Ladies! Cover your eyes!

While we were out today, the rear of our (usually very modest) little house decided to get a bit naked!

Eeep! 

Although it looks as though a tornado tore through it, we're actually quite happy because we finally see some progress on our renovations (after 5 months of having the main part of the house boarded up). And it's very well-ventilated.

Now I'm starting to get excited ... !

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.

Saturday shopping

Today was a good day.
This morning we braved the cold wind, grabbed ourselves some coffees, and bought .....


... a new house! Hooray!


Well, it's not exactly new - it's a little cottage built in the 1920s, in a leafy, quiet street. Here is my new sewing room:

our new bedroom:


and the bright and sunny sitting area:


We're looking forward to having more space - it's been quite a while since we've been able to host dinner parties or lazy lunches for our friends. Our new house has room for entertaining, three bedrooms, a decent bathroom, and quite a bit of space outside. We're planning to renovate the kitchen and maybe add a couple of rooms in a (non-obtrusive) second storey. Godfrey has lofty ideas for his new shed, and I've already planned the garden in great detail.....

The next step is to sell our current house - anyone looking for a Victorian terrace in Brunswick?