Nineteen on Hume

Thursday, July 23, 2015

We Have a Bedroom!

For the last 7 or 8 months Scott and I have been sleeping out in our front sunroom while our bedroom was being repaired and painted. The sunroom is surrounded in glass windows on every.single.wall which means it's icy cold in Winter and gets zero privacy! The bedroom that we were getting ready to move into had a lot of work to do in it, 11 foot ceilings with all the walls and ceilings needing no more gaps, sanding, bogging, more sanding and painting! With Scott at work most days for 12 hours it makes it really hard to get much done at home, and since he's a house painter by trade he's definitely the best person to do ours! I did a lot of the work on the bedroom, mostly all stuff down on the low ladder, I hopped up on the high plank a few times to gap and paint while Scott was at work but I was petrified and it would take me 4 times as long to get anything done because of course if I fell I would break my neck...or graze my knee or something haha! Slowly but surely we finally got our room finished this week! We are sleeping in our actual bedroom and it is so much more exciting
than you would think! It's warm for starters, we don't need an electric blanket and 10 layers of clothing. It feels so cozy and just how we had hoped. We still have bits to do like skirting, the window surround, paint the door and furnishing it nicely but for now we are over the moon to actually be in a real bedroom and sleeping properly! Here are some photos of it so far, with all the work being done by us :)

Main Bedroom the day we got our keys

Main Bedroom now

Day One-note how many gaps are in those walls, and the old door frame to the right,
we took that out and in there is now our walk in robe

Day 2-All that green paint on the floors-it was lead paint...

Lucky Scott got to spend an entire day in the room completely sealed off
to sand the lead paint

So many repairs!

I may look like a pro in my ugg boots but I'm quietly petrified all the way up there ;)

Bedroom Now hooray!!!!

This was our bedroom in the front sunroom, the other end of it was complete chaos with gym
sets, boxes etc. And that window to the left looks into Jacks room.

We made this light in Jacks room for completely free! A friend gave us the globe & we had the hanging cord
already. It was pinterest inspired & came up really well, it looks amazing turned on!

We Are Still Here!

So I have been incredibly slack writing on this blog, life has been hectic the last few months and well, to be honest we haven't had that much to write about!

Back in March I was unlucky enough to get struck down with Ross River Fever while outside at work. I had over 80 mosquito bites on my legs alone and 5 days after the bites I woke up unable to walk, with the most excruciating pain in my right ankle-it was like I had broken it. I knew instantly in the back of my mind it was Ross River, but my doctor wouldn't believe me and told me to see how it goes. After 3 weeks of intense pain in my ankle and the hugest limp when walking I went back and she got an xray to check for a tear, and I insisted on blood test because by now I was badly fatigued and could barely use any of my fingers, I knew it had gotten into my finger joints. The afternoon of my tests she rang and told me to come in and she confirmed I have the pesky Ross River and ordered me to 3 months of strict bed rest as there is no medication to get rid of it. I'm not sure about anyone else but being a Mum of 2 children, running a business and having a husband who works 12 hours a day, this 'bed rest' she spoke of wasn't something I could do haha! The hardest part was stopping all exercise because when I did attempt a slow walk, I would feel even worse for the next few days. It was a really tough few months, things you do everyday like doing up the kids pyjama buttons, opening a bottle of milk or driving the car, were almost impossible. A 30 minute drive into Toowoomba by myself and I would need to pull over on the way home for a quick sleep, the fatigue was crazy. Thank goodness it now seems to be going really well for now, I think it often comes back at certain times for the rest of your life but at the moment I'm feeling really good. Some days I get a little pain in my fingers or they will lock up, but 90% better then what they were. I joined the gym and am being really active again, which I think is what helped get me back to good health, not stopping, making sure even when I was probably meant to be resting I would try to keep moving, apparantely the blood flow to the joints helps them a lot so I do think avoiding the strict bed rest helped a lot. Reminder: wear a mosquito repellent, you don't want to catch this!

While sick, we didn't get much done around the house, little bits here and there but nothing huge.

