All the Little Bits...

Aside from the quite major renovations of replacing an entire bathroom, taking out 2 walls and putting in 2 cavity slider doors, there were several other things we needed to address with the house as well (not mentioning that the roof needs replacing, and that the electricians found some old wiring in the house, even after it passed it's electrical test that was done prior to us buying the house. See, always more things!!).

These included -

• Taking out 2 small areas of dry rot (at least that means the house is dry right? Better than damp rot I s'pose) in the office and by the front door.
• Filling in some surface cracks around the outside plaster of the house.
• Replacing 3 piles.
• Levelling up the lounge room floor.
• Re-routing roof drainage pipes so that the water didn't spill onto the pathway outside of the kitchen door.
• Re-routing bathroom drainage and sewage pipes so that they are under the house, instead of on the wall outside of the house right next to the kitchen door.
• Installing a sump-pump under the house (that's a small post for another time!)

I think that's it. 

Oh, no wait a second, then there was the time that the plumber told me the hot water cylinder was leaking and that we'd need to replace it. But that's also a post for another time.

Onwards to the photos me thinks - reliving all that work above is giving me heart palpitations.

Oh Hai there bath!! And what the outside plaster covering the house looks like from the inside...

I've since made the revelation that the bathroom is now officially the most insulated room in the entire house. Building paper was put against the inside plaster on the wall, then pink bats, then aqua gib, then several layers of special stuff to make the tiles stick to the aqua gib, then plaster and tiles and finally grout. Mmmmm, toasty.

Plumbing has been installed!

The new toilet sits in the corner on the right, where the level is currently hanging out and the vanity sits in the middle of the toilet and bath.

Kitchen/Dining room on the left. Straight ahead is the door to the office/library. To the right, the lounge.

Er, I guess it was a good thing we decided not to keep the racing carpet then? (Spot the chook house?)

Oh dear. This section of the outside of the house was probably the ugliest bit of the house before it got all cut up (and it's the bit we use as the entrance to the house, I'm standing in the kitchen door taking the photo above). But with a huge section of the concrete path being cut up, mud, dirt and (for lack of a better word) building crap everywhere, it was a bit of a sorry sight. (Spot the old pinex board that used to cover the hall!)

That pipe running down the side of the laundry on the left has now gone. It was the pipe that drained all rain water from the roof into the mains water waste (currently hidden by bits of wood) except that all that water would spill onto the path instead, and not into the drain. That's the kitchen door on the right.

I'm not sure I actually got any good photos of this outside section of the house before the work started, which is really annoying because now that all the pipes have been taken away (and re-routed to under the house/concrete path) this section already looks so much better than it did. I'll need to hunt through my epic number of photos to see if I can spy anything.

Until next time,

xx

J (& D)

And then the Builders came...

It's been a few months since my last update, and well, an awful lot has changed. An awful lot has also unexpectedly (or expectedly?) popped up too, which is what you get with an old house I suppose. It's sort of been ongoing, with small little annoying things continually popping up and it seems to me that no matter how much you plan, there will always be more things.

I guess all that watching of Grand Designs over the years has at least taught me that in building/renovating, all's fair.

Day 1

By the end of day one, the house was in total destruction mode. I had no idea they could do that much so quickly. Behold...

Missing - x1 bathroom, x1 bathroom wall, x1 hallway wall, x all power to the house except for 3 plugs in the kitchen...er, great. Can we change our minds already?

(Well, in saying that, this part nearly didn't start on the day that it was supposed to! The plumber couldn't find the water mains after a minute of looking and so promptly left. After about 5minutes, one of the builders found it (right by the front gate) and promptly called the plumber back).

Looking up at the bathroom directly in front of me from the hallway. The lounge wall on the left has all but disappeared.

The bathroom (or what was the bathroom). The toilet was in the corner where you can see the hole in the floor.

Standing in what is now the lounge - the shower would have been directly in front of me, up against the far wall where the light is in the photo.

That was a doorway on the right and a wall on the left, now it's just the hall way.

Standing in the lounge/dining room/kitchen looking at the destruction.

By the end of the day, it was rather apparent that my initial plan to stay in the house was not going to be a realistic one. So I packed an over night bag and went to a warm house, complete with working bathroom. (I should add that David was galavanting around the world for the first three weeks of this renovation - was it planned? We will probably never know for sure).

Day 2 

Then the builders came back and did it all again the next day...

Lounge cavity slider frames are in (left) and the second wall is out (right). Bathroom - no change.

No more wall...

Standing in the dining room/kitchen looking at the lounge.

Cavity slider frame is in, the bathroom is behind. Why they put the bathroom door back on, we will never know...

