Many hands and all that jive!

Excited to share the next lot of progress on my house! This weekend (which was actually two weeks ago almost - bit slow with the uploading!) was especially productive because I had the handy help of not only my lovely man, my amazing parents but also the most epic sister in the WORLD!

Have I told you about my sister? No? Well have a seat while I tell you all about how she is my favouritest person in this whole world. Actually no, you don't have the time for that, the story is far too long and intense! Anyway! My awesome sister Mel has been my partner in crime since forever. She's so awesome, that despite having a million jobs to do at her own rennovation, Mel spent the weekend working on my house instead! Told ya she was awesome.

So what did we achieve?

Bath is in, boxed and ready for tiles!

More walls are painted!

(was supposed to be a pic here but Mel will kill me if I post the ones I have of her, hehe)

Have I told you about my third bedroom? This is the bedroom that lost its wardrobe, sacrificed for the good of all and more space in the kitchen. Well this room was the nastiest bedroom of all. Apparently it wasn't enough for gross-old-man to be gross and old by himself, so he had a boarder who was also old and gross. Let's call him, sidekick-old-gross-man. So SOGM resided in bedroom three, must have chain smoked in his sleep, and had the urge to put many many holes in the walls. And hang a nasty towel over it. To make it less creepy.

Up until now, we've been calling this "the room of doom". Well the room of doom is doom-ish no more! It's been scrubbed, bogged, and is almost ready to paint!

Whoa. That ass. Remind me to start some serious exercising when I move :/

It's the last bedroom to be painted, horah! This will be my guest room in the future (I can hear mum complaining from here "but I want the room with the cupboard!". Me: "why? the cupboard is going to be full of my crap!" Ahhh, the thought of being able to unpack all my crap and stash it all over my house....!)

We also had the task of putting together the cupboards for the new part in my kitchen. Arriving "flat pack", apparently the outside parts are called carcasses. "C'mon mum, I want these carcasses in my kitchen!" - sounds charming, right? Who thinks of these things?! Anyway.

The directions we got for the flat pack were crazy! Hand drawn diagrams from the builder (who did us a favour by just cutting the cupboards - his job is actually to put them together and install them, for probably triple the price we paid). Decoding hieroglyphics would probably have been easier! And once Mum and I worked out how it was supposed to work, we simply screwed them together.

Ha.

HAHA!

Let me tell you about that. So I'm thinking, yep, I got this. I can use a drill, I've screwed a screw. And these are even special screws that you don't need to pre-drill a hole for, or countersink. Awesome! But why are these screws so huge? 50mm screws? For cupboards?! Really? He does realise we're not putting together the Titanic, right?

Grrr I am the long screw of doom out to make you ANGRY!!

Okay, make sure screw goes in straight. Clearly this is important. So mum holds the pieces, and I line up the screw. Screw slips. Sigh. Apparently the white coated stuff kitchens are slippery. What of it? Start to screw. Drill stops. Curse at drill. Apparently this drill has a clutch. Yep. Because apparently there's people out there who mustn't have eyes in their head, or good motor controls, to know when to back off when screwing something, and need a drill to do it for them. Yeah, that's what I thought too.

Anyway, after much fiddling.... first box together!

(I'm an annoying picture that wont go up the right way for no reason at all)

This was after we pulled it apart once and re did it. For future reference, its a good idea to take apart all the pieces, and line them up, before drilling. Else you might accidently drill the bases for the other boxes to the sides of one, thinking the bases are the sides. Because you didn't look at all the bits. Just saying. 

Oh and for another example of silly references - the feet that go on the bottom the cupboard? They are called chairs. Yep. Work that one out!

The best part of getting the dead bodies, oh, I mean carcasses, done...

...was the part when my lovely electrician wired in my new oven! Look at that beauty!!

So excited to see it in. I could cook a roast right now, if I wanted. How awesome is that?!

And in the meantime, said lovely electrician man of awesome, has been working on the second most important structure on my block of land - no, not the shed - my cat pen! 

I have tried a million times to upload this photo the correct way, and it doesn't want to play ball. I take no responsibility for cricks in necks whilst reading this blog.

It's all dug out ready to have the prep done on pouring the slab. If you didn't know already, I have two cats. They live a happy life of being spoilt rotten by yours truly, and are kept safe and secure, away from roads, dogs, wildlife, other cats and mean people because they remain indoors. I will spare you the rant on my opinion of responsible cat ownership for another time, but lets just say my cats are indoor only! So why the pen? Just because my cats aren't allowed to roam, doesn't mean they aren't allowed to enjoy fresh air, sunshine, butterflies and the wind in their ears. So this area here will be their main cat pen area, with cat flap access from inside the house. They will have beds, hammocks, viewing areas, and their litter trays, all in a mesh run with a roof to protect them from the rain.

I have plans for tunnels and towers that go into the backyard, but the one area will be enough for now!

Also, a huge thank you has to go out to my besty Loz, for coming and scrubbing out my kitchen cupboards for me. We're almost old-man-germ free, yay!!

And all this was achieved without me having a voice for the whole weekend. Torture, I know!

I still struggle to imagine the house done, with all my things in it. It's hard to have vision of the completed project when things feel so close, yet so far away. I know it's going to be awesome once it's done though!