We were lucky enough to have Scott's sister Sharon come and help paint our Walk in Wardrobe (she is an awesome painter!), which is a small 4th bedroom which joined our bedroom that we have converted into a storage room. The floor in there was the worst of the house so instead of polishing it we just painted it and will put a rug down. Getting this room done was the biggest difference for us, being that we could move our clothing and cupboards out of our dining room and into that room. We've worked out that there's so many steps that need to be done in a specific order to then move onto the next job in our house! We decided to paint our walls in Solver brands Beaver colour which is a nice neutral brown. We were doing white walls, then grey then we settled on this colour to give our home a cozy, comfortable feel. After painting Jacks room white it really put us off the idea of white walls everywhere, just too hospital like for me in this old house.

Scott's Nana bought us an orange tree so we planted that and built a little frame around it and then we started digging up a corner of the backyard to eventually make a nice big vegetable garden. The entire area there is full of huge rocks, glass and ceramic plus the odd bit of interesting parts off things like windmills etc, so we are sifting each shovel full of dirt to get decent soil for the garden and this is so time consuming and a pretty tough job with the shovels, hoe and sifter!

We also discovered that a 70+ year old house that has no skirting and no carpet is bone chillingly COLD! Oh my goodness it is cold. Scott's Dad was kind enough to spend a Sunday with us helping to insulate under the kids 2 bedrooms and our hallway. It was like a jigsaw puzzle, having Scott under the house measuring, then Philip and I cutting MDF board and covering each piece in Sarking Foil then having Scott drill it under the floor boards. It was a full days work but has stopped the breeze under those rooms and makes such a huge difference to the warmth in those rooms! One day we will get to the rest of the house, but for now it is another job on that ever growing list!

Because it obviously wasn't cold enough here we decided to pack up one night a couple of weeks ago and drive a few hours south to New South Wales to see the snow on top of Mt Mackenzie at Tenterfield. The kids and I hadn't seen snow before so we arrived at midnight, slept in our ute and the snow started falling around 2am. Jack and Summer had no complaints being woken up to go outside to have a snow ball fight! It was so much fun, then we watched the sun rise and left as hundreds of other people discovered how nice it was up there and we headed off to Stanthorpe to some wineries, breweries and a Cheese cafe then headed home! It really was absolutely beautiful and I'm so glad we made the last minute decision to go down to have a look.

The following weekend (last weekend) we headed up to Childers for our friend Ambers birthday party for her 2 sons and for me to do a photo shoot with them afterwards all dressed up in their baseball themed gear, which was awesome. The party was at a 100 year old theater, watching The Sandlot movie and eating some pretty delicious food that Amber made up. She did an amazing job and worked really hard, it paid off and everyone had heaps of fun! Sunday was breakfast across from Woodgate Beach and a quick run for us, scooter for the kids then we left and went up to Bundaberg to visit Scott's sister Belinda and her family for a few hours. The kids loved playing as they always do and we sat on their gorgeous front verandah and talked and talked and talked! We arrived home finally at 8pm completely exhausted and decided we are hibernating for a little while and that's all the random little trips until it warms up!

There's been so much more happening but I think that's enough for now, so here are some photos of what we've been up to :)

Walk in robe the day we got our keys

Sharon hard at work painting

Walk in robe after pulling up the carpet

Summer and I digging away!

The kids love finding lots of worms!

Always time for a photo!

Jack and Summer posing as always!

The sarking foil glued onto the mdf board then drilled under the house floorboards for extra warmth

A bit of horse riding in the holidays!

Beautiful Woodgate Beach

Summer with her cousin Tully (and their cat!)

Proving I do work! Thanks for the photo Amber!

A set of drawers I bought to repaint

My drawer project completed for Summers room!

Seaworld for Jacks 7th birthday

Elsa Frozen cake I made for Summers birthday party

Jack and Summer at her 4th birthday party

The kids and I at my 30th birthday

Scott and I at my 30th birthday

Jack having a play with the dolphins at seaworld for his 7th birthday...yup we have been busy!!!

Jack and Summer with their Nana at Seaworld

Saturday, February 21, 2015

It's Been A While!

