It has taken four years but big things have started with excitement, and stalled in a typical for us fashion, like my floors... Justin had planned to use his two weeks off over christmas to restump the house, and finally give us straight floors. It was an ambitious plan that required the hired help of two tradesman from work, and optimistically, some help from friends and the spawn. In anticipation of the coming help, the lounge room floor was ripped up, and we moved everything deemed unnecessary to a shipping container in the front paddock, that was nearly 3 months ago. Life got in the way with weddings, birthdays, and other social engagements we couldn't say no to, tradesmen were unavailable, and everyone has been busy, unable to make the trip, or they have come for more of a social visit or car part pick up. It doesn't help that we are not the most organised pair of people, and a working bee would mean entertaining and feeding people, with my rheumatoid arthritis, and other health issues, I am not up to doing that, so we haven't asked for much assistance.
First up was our lounge room floor, it was slow and tedious work for Justin, as he tried to save every separate floor board, lifting each part of it a little at a time, and cutting the nails until the board was free. We then realised that we have no stumps supporting the outer walls, just bricks haphazardly stacked on uneven dirt. There is no door on our lounge room, so the outside has been coming in through those gaps for the past 2 months, flies, mosquitos and other bugs/animals/amphibians, it has been a trying experience and aeroguard is the new before bed routine.
We also found out some pretty terrifying things are holding our house up, and that we are definitely making the right choice to fix our floors, instead of living with them for a while longer.
Yep, thats a bit of wood angled under our bearer, on some old stacked bricks, resting on a wedge of rock, on a chunk of bluestone, in a pile of rubble... This wasn't even the worst balancing act, but Jus moved some before I could grab a photo.
We found our walls have been plastered over old masonite boards, which were stuck on old wooden plank style walls. It's pretty cool to see new layers revealed, to see some of the history of the house emerge. I can't say that's a wallpaper pattern we want to keep, and pink is my least favourite colour, but obviously a previous owner was a fan, my renovated in the 1940's or 50's and again in the 80's bathroom is also pink.
We have moved the sofa bed, tv's and consoles, with some other useful pieces of furniture into the dining room, which is now our lougeroom by day, and bedroom by night. My pantry is now our linen closet, and we have ripped out a low row of cupboards, for our fridges to fit and put some temporary shelving up, all to better use the space for kitchen essentials and an open pantry.
The strange thing is, without all of our things and living with a suitcase amount of clothes, life isn't bad. I think there is something to the minimalist thing. We could live quite comfortably live in this tiny space, if there was a door to keep the bugs out, and many people do. There will be much scrutiny over how we use our space when this is finished, and a hard look at what things we really need to be happy.
Life is still hard without our dog Murphy, I still miss him so much, and our second youngest spawn is away, working his way around Australia. Our house seems so different with only the youngest spawn at home right now. We have also put the word out with the family, until the floors are done there will be no visits to us, unless they're coming to help.
So here's to patience, successfully putting our needs first, and learning that less can actually be more.
'til next time,
Bek
