Painting, Paving and Packing.....

Well I think it is probably fair to say that we are now well and truly over any excitement we had felt as far as painting is concerned. On a positive note climbing up and down steps does tone up the gluts very well and wielding a paint roller also helps tone up the bat wings! And it is really good to see most of it done now meaning we can go onto other things.

Our Inner Students have been honoured with our paint colour selection... not everybodys choice. But then I think its probably the first time either of us have been able to use REAL colour... so we've joyfully embraced it....

Colbalt blue called Rhapsody in the en-suite

Radiant Red in Bedroom 1

A real turquoise in the bathroom

And in the toilet a very vibrant yellow called Sundawn. Which is a tad brighter than we thought it was going to be and possibly a wee bit more orange. Most people carry sun glasses here so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

It did seem to take an age and endless sample pots to reach this choice of colours and we are hoping not to have to do much painting the future so hopefully we will grow to love it. We'll see......

We've not yet taken delivery of our external doors... though I am sure they will be VERY special when they do finally arrive. There is a rumour going around that may happen next week.... hmmmm.

The next job tackled is the verandah paving. Which will help keep being blasted by the sand when the westerly winds blow to a minimum. We had all the pavers and a tonne of paving sand ready for us to find the time to crack on with it. Which we finally managed to do to find the tonne of paving sand was only just enough to lay the bedroom verandah! Hay ho.... Deb and Robert arrived just in time to find us puzzling over how to finish the edge. They had just enough spare half pavers (as you would) for us to finish the job perfectly and kindly donated them. I think it looks great.

Huge excitement in the camp when we had 10ml of rain the other day, which was fantastic with a promise of more to come. With that thought in mind Rick has now rigged up another part of the roof to channel into our rain water tank.

The landscaping chaps are due out next week to lower the level the area the east side of the house.... at last. Which means our water tank will finally be at the right level to be properly hooked up to our roof. Fingers crossed we will then have constant rain for at least one week.

The landscape chaps will also use some of the rock and clay dug out of the water tank hole to level the carport and the area at the front.of the house. Any spare will be dumped in a neighbours field up the road. He does know about it and is keen to make another jump for his motorbike course.

AND we have also started to move our 'stuff' onto the block, which will hopefully make it less of a trauma when the final move happens.

The wet area tiles are in stock so we're off to the Mount tomorrow to collect everything ready for a tiling lesson which will also hopefully happen this week. A busy week in the making.

The Casterton Show

By way of a change from 'house work' we took ourselves off to Casterton the home of the Kelpie for their annual festival. It was different to the Naracoorte one, more of an emphasis on the funfair side rather than crafts and rural skills. But we did manage to find quite a few things to interest us... starting with this lovely Landy.... which we managed to leave behind

A keen Kelpie working the sheep, fantastic to watch their skills

All day there was the threat of rain and thunder rolling around the Casterton hill tops and then finally the heavens opened. Very impressive rain for about 15 minutes then the sun came out again, it is very polite rain here!

A sign in Catestertons Kelpie Kafe, great food and lovely people

It were a grand day out, as Wallace would say and rounded off by a visit to a dear little nursery who were selling some very reasonably priced Quince trees. Resistance was futile so we've another fruit tree in our ever growing collection.

Just two more photo's to finish.

A Jacobean Lily also known as a Poor mans Orchid

I was recently given a whole load of plants, cuttings and bulbs and was delighted to find one of the flowering.

A very happy Fred with the biggest marrow bone I have ever seen. When we took it around to Deb and Roberts for him Fred did a little dance of excitement, really funny to see.
Happiness is.....

Painting and Removalists

No guesses for what we've been doing over the last couple of weeks.....painting... painting and yet more painting. I think we are getting better with our accuracy as most paint, these days, seems to be going where we're aiming it.

I think it was quite telling about the states of our minds when we realised just how excited we were getting about actually putting some colour on the walls! It is a strange thing painting in white, a real challenge trying to make sure nothing is missed and incredible just how many shades of white there are. Of course the missed bits only show when the paints dry and all the brushes/ rollers etc are washed and put away. Just the bathroom and shower areas left to do with the especially formulated wet area paint. But first, I think mainly for the sake of our sanity, we had to use some colour. The colour we chose for most of the walls is a very gentle creamy colour called Soothing Balm. It reminds me of clotted cream teas from Cornwall... happy days... and it is indeed soothing. There will be more colours in the rooms soon once the right ones are chosen.

Chatting to one to the local paint experts whilst on a recent paint hunting expedition he told us back in 1947 the colour chart of a popular paint manufacturers held only a choice of 7. It is a tad different now and mind boggling.......

Once all the painting for all but bedrooms 2 and 3 is done we'll have the pavers to lay, which will hopefully be this weeks job done.

