Monday, Apr. 28, 2008

The lion is sleeping

Sometimes, with out trying, I remove myself from the world.

Every so often I'll have one of these episodes where I'll just lay dormat whether I am at home or at work and I will watch what is happening around me. I won't offer any input and I won't try to over think anything that I witness. I will simply breathe in everything word, every action and every sound around me and let it settle gently in a section of my brain before letting it float away again. I would like to believe that this is my body's natural way of meditating but since I have never meditated knowingly I don't have anything to compare it against. Whatever it is, it's a wonderful feeling to behold and gives me a sense of peace when it happens. It's about the only time my mind manages to slow down enough to stop and take a pause. Usually it bouncing off the walls, flickering from one thought to the next and leaving nothing untouched.

It's nice to be silent for a change. It's nice to not say anything but to just smile instead.

Saturday, Apr. 19, 2008

Going cheap!

One of the things that I really love about living so far out of the city is finding things like this on the side of the road.

Saturday, Apr. 19, 2008

Our new window

I'm definitely over this whole renovating thing for a little while, although it's nice to know that we can actually do this, that we haven't bitten off more than we can chew. But since we are on a learning curb here, it took us much longer than it probably should of. For instance before you paint the windows, make sure the windows fit back into place if you replace any of the window framework. I probably would of thought of this had I known that some of the timber was rotten but since we didn't pull all of this out until the next day, it was only then we realised our error. However, we have a dozen or so other windows to refurbish so we shall know this for next time. Learning curb one.

Learning curb two. Painting with oil based paints is hard. Not that I have painted with water based paints on a house but I've painted furniture and that didn't seem difficult. This stuff on the otherhand was a pain in the ass. If the paint goes over the edge, you must immediately do something with it lest it dry into little blobs which you cannot do anything with and will stand out. I was such a slow poke with the painting that I managed to avoid this but when the Beloved took over on the occasion, I noticed some slackness with his technique. Next time I know to not let him touch the paint brush even if my back is killing me from standing up so long.

Learning curb three. Watch the glass because it does break. The Beloved managed to break the first piece whilst trying to remove the old putty (very easy to do when you are chisel this concrete like substance from just milimetres from the glass) and the second piece whilst trying to put the window back up into place. He swears it just cracked when he swung the window shut as the bottom of it caught on the window ledge (which needed to be planed down some) but instead of getting annoyed (which I was by the way because I was so looking forward to seeing this new window) I managed to forgive him through gritted teeth and walked away without yelling in frustration. Replacing glass in casement windows is not fun.

So yeah. We are finished for now and there are some photos below. It was really hard to take a good picture of the window due to position of it but there is a photo there that you can compare that fixed window to the other ones which are in badly need of repair also.

I have more photos of the whole process but it seemed a little too boring to post those. I think I need to open a new flickr account just for house renovation photos.

Thursday, Apr. 17, 2008

Finished! At last!

We managed to finish everything that we set out to do these holidays and it took every single day to get it all done. It seems the hardware store out here is not opened during the school holidays (crazy I know. Wouldn't you think that would be the time to be open?) so we only picked up extra materials for the job when we drove into the city which didn't occurr too often. Come Monday we just managed to get the window in with the new brass locks and brass sliders before it was time to prepare ourselves for going back to work and I haven't had a chance to get on the computer much since then so no, I haven't uploaded any pictures yet. I'm hoping that Saturday will be a good time for this.

It's good to be back at work though even if it means I'll be trying to catch up for my time off for the next week yet. I get a little apprehensive when I am away from my job for too long, like somehow they will find a way to do without me there and I will be out of a job because of it, but always I come back to lot's of paperwork and bosses running around with their heads cut off because they need information only I seem to know where to find. It's nice to feel needed.

And on that note I shall leave you with a few sunset photos I managed to capture on weekend.

Friday, Apr. 11, 2008

R enovating update

The plan was to renovate during the day and update the diary with these tales by night. Unfortunately for me I had forgotten what it was like to actually do a full days worth of complete physical work that by the time it came to retire in the afternoon all I wanted to do was vegetate, eat and go to bed. All in that order too. Today however has been less physically exerting as all we have been doing is painting and vegetating between coats drying. It is tedious work, as we are working with oil based paint, and you have to be careful how you apply the paint otherwise you could end up with bleeding and brush strokes that are applied in the wrong direction and although it says on the tin that you need to wait 16 hours between coats, we have been cheating by apply two coats in one day. I am so over this waiting bullshit. I'm too impatient for this work really.

The top coat should be applied tomorrow though and then we can have our window back. We haven't had a window above the bed since Wednesday and although we have a nice view of the mountains, it sure would be nice to be able to close something to the public. Next time I will know that one set of casement windows needs at least a week to do them properly. More if you are putting new putty in because that in itself is meant to take a week , to allow for drying purposes before painting. Again we cheated because we will have the new windows in by Sunday at the latest and will paint the putty next weekend when we are home.

Oh and I have photos, lot's of photos actually, to show here but I'll wait until the window is back in place to show the full effects of that small makeover.

Sunday, Apr. 06, 2008

A little home improvement

I've been itching for some time off work. My job isn't overly stressful, it's as stressful as you allow in fact, but I haven't accomplished much since purchasing this house and the more I look at this place, the more I feel let down that I haven't achieved more in the past year and few months. So with this thought in mind The Beloved and I spent most of the morning shopping at Bunning's, purchasing everything that we might need to do some home improvements of our own. Of course we couldn't go completely out of our heads and spend like we had an endless supply of cash in our pockets but there were a couple of small jobs that we could afford to do that will make this house more like a home and with that in mind we bought almost everything that we needed.

The Beloved has chosen to take on the job of filling this gap in the wall – the gap that I have whined about previously in fact - where an actual wall was removed by the previous owners and was never finished off. We are letting the wall be gone but there is the small matter of a gap say 550mm height x 2700mm wide that needs to be tidied up if we are to keep any warmth we create in our home. You can only see a fraction of the roof outside, because of the general slope of the side roof (because our roof is all different heights and what not ) but it's enough to make it quite cold during winter and I can't justifiy a heater if I cannot even keep the heat in so to speak so bye bye gap. I on the otherhand have decided that some of the casement windows at the front of the house, as well as their surrounds need a make over. A huge makeover. I've stared at those flaking paint windows for far too long and I want them gone and so shall it be.

It's such a relief to be finally doing something about this place, even if it is small renovation that won't be noticed much by anyone but ourselves. If it makes us feel much better about our abode than it will be worth every penny spent.

Photos to come...