Something seems different around here ...

... what could it be? ....

no wait ... don't tell me ...

Oh! I know! Could it be the fact that our kitchen, laundry and living area have been completely demolished?

... and that we've not had hot water for a couple of weeks?

Ah yes - that's it.

As seems to be the case for many people renovating, commencement of a few small alterations revealed countless problems caused by previous modifications to this house. A simple kitchen revamp has ballooned into a rather major task, requiring several months of work and even threats of having to knock down the whole rear of our house to start again from the ground up! (not a welcome idea, given that over the past year we've replaced the roof, developed a great little garden and installed a 10-unit photovoltaic energy system .... eeek!)

crappy old kitchen

part of the living area, which we hadn't planned to change ...

part of the living area .... it looks really stark and white in these pictures, although it was rather warm and comfy-looking really

rrrrrip!

Crrrrunch!

The floors throughout the back of the house will be ripped up completely next week, new slab will go down, walls stabilised (now that's pretty important, I imagine!), and we'll have recycled messmate (timber) flooring finished before Christmas if all goes well. At this stage I think we might be looking at a late Feb completion date for the kitchen, laundry etc.

I do know that we're very lucky to have access to a functioning bathroom though (braving the cold showers!), and we survived a trip to Ikea last weekend to buy some shelving for our makeshift kitchenette. It's just inside the front door - very handy.