The cold icky weather we had during this initial bit of house-destruction did not help either. Do you know how much dust renovating makes? SO MUCH DUST. Add to that constant rain and you get cold wet muddy mess.

If you plan to renovate, my advice is to give up any plan of cleaning/dusting until every single work person has left your building.

More pictures to come - I'm trying to sort through the hundreds... and they get better, oh how they get better (she writes while sitting in her lovely lounge with the french doors open, the sun shining and the birds tweeting!).

xx
J (& D)

The Night Before...

We have people coming around tomorrow to rip out our bathroom and 2 internal walls and a few other small bits and bobs. Fun times - not...well, actually, kinda fun because then we'll be able to live in the house how we want to.

You see, right now, the room we want to use as the lounge is currently separated by two walls that make up the hall way in between the current kitchen/dining room. We can't use it because there is no heating source in there. Also, the carpet is interesting, the walls need painting, the floor needs to be levelled a little bit and we really really want to open up the entire living area so that it's more spacious, we don't have wasted hall space that doesn't get used for anything and the current really old, really small bathroom is going to get a teeny tiny bit bigger, oh, and look wayyyyy nicer than it's current state.

Behold, how we are currently living in our little house...

This is the current living room, dining room and kitchen. I'm standing in the little kitchen to take this photo.  Most of the wall with the Red Lady on it (well, technically she's a yellow lady but we've always called her the Red Lady) is being taken out.

Like our flooring choice? This will be replaced with something nice, but until the major work has been done, it stays. And say hello to wee Monty!

That door on the right goes into the hall way. The door you can see (with the painting on it) does not open. It's left over from when what will be the lounge (we call it the green room, you'll see why soon) was 2 rooms.

That 'door' will be part of the extended bathroom. When I say 'extended' it's being extended the tiniest bit, up to where the 'door' ends. Right now it's wasted space, so it made sense to bring the shoe-box bathroom out a bit.

Cosy wood burner - this little guy gives out some amazing heat. In fact, it can get way too hot in here! And that is my wee kitchen up the back.

We have rather pretty ceilings throughout the house...

So, this wall will go, as well as the one (out of the photo) to the far right. You can see down the hall way to the other end of the house. The study/library/office is straight down, the door to our bedroom is on the right at the end of the hall and my sewing room is on the left (though you can't see it). We will be adding in a small sliding wall-cavity door to the end of the hall way so we can shut that end of the house off if we want too.

So, looking up at the bathroom from the hall way. The door on the right is the door we just came through from the dining room/kitchen.

The bathroom is being extended all the way up to the start of the dining room/living room door. The wall you can see just beyond that on the right makes up the shower wall. Yep, totally wasted space!

Non-functioning door on the left.

Gotta love the floor and general colour scheme of the bathroom!

So, that wall you can see in the centre is disappearing. We'll end up with a more 'square' bathroom. I think just getting rid of the wall will make a huge difference to how big the bathroom feels.

Also, is that a door stop in your shower? Ummm, yeah, doesn't everyone have one of those?

A lovely paint job and probably original 1940's wall storage.

And, while you can't see it, because the bath towel is blocking it, the shower head is super low. As in, I have to duck under it to wash my hair. Can you imagine how poor David feels?

Ah, the ol' faux yellow marble. Noice!

Can't wait for this toilet to go! And that pipe! Thankfully all piping will go under the floor, where it should be.

The wall on the left (with the smoke alarm and picture) is coming out. We are putting in sliding/wall cavity doors there so that we can close the room off if we want too.

The Green Room (can you see that carpet?) gets amazing morning sun. It also has french doors out onto the back of the property which is where all that lovely garden is. In summer, I can see us sitting in the sun, with the doors open, eating breakfast (that may quite possibly include eggs of some description) and watching the chooks.

You'll have to forgive the mess (we are currently using it as storage).

Why, hello there Mocha-Bee!

So this room used to be 2 smaller rooms. It was literally cut in half down the middle (essentially cutting the french doors in half), and you can see where the old door used to be below. Actually, I guess it still is a door...

Don't be jealous of the racing/dog (cheetah?) carpet. Not everyone can have carpet as awesome as this...

Back with more updates soon. You can bet I'll be snapping away :)

xx
Jen (& David)

New Beginnings...

First posts are tricky aren't they? I think that's why we've procrastinated getting this wee blog up and running.

You have to introduce yourselves (Hi, I'm Jen and this is my husband David, we live with our two cats Mocha and Monty and three chickens Rosemary, Marigold and Daisy), you have to explain a bit about the blog (this blog is about chronicling our foray into first-home-ownership, renovation and living the kiwi dream — whatever that means) and you have to talk a little about what your plans and hopes are for the blog (we hope to blog about all the things that come with owning a home that needs a bit of work, and a huge garden! All the good bits, and all the bad bits. Gardening tips, DIY ideas and recipes are of course part of the menu, even if we don't quite know what we're doing!).