Wow, I haven't updated this for a month now but we haven't done much to write about! The renovations came to a stop when it came time to move out of our rental, get it cleaned, packed and then moved to the new house. It was a huge job, as school had started back (20 minute drive from old house to new school), hubby was back at work and there was so much to do at the rental, during school hours and then doing trailer loads at night with Scott after he finished work. Have I mentioned we moved from a brand new house with lot's of storage, into a house with no storage? May have spoken of it once or twice haha! Since we haven't finished coating our wooden floors, we can't really move any furniture in. We finished the 2 kids bedrooms and hallway, and painted one coat on Jacks walls, so their rooms are very basically set up for them so they are comfortable and can have a place to play while the rest of the house is in tatters. Since we can't really move our stuff into the house yet we hired a storage shed and filled it, plus our single garage, and we are just roughing it out for a while.

Scott and I are still sleeping in our sunroom on the floor but upgraded from a blow up mattress to our bed mattress so it's not too bad really! As we are still halfway through the floors there is stuff everywhere...absolutely everywhere. I built some Bunnings wardrobe inserts so we had somewhere for all our clothes rather then in washing baskets, and those are both in our dining room, along with opened boxes, a huge tv on the floor and tools everywhere.

You see we ran into a few problems along the way. After we had the plumber install the filters and pump on our rainwater tank (and what amazing water it tastes like!), our poor old pipes underground at our back door burst. He did a quick fix on that until we decided to get new pipes to our kitchen last week going under the house rather then under ground, as the next place to burst was under a huge concrete pad. He installed a new tap around the side of our house which places our hose in a much better position now too which is great.

We also made a real crap discovery a few weeks ago...many many birds nesting in our roof. We worked this out after us all being itchy non stop and working out there were all these wonderful mites coming through our VJ ceilings from the massive amount of birds. Argh. This has been an absolute nightmare. We got one of those big fake owls for the roof, it's meant to scare the sparrows off, but of course the sparrows love it ha! We went into the roof and removed all the nests we could and last weekend Scott and his Dad were up on the roof removing a part of the roof to remove a nest in a tricky spot, and starting to install even more guttermesh then what's there. These little sparrows get into the tiniest spots-I read they squeeze into 25mm gaps with ease, and they just don't go away. They have chewed a hole through our suffit into the roof that we need to fix too. So needless to say, all of this has really halted any work on the house whatsoever!

The last couple of days I have sanded a few more spots in the lounge and main bedroom with an orbital sander and we are hoping to slap a coat of clear on them today. It takes 3 days for the 3 coats to be applied, so that means we will all have to go out the front door and around to the back of the house to use the toilet at night for a bit, which is ok! Will be worth all of the hassle to have all these floors done and looking amazing!

The kids have adjusted really well to living in such a non organised house, they don't seem to care in the slightest which is really good because it's taken me a bit to come to terms with us looking like squatters living in a squalor-I am sure we aren't the first renovators to do this and we definitely won't be the last! It's actually been really good for us all having no tv connected and not being able to just sit around doing nothing. Unlike with our old rental, we now always have something to do, Scotts not bored out of his mind anymore and I think he will have a list of jobs as long as his arm to do forever! The kids play constantly with lego, dolls, the dog and getting in doing some gardening and they are getting along pretty well! Oh, and they both love their new school and kindy and best of all most days we get to walk/scooter/ride there and we are getting out of the house being really active a lot more!

We made a last minute decision to wake up last Sunday and spend the day at our favourite place-Byron Bay which is about a 3.5 hour drive, (in reality Scott actually lost a game of paper, scissors, rock to my sister Ashleigh, so he had to go). I think we needed the day away really badly after working so hard the last 8 weeks, we took our dog Sarge and went with my sisters family and it was a really, really lovely day spent at the beach, I won't settle for all work and no play and if the renovations go a bit slower so we aren't stressed and exhausted then I think that's ok.

I don't think I have actually posted any photos of the floors we have finished yet, or Jacks room painted so will add some of those in. We decided to be a bit different and paint the ceiling in the kids room a nice light colour since they got to choose their colour, and although this was something that Scott thought he would never, ever do being a house painter, he really loves how it turned out surprisingly!

Well I better go get these rooms ready for when Scott's home from work today so we can actually get some stuff done, so here's a few photos-I haven't been taking many at all lately!

Amanda
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