Renovations and Excavations

With enough of our ‘stuff’ unpacked to live comfortably but simply, we started the renovations in earnest.  First the laundry was stripped of its very old, rough and ready cupboard and rusted sink and new put in ala Bunnings.  This DIY is our favourite store and I am quite sure it’s stock value has gone up this month with our patronage alone – in inverse proportion to our bank account.

The old laundry cupboard and bench

The new laundry

Meanwhile I started scrubbing years of grime from the bathroom and refurbishing the wood panelling. Then I started painting the bedrooms and scrubbing and polishing the wood.  I have come to the conclusion that every square centimetre of the house will have to be scrubbed, painted and polished.  I go to bed every night with my hands throbbing from the scrubbing and painting.

Bob goes to bed every night with his back aching. He has been extending the verandah roof so the boards are not exposed to the weather and then will replace the boards that have rotted from exposure to the 1600 - 2000 mm of annual rainfall we get here.  He has also been shaving and rehanging doors, cementing the broken top to the septic tank, repairing the termite damage and finishing off all the missing bits of skirting board and trim that never got done when the house was built, to name just a few of the chores.

The biggest project so far involved an excavator and bobcat spending three days clearing the excess bush around the house.  What an amazing job they did!  Massive trees were lifted out of the ground like matchsticks. The excavator driver handed his monstrous machine like a surgeon with a scalpel and suture. We got rid of 30 huge tree stumps, scores of trees too close to the house, pushed back the lantana, tidied up the dam and cleared a level spot for a storage shed.  A total transformation to the place.  No more Ankgor Wat verdant cave.  I can breathe and we have a view.

The Masters at work

The double Tallowood near the house

Some of the tree stumps dug up

Picking up trees like matchsticks

Making quick work of removing the trees

There goes the big palm

View of the house from the paddock before the clearing

After the clearing

 After the clearing we bought about 20 kg of millet grass seed to sow around.  By the time we got home from the Norco it looked like we would get some rain so we quickly sowed the seed thinking the rain would give it a great start.  As luck would have it this was not a gentle English rain but one of the fiercest tropical downpours we have ever seen.  All we could do was look at the seed and top soil running down the hill in rivulets.  Fortunately after inspecting the damage the next day we saw that quite a bit of the seed was still on the ground and a few days later a patchy green was forming.

Torrential rain just after sowing the grass seed

Patchy grass coming up a week later

Greening up

We have a list of about 30 major repairs/renovations to do between now and mid-March and so far have managed to tick off about a third of them. It is going to be a very busy few months.

A baby staghorn fern on the trunk of a bottlebrush along the driveway