Ready for improvements!

A carpenter is expected at 7:10am Wednesday to put down the floors in the lounge. So now is a good time for an update on progress so far. We have a new camera so the pics are better. Some look not so good, but I think it's the flash picking up the dust in the air (which is plentiful).

So...the lounge:




You can see here that we've removed the internal walls separating the bedrooms. The hallway wall will go but it supports the ceiling joists so not a job for me.

Backyard kitsch

For R's 30th Birthday we thought a garden party would be nice. It would be a garden party, of course, because we have no floors in the house. The dust-bowl wouldn't do.

Here is the before:



Wah hey...look at that! Let's hope that sun hangs around.



And about three hours later...hail the size of golf balls.

A door for Lupin

It's a slippery slope...a couple of dog posts and the focus of the blog quickly changes. I will craftily segue back to the house with a post about the dog door I just installed. Hurrah!

So here it is!



Quite handy for when it's raining and you don't want your nose to get wet.



Getting there...



And in - blur like sotong!



I now need to concoct some cunning booby traps so I know he's been inside when I've left him outside and left the house. A single hair placed across the door perhaps? Or just a liver treat in the middle of the floor?

Garden update

I returned home after Christmas to find that the garden was flourishing. Last year the heat pretty much killed off the vegies while we were away. I think there was a bit of rain while we were gone...actually, I know there was because my front yard trench was filled with water. I'll refrain from posting pictures of that.

There was a thunder storm last night - New Year's Eve - and it poured. I decided that some gentle guitar music might take Lupin's mind of the combination of thunder and NYE fireworks. He appears to like Chet Atkins because he wasn't too bothered by the noise outside.

Anyway, here is the tree pumpkin. I'm wondering what to do with this...I think it wants to go along the ground, but that's WLP territory. It's actually quite spiky, much like a zucchini, so maybe he'll give it a wide berth?



The passionfruit is going great guns. Perhaps this is indestructible plant #2.



Here is a flower that's growing out of the succulents. There's another one smaller than this.



Thankfully the bampot tree was dormant over the festive season.



He was happy when I took this, honest. He's been to the velodrome twice today.

Removing slats from walls and removing bedroom ceilings

The plaster said the dreaded words: "Mate, the slats have to come down". Here are some progress pictures.

These are both taken from the middle bedroom looking into the study.



Here is the pile we removed. This is only about 2/3 of them.



Our original intention was to leave the front & middle bedrooms' ceilings in place and just sheet over them. However when I was up on the ladder I noticed they were sagging pretty badly, so we decided to pull them down. What a mess!

This is from the study looking into the middle bedroom.

Lupin home after Christmas

Lupin arrived home from the kennels at 5:45am today smelling of flea treatment, and was fast asleep by 6:45am. I managed to wait until 3pm before stroking his velvet ears. Here he is playing with the toy that P & G gave him for Christmas.

The false ceilings come down

Excluding jobs that relate to raw sewage, I now believe there are no jobs more filthy than removing a ceiling. We pulled the false ones down from the hall and study and then had to remove all of the original plaster from the original ceilings. So I suppose that the dust that was disturbed is from the last 100-odd years or whatever.

Unfortunately the photos don't really do it justice because the difference, particularly in the hallway, is quite dramatic.

First of all the hallway before...



And after...



The study before (pictured is the false ceiling's frame)...



And after...