some pics

Click on photos for more of the Fibro Majestic renovation.

The move.

The move has happened. The first half of the week was spent overseeing the new heater, oven, carpet being put in. Packing and packing. On Thursday the 2 moving men arrived at 8.30am and then left at 5.30ish but not before one of them had asked to view one of our indigenous paintings twice (concerned about authenticity?), and not before one took my car for half an hour to look for his old dog who had wandered off back home, and not before both said all the right things about 'nice yard', 'great colour carpet', 'great shed' etc etc. Not much else to say about the move itself. We are in now and over the next few days I will upload some photos. During the move day a couple of local rangers drove past looking for a white goat on the loose. Living up here is great. :) Everything is working in the house. (oh - another thing the lovely mover said during the day -"it's looking more like a home than a house") The new heater is warming up the house, the kids are happy, the dogs are happy. We cooked roast chook in the new oven on our first night. After momentary panic, removing melting plastic coating from the ends of the oven, and the plastic melting in the warming draw, all turned out well. ;) - It's suppose to be 5 degrees tomorrow (snow maybe). The big park opposite out front yard is hosting the Million Paws walk - I'm hoping we will be watching it from out front window, inside, rugged up.

Floors

IMG_4124
Originally uploaded by Catch That Mountain View

Here are the floors before they were oiled

New Kitchen floors

I am very relieved A & I work well together under tired stressful situations. It could be so different, but mostly we just get to work, chatting, laughing and enjoying the process. Over the last couple of days we have worked solidly lifting two layers of vinyl from the floors, another layer of masonite under that, and then finally (and please god may I never have to do this again) we were on our knees slowly, excruciatingly taking out 100's of staples. But we managed to get through it and A did most of the sanding and oiling of the floors. - We are really excited...its looking more like the little country house we imagined. Oh the gorgeous oil which we used is a totally organic beautiful range of wood oils from Australia called ORGANOIL