On the weekend was the big move-in! What a mission. At the risk of repeating myself I can only sing Gord's praises again and again. He is relentless... he started packing furniture into the truck on friday night and the first load was ready to go on saturday morning... He just didn't stop all weekend.. incredible. Funny how these things bring out the gender stereotypes... I ended up packing up the kitchen stuff, cooking and cleaning out cupboards etc, while the boys most of the tough stuff. Credit to Henry and Robbie (our saviour - he's been over to help us out 3 weeks in a row now!) for helping with the move - thankyou so so much :)

Unfortunately it looks like we'll have no internet for a while so I'm a bit behind with posting... I haven't downloaded the latest pics yet (especially of the beautiful new floor!) but here are some scary before shots of the bathroom -




The entire bathroom is about 1700mm square and consists of a bath and a sink basically. That shot is my brother standing in the bath. Seriously. Lucky neither Gord nor I are 6 ft tall. I am about 5' 7" and my head is only about 2 inches off touching the ceiling when I'm in the shower. That room needs some serious work... I think the current DIY priority list is as follows -

1) get blinds! It is freezing without them.
2) design and make bookshelf so we can unpack the 400 boxes of books we have between us
3) bathroom!? knock out wall to laundry, sort out level of floor, get toilet plumbed inside, etc etc...?

Lastly, some eye candy. I already dream of having a beautiful big rug in the bedroom... even though it's number 4789 on the priority list right now! But isn't this lovely? -

Lots to recap.

Last weekend was the first weekend of major DIY - Gord patched and fixed the floorboards -


- in the process discovering that the electrics under the floorboards were an accident waiting to happen... so then he fixed up all the electrics too. He also knocked out the ridiculous arch-shape in the doorway through to the bedroom. Here's the before shot -


Jim and Sean painted nearly the whole living space and bedroom -


Mum was a wallpaper-removal machine (and cooked Chilli con Carne for the troops!) -


Amber came later with Jonah, and Jess brought cake which we ate at the end of the day with cups of tea. Last weekend was such a mission. I painted, bought building supplies and beer (Very important!).

This weekend, Robbie came round again and helped finish painting the walls and ceilings, Mum catered again (so important - thankyou!) I painted and tidied and had a mini-tantrum trying to paint the window frame in the bedroom with enamel paint. BAD idea. I have since sanded off most of what I painted in preparation to go over it in water-based which looks much better, less shiny, and is much easier to use. Grrr.

Gord doesn't cease to amaze me - he's finished most of the electrics, wired up the TV antenna -


...finished plastering the newly rectangular(!) doorway -


....patched and planed the uneven floorboards... the list goes on. I'm so lucky.

And all that was the lead-up to tomorrow when the FLOOR MAN comes to sand and polish the floors. After hearing a few horror stories I decided there are some things best left to the professionals - no not electrics, not plumbing, just floorboards. :) ha ha. I can't wait to see when they're done... we're having them stained darker to help match all the different timbers. Something like this -


Not too dark... and not too shiny. I'm going with water-based instead of polyurethane finish so it looks more natural - less plastic.

Man that was a big round-up.

This weekend is stage 2 of the DIY blitz. Trying to get all the big stuff done before Monday when the floor man is coming to sand and polish the boards. So today was all about painting, plastering, fixing floorboards, wiring electrics and the TV antenna. Actually I just painted... everything else was Gord. Had some help also from Robbie... and of course Mum took care of the catering again. Aren't we lucky?

Progress photos tomorrow, but in the meantime here's the floorplan and Auction flyer, which shows some good 'before' photos :)

First Things First Post!

I just bought my first home. Here it is.



It's 3.5m wide, 1 bedroom. It's got an outside toilet(!).

So much potential... so much to do!