Daisy & Rosemary foraging away...

Well, I suppose it wasn't that hard was it?

Let's start at the beginning shall we...?

In September 2013, after 4 years of living in Sydney, David and I decided to move back home to New Zealand. David had just completed his PhD and Sydney living was expensive. So, we moved home, back into my Father-in-Law's house while we waited to hear back about PhD news and plan an overseas holiday to Italy and the UK.

Initially, buying a house wasn't really the plan. But we slowly realised that PhD news wasn't going to come as quickly as we had hoped, and as much as we loved living in the grand old house that was my FIL's, we really wanted a place of our own. If we had to move elsewhere for jobs for David (academic jobs are few and far between, and beggars can't be choosers) then we would just rent the place out.

We did our sums, and surprisingly, they added up. Renting a place of our own was going to cost more in the long run than buying a house (within our budget, of course).

So, right before we left for our trip, we found a house we liked in the area we wanted to live in. It was in budget and it was cute and rentable if we had to leave. 

Only problem? Someone else was prepared to pay more for it than we were. So, with sad faces, we headed to Rome (which I guess wasn't actually that bad!). Eight weeks later, we returned home and started looking again but as the holiday period loomed, house pickings were slim.

To our surprise, during that time, along came another house we wanted to buy. It was a private sale and it seemed like it was the one for us. Alas, after Christmas, came the news we kind of already knew was coming, the vendor had decided not to sell after all as he had just signed another six-month work contract.

Then, in January, third time lucky, we found this house.

It wasn't exactly love at first sight. It didn't have that pretty street appeal that some of the other houses we were looking at did. But it had an amazing garden, it was private and at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, it was bigger than the other houses and it was cheaper.

Oooh, secret garden path to the right...

What's down there then...? (That's the hen run in all that nasturtium on the right!)

Oh, it's a hen house!

And the french doors of the room that will be the lounge.

Let's keep going... that's the oldest of three apple trees head.

Round the bend, to a large rhubarb and climbing rose...

Under the rose and the first glass house on the left and a small cherry tree to the right...

Ah, glass house number two!

Ummm, I think some plants threw up in our garden...

Looking back up the path we just came down. Yep, and more of them there potatoes on the left.

We looked at the house three times, each time knowing more and more that this was the one. Yes, it needed work. But the bones were good, it had a lovely feeling about it, it was filled with all-day sunshine and we could put our mark on it. Oh, and its chattels included chickens — three to be exact.

Looking back now, the sale actually went quite quickly, but at the time, it dragged on. I didn't want to get too excited about the house just in case it didn't come through again, but it was hard, especially when we had mentally moved in already (and we were getting desperate to unpack our boxes from Sydney that held all our possessions, waiting, lonely, in the sitting room at the FIL's).

The two other apple trees, pear and two plum trees line the back of the lawn. There are two feijoa trees on the left of the photo.

The side of the house — that's a fig tree in the middle, some raspberry and current bushes on the left and more rhubarb tucked away to the right.

Same side, different angle. My sewing room on the right and the study/library on the left. Both rooms get some amazing sun!

The front door gate...

The front door gate from the road...

 The back door gate...

The back door gate from the road.

From the road — the house and the back door are on the left and some storage/laundry/old cement water tower thingy on the right. Not the prettiest sight you ever did see, but the flowers help :)

The day we moved in was torrential rain. The first day in two weeks it had been that heavy. We did one trailer load, unpacked a very wet couch and called it a day.

Five weeks later, and we are loving the house. I can't believe how warm this lovely old lady is (she was born in the 1940s, but a lady never reveals her actual age. Though I'm sure with some digging around the council archive we'll turn up that bit of information). I've started calling it the Summer House, because, if you've ever lived in Dunedin, you'll know how cold it can get, and how days-wearing-skirts-without-stockings are few and far between, even in the height of summer. Now I'm sitting here, in a t-shirt, too hot, typing this while the wind howls and blows outside, with no heating on. I'm not complaining.

The photos dotting this post are ones I took on the day we moved in, in between rain showers, of the garden. We've since spent A LOT of time in the garden, clearing and tidying up, and while there is still a lot more to do, it's looking pretty good. (If we do say so ourselves.)

So, welcome to our house blog. I hope you'll be warm and comfortable here. There are fresh eggs in the fridge, a lot of cabbage in the garden and a several litres of stewed apple in the freezer, so do help yourself...

xx

Jen (and David)