Renovation Update

So many people have been keen to know the progress on the extension of our house. You can read snippets here, but thus far we have been pretty tight lipped. Something about making sure that the internet doesn't know we are doing it so that we have less of a chance of getting robbed in the process.

Anyway, we are nearing the end, so I've started trawling through photos that we took (systematically documenting every change seemed like a good idea at the time...) to find the best way to give people a snapshot of what has happened.

So here we go! Starting with a lovely big shot of our enormous back yard and what the house originally looked like. The bit on the right hand side where the roof slopes down was our existing laundry and second toilet, which were on a lower level that then house itself. That was demolished on day one and everything was built out on the same level as the house from there.

The children were easily entertained by the digger and construction that they could see from the back bedroom window. In the above photo, they are in the room on the far left of the house (the set of three windows). These windows got moved early on to the other side of the house because otherwise they would be looking straight out onto our new deck.

And at the end of week one, or maybe two, here is where we are! The back cladding is gone, the stumps are in, the foundations are laid. We can no longer use our back door.

The external wall frames did go up after this pretty quickly, and then the back of the house kind of sat there for what felt like a long time, because the roof trusses were getting made and were taking their sweet time doing it. Our builder was great though, and used the spare time to start re cladding the house at the front.

This is what the front of our house looked like:

With the renovation happening mostly at the back, we had relocated the trampoline (which I'm technically not supposed to use with out proper soft fall and spring protection) out to the front yard. The kids have loved it. Anyway, back to renovation talk.

That plain creamy stuff is actually made of asbestos, which is fine except if you break it off and crumble it up, it can kill you, so it's best to get rid of it. While we were getting the extension done it seemed like a good opportunity to do so. An expensive opportunity, but an opportunity none the less.

After the asbestos was gone (hallelujah!) the builders insulated and wrapped our house up in this attractive blue stuff before cladding it with some lovely weatherboard look-a-like cement fiber stuff. The insulation made the world of difference to the overall temperature of the house, which was super exciting because we don't have air conditioning.

And then, the trusses arrived and we retunred to the back of the house again! 

Just before Christmas the roof was on. It was pretty crazy to think from the first of November to mid December that so much had changed. What you see building before your eyes here is a laundry, toilet and second bathroom (essentially running down the right side of the house towards the yard). A living area with a bay window (straight out in the middle there), which has bi-doors out onto a large deck (left hand side of the house (where there is currently no roof)).

In this shot, you can still see the old "back wall" of our house is still existing in there. The builders had been so considerate of us and my work, and built all of this other stuff with the original house still intact. That wall stayed in until mid January, when the extension part of the house was all wrapped up and secure and it finally came time for it to go. 

We are really stoked with how things are going along so far, and excited to share some more of the renovation journey, though I suspect this is enough for one post. I feel it's important to mention though that this snapshot does not show how cramped things can be inside a house under renovation, and how the loss of easy yard access really impacted all of us, the girls and my work especially. I've spent the last three months essentially taking four children on excursions most days of the week. Some days we leave at 7:30 am or 8:00 and don't get home until 4:30 pm. Which is a really long day.

But, on the plus side, knowing that the house was going to get smaller before it got bigger, meant that I packed up a lot of kids toys in preparation. And I culled a lot on the way, not just toys, but other things as well. It's been really good to have a reason to do a thorougher clean out. I even did my material stash! I don't know that I'm up to holding things and seeing if it sparks joy, but I've definitely enjoyed the purge, and the kids have done really well with the lack of toys.

Seriously, I'm talking one tin of cars, a tub of duplo and a drawer of soft toys. Even their books got put away, and we have been reading about an eighth of their usual library. That's been the hardest part.

Anyway, I'll tell you more about the joys and tears of renovation, next time. Stay tuned!

She's Older Now

I didn't want to make a big deal about this, especially after seeing so many posts on Facebook in that first week of school. "Just like that he's in prep!", "Where did my baby go?",  "Looks so big in this uniform." Blah blah blah.

