The renos continue

The good news we now have some walls, the bad news the slate has been removed and things are a little messy.

Here is the new pantry with walls (and a light that comes on when you open the door - we think, it is certainly on when the door opens but is it always on)!


And the laundry.



Here we are looking towards the deck from the kitchen.



And our classy new front entrance....



Turns out the slate in the kitchen area and family room were laid at different times (more than a few years apart apparently and by different techniques). The kitchen was laid using bitumen and hessian the family room by a more modern adhesive. You can see where the extension starts quite easily in the photo above, note the change in floor colour where the bitumen ends. The consequence, the kitchen area lifted fairly easily the family room will need to be stripped by a sander of some sort. The dust is already everywhere with prospects it will get a lot worse.
The tiles have been delivered so it is all go.

The renos begin

Well the renovations have begun, Monday was a public holiday so Tuesday saw the builder on site beginning the clear out. Below is the bathroom before.

And after...



The upstairs bathroom (which had no waterproofing in the shower recess) was the first to go, then he moved on to the laundry.


And after - sadly he had an accident with the classy light fitting and it will now have to be replaced, we had always planned to replace the vent in the ceiling which is hanging at a drunken angle.
Notice the slate was still on the floor at this stage, it is now gone.


By the time I got home in the evening both rooms were gutted and all the rubbish was in the skip. The next day or so was spent jack hammering the floor of the laundry away to provide a keyed surface to take the bed for the tiles. Then the pantry wall went and was relocated to enlarge the pantry (see below) to suit a domestic goddess who is going to spend much of the rest of her life preserving things.

This was taken from the laundry door (to outside) looking back to what will be the pantry, the studs will form the wall dividing the laundry from the pantry.

Tomorrow (Monday) the plumber is coming to position the pipes and then on Tuesday the electrician will be here to put in the odd power point or two.

So far minimum disruption (4 days in) if you do not count the dust...

More weird weather

As if the dust storms were not enough, Tuesday afternoon a huge storm rolled in with accompanying hail. Our yard rivalled the snowfields we saw in Canada. Phillip didn't believe my report to him and as he came home from work there was no great evidence of it until he hit our street. How weird! In this Spring 'warmth' there were still pockets of hail in the yard the next morning. We had taken all our fire wood downstairs and cleaned out the fireplace but last weekend we had to once again light the fire.

Expecting??

Our bird book suggests that the white faced heron builds an "untidy nest of twigs" not sure if they have read the book but they have built their nest "by the book" - it is an untidy construction of twigs carefully selected (we watched the selection process from out bedroom window) from the many twigs which litter our yard.

I cannot be sure but I think mum is sitting on eggs in the nest - they have built it in a spot which makes it just a little too difficult to see from the ground or the roof of the house. The camera is capable of 18 times zoom but it does not quite do the job at the distance (and I am still learning how to focus manually not so far to great effect) here is another of the mum I suspect.