to get some enjoyment from our hard work.
The list is also getting shorter which is also satisfying.

Living Through Renovations

Our house is currently in a state of chaos.
We have had to empty 5 rooms (entry, 2 bedrooms, office/craft room and lounge) so that we could do some painting and get new carpet laid.
So we currently have our belongings piled up on every available surface with little pathways running around from room to room, basically we are living like rats in a maze.

 This is the reason we are painting.  Ugly ugly fake wood paneling, we call it caravan cladding.  Both our living room and our kitchen dining room are clad in the wood paneling and it makes our house really dark not to mention dated and unattractive.

So we called in the assistance of Hubby's parents and started painting.  First coat was a undercoat/stain blocker as we were not sure if the stain would come through.

Even with just the undercoat on we could see that the paint was going to make a huge difference.

Then it was on with the colour.  It is the same colour that we have used in the other rooms we have painted and is a pale beige colour.

The reason for undertaking painting this close to Christmas is because we had ordered carpet and it was a bit of a last minute decision to paint the walls.  We had originally thought we would not bother but we decided it was worth the effort.

We have been looking forward to getting carpet for ages as our floorboards were really ugly.  Years of paint drips, evidence of old carpet and lino and plenty of ventilation.  Getting the floors sanded and polished was not really an option.  It would have been really expensive and we were not sure all of the boards would have stood up to the sanding.

One of the ventilation hole.

 Woo Hoo here comes the new carpet and nice thick underlay.

 And here are some before and afters.

Looking into the spare room...

Check out the floor...

And now look at the difference.  Amazing.

And in the lounge...

No more fake timber...

The spare room had already been painted but the floors were still terrible.

We couldn't wait to cover up the mess.

And now it looks like a proper bedroom.

I am so glad it is all done, now all we have to do is put the house back together.  But not everything will be going back where it came from.  We will be using this as an opportunity to have a big de-clutter.  Thankfully we are not having visitors stay for Christmas so we can take a bit of time to sort everything out.  But I suspect we will get sick of the chaos and not let it drag out too long.
We still have the kitchen/dining room to paint and it is a big space so we are going to leave it for a few weeks.  Plus it is where all our stuff is currently piled so until we get that sorted there will not be any more painting.
And let's face it it is Christmas.

Have you lived through renovations?