Sorry. I'm not trying to be negative about people celebrating their kids, but it was all just a bit same same. Did you not know that your child would one day reach an age where schooling would be the next step? I'm not exactly sure how it would take you by surprise.

Anyway. All that said, it feels wrong to not recognize in some way that Sophie too, has joined the ranks of school aged children. And I've had enough people ask me "how's she going?" not to let you know.

She's doing fine. School is hard. It's a change. It's exciting. It's lonely. It's fun. It's long. There is lots of sitting. It makes her tired. She's excited to go. She's made friends. Can't remember their names. Can't remember the teacher's names. She knows she loves Library day. And running. And that morning tea is not long enough.

All in all, she's doing fine and we couldn't be prouder. Nice one Sophie. May you always be as confident and thoughtful as you are now, and realize that every challenge is able to be overcome.

Tiger's Birthday

Is it going too far when you are celebrating birthdays for soft toys? I'm not sure, but I confess, it's been done.

Three years ago, Sophie's birthday present was to go and see The Tiger Who Came to Tea as a show based on the book which she loved. That same year, only about six weeks later, I made my very first stuffed toy (animal variety) the Tiger, which she loved and promptly called "Tiger".

Three years on, Tiger looks like he needs some major surgery to continue on with his life, and has in fact, already undergone some major surgery to keep him in his alive state. But Sophie continues to love him and assures me that he makes the best pillow and is just the right size to cuddle.

There has been requests to either fix him or to get a new tiger made, which I'll be honest, was a little horrifying to me. Replace Tiger? What is she thinking!? But she's got a point, even with the patching, I'm not sure he will last much longer.

Sophie often asks me how old Tiger is, and this year remembered that his birthday is in February. So we celebrated. We even had a cake, which Sophie choose after pouring over the Women's Weekly Birthday Cake Cookbook for an hour or so.

It sounds crazy, but it was fun. I doubt we would do it for almost any other toy, but Tiger is special and we were all happy to celebrate with him.

Wildlife

While our house has been undergoing some major changes in the recent months, we have had to spend a few nights over at my parents house for various reasons. One night, while eating dinner on my parents patio, I noticed a small mouse creep out of the garden and under a table. It quickly darted back, and I thought that was the end of it. We were, obviously, making loud noise, had the lights on etc, so we assumed it would wait until we were absent before appearing again.

But come out again it did. And it stayed out. It crept all over the patio for about three or four minutes before I decided I would catch that mouse.

It was so little that I just took a plastic cup that the girls had had some chalk in, and put it over the top. There was a little scuffle, but nothing undignified on my end (much to Steve's surprise). The mouse was caught.

Since I had caught it, I didn't want to let it go again. My parents would not be happy to know it was still in their yard. But neither did I want to instigate it's swift demise.

Since we had our stick insect with us, I figured that enclosure was as good as any for the mouse, and I promptly put it inside. We gave it a box to hide in and some food and it lived in there for half a week. Then I talked to a friend of mine who said that mice can actually eat insects, and I was suddenly afraid for Mary (our most recently surviving stick insect), and I relocated the mouse to my parents old fish tank.

After some discussion, we named the mouse Emily, though Sophie, who was strongly supporting the name Emma was convinced we were just saying her full name (Emma Leigh), rather than Emily. Tricky Tricky.

Emily lived with us in her fish tank for another two weeks until I cleaned it out one morning and accidentally put the cardboard house we had made for her too close to the drinking thing. She did some amazing climbing and escaped without us even realizing. Goodbye Emily.

The girls were pretty devastated when they found out, and wanted to conduct search parties. When we had convinced them she had probably gone outside (hopefully), they asked when we could get our next pet.

I'm a bit sad that these are the only photos we have of Emily, and that she was with us for such a short time. But I'm also glad that we didn't have to commit to looking after another pet, and doing arduous things like actually take her to the vet and find out if she (or he) had any diseases that could kill us. Whew.