The builders are going to line the showers and cut the tiles for the wet areas. After a quick floor tile laying lesson it'll then be down to us to tank, lay the tiles and waterproof everything.

AND there is a rumour that our front and back doors will arrive next week.... yippperdeedodah...

We did take a wee bit of time out every now and then, I have headed off to the veggie patch, things to harvest and also not wanting to miss the planting season. Everything seems to be growing at a massive rate of knots.... I will never cease to be amazed. I've put in more peas and they have already started to pod. The runner beans needed harvesting, I noticed flowers were starting to come again on the new stems, so I've cut them back to see if I can get a longer growing season from them.

It's also time to harvest the, parsnips, shallots and garlic. Our first Strawberry was of course delicious, hopefully there will be more to follow soon. Rick has kindly rigged up a chicken wire protector for them to keep the birds off but I've also got to keep an eye out for lizards. Another first for me. The Sweet Peas are amazingly still going strong, I am loath to take them out till they are well and truly finished. Tomatoes are forming but the Basil and Thyme haven't fared so well. And the potatoes are going great guns, it'll be great if we managed to get a crop by Xmas.


Rick's time out has been working with the 1960's International tractor. Shifting some of the large rocks and trying to level out the ground, which has been churned up by all the large building machinery.

A zen moment

The tractor is quite a character and to me sounds very much like a happy traction engine chugging along. A great little work horse which needs a bit of loving when we (Rick) has a wee bit more time.

The best bit

For me anyway was getting the call to say my goods and chattels will at last be arriving in Naracoorte Sunday evening. The removalists would like to unload first thing... which turned out to be 7 am Monday morning. Keen or what. Slightly bleary eyed but extremely excited we arrived at the block and didn't have long to wait before hearing the sounds of a large lorry approaching.

Before they started unloading Deb and Fred arrived to very kindly lend a hand. Fred was just excited to be there. I did feel a bit of a Princess to watch the four of them (Fred not included in this) toiling up the hill with some pretty hefty loads. It was my job to tick off the boxes (173 all numbered) and direct them into hopefully some sort of 'easy to understand later' type of order. As far as I can tell all is present and correct. 

To think the journey it has all been on from almost two years in store to a massive journey half way around the world involving two huge container ships, fumigation and everything to arrive here. So far I've found just one garden pot was broken. All the things we need to use at the moment like Mum's decorating things, ladders etc were strangely the first things I have found and unpacked. Amazing.

Slowly making the house our home

We are well and truly into painting the interior now, thankfully there is nothing for us to paint on the exterior of the house. Bedrooms 2 and 3 are ready for their final coat of wall paint, once the colours have been chosen. As the white undercoat is going on the grey gyproc walls and ceiling the rooms seem to be growing again in size. We are still amazed how we have ended up with such a large home! Not complaining mind just pleasantly surprised.

As much as neither of us really like painting it has to be said that an empty house with only a concrete floor is fantastic to paint. It doesn't matter how much mess you make as long as you can get most of the paint where you were aiming it. Deb very kindly lent us the stirrer attachment for the drill and a neighbour lent us the huge roller and bucket, lots of area covered in no time. The biggest challenge we have is remembering how many coats of which paint we've done and where!

The week started with a surprise visit from some Queensland friends who, after a trip to Perth were slowly making their way back home. Very soon after our pavers arrived for the verandahs, which our visitors kindly helped us unload.... the jobs are mounting up.

Rick discovered a hole in Dora's fuel tank, thankfully it wasn't during a long trip. So he's going to have a go at repairing it with fibre glass and special anti rust paint. 

And with a threat of some decent rain fall, we (term used loosely) rigged up a make shift storm pipe from the roof to our water tank, hopefully we'll be able to capture some water.
The top of this tank needs to be above the ground but the costs of hiring the crane to lift it again are prohibitive. So the idea now is the whole area between the house and the tank will be landscaped and slightly lowered. They will also tackle the two huge mounds of stone, which came out of the hole. The largest stones will be set aside for use later and hopefully the rest will be used to make the level of the ground right for the carport and entrance. Any left over can hopefully be used as the base for the CFS (Country Fire Service) road we have to put in. All this will hopefully happen very shortly.

We had another trip to the Mount to order the wood laminate flooring for the spare bedrooms. Went back to the most helpful tile shop for another chat, collected more tile samples and organised a quote. And collected more paint and more colour samples. A very time efficient trip.

The kitchen has now been ordered, I finally made my mind up on the type of door covering to have and the type of work bench. Having said all along I didn't want a dark work top that is just what I've ended up with. Funny how things work out.

In the middle of all this activity was the 'once a month' spinning day. It turned out to be an amazing day. Following on from the Naracoorte show we ended up with 14 spinners and learner spinners turning up. Another bonus (which I had completely forgotten about) was the Textile Artist. A lady we met at the show had promised to bring in her collection of dyed yarns and fleece, all the colours of the rainbow. She was moving to Queensland and it was time for a change in medium, she was swapping to paint and wanted to pass on her treasures to us. She was such a generous soul and gave quite a bit of it away. The car was loaded to the gunnels with bags and bags of multicoloured treasures to spin. Deep joy.....

And finally
Our lovely friends Graham and Jenny dusted off their 1948 Rover and invited us along for a picnic to an off the beaten track homestead. It was an event organised by the Historical Vehicle Club for the South Australian and Victorian Riley Club gathering and hosted by the owners of Woolmit Farm.

This was the original three room kitchen. Always built away from the main house in case of a fire.

 The back entrance to the main house, which we weren't allowed into. Path was lined with lavender plants and the roses around the arch had a fantastic old world scent. Beautiful.

Main house, front door flanked by two citrus trees

Think this could be the wash house, needing a lot of TLC, but had still got the original slate tiles

The shearing shed still in use

Raised above the ground for free flow of air to dry any soggy sheep before shearing

The bale press

The other reason we were there

A 21 Riley salute

An almost meeting yourself coming back again sort of a week.......

AQIS day - my goods and chattels have finally made it over here from the other side of the world and cleared customs very quickly. Hooray... but they still had to be cleared by the quarantine people. AQIS - which stands for, for those not in the know, Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service.

All well and good until I received an email informing me that 'Borers and Ferris' had been discovered on an old trunk. Fumigation was needed and then I had to decide whether it should be destroyed or not. All for a massive fee.... not quite what I was expecting as the trunk in question was Borer free when it was thoroughly wrapped in plastic before being put in store for the last 18 months.

I had to look up Ferris and discovered found it meant the borers were active - how did that happen!!! A couple of sleepless nights, several long phone calls to AQIS and the removalists later I learnt that the fumigation fee was a lot less than first quoted and would have to be paid. It would then be my decision to keep the offending article or have it 'destroyed'. A bit of a no brainer in the end and one of those things which can happen. Hay ho.....

The fumigated goods and chattels will finally be delivered mid November.

Time to get cracking with the rooms it will all have to be stored in then.....

After a quick chat with Sid to let him know the plans his team got cracking with finishing bedrooms 2 and 3, ready for us to decorate and put the flooring in.

Mount Gambier - off we went to the Mount. Our mission was to get undercoat and ceiling paint for bedrooms 2 and 3 and check out flooring. We got completely boggled with choice of tiles but finally found a lovely very helpful lady who really seemed on our wave length, reduced our choices (using budget and colours) AND she had some great ideas. We resolved to go back to her shop for the floor and bathroom tiles for house when we had a bit more energy.

More pressing was choosing the flooring for bedrooms 2 and 3. Surprisingly quickly we found a reasonably priced wood laminate in a very easy on the eye Spotted Gum.

Excellent on to the paint while we still had some energy left....
Looking for the right type of paint for the undercoat and the top coat for the ceilings was so confusing. Who would have thought it and we only wanted white, goodness help us when it comes to choosing colours! Luckily a lovely very knowledgeable lady came to our rescue, took away the confusion and pointed us in the right direction.

The Kitchen
Plans are coming together regarding the kitchen, plans have been drawn up and we have a quote, far closer to our budget than the previous one. Just need to decide on the type of covering for the doors and a work top. If I can make up my mind soon I've been promised a kitchen by Christmas. Yipperdeeedodah

Doors
Finally our front and back doors have been ordered - but we have no idea when they might be delivered. Meanwhile Sid arranged for the 'gaps' to be boarded up, its now a secure house.

We still needed some internal doors, preferably recycled, for the bedrooms and laundry and double doors for the dining room. Sadly there is very little in the way of recycled building materials in this part of the world. Off we went, to first Murray Bridge, then having discovered that was also a 'recycled doorless' place we headed off to Adelaide.  It was a wee bit of long day involving an 8 hour drive (nothing for intrepid Aussies but mind boggling for those from tiny Islands the other side of the planet!!!) But a great success in the end. Ok so the doors are not really a pair BUT very close and we think they are solid Red Pine and old. They will look brilliant when their rubbed down, varnished and the glass has been replaced. Deep joy.

We returned very late in the evening tired but happy and found Sid (our builder) has very kindly donated 3 doors to our home. They are plain and Meranti, so just need a bit of a rub down and a clear varnish and we now have almost all the interior doors we need.

Painting
Oh and we got the ceilings and walls painted at the weekend..... phew.....

Happiness in the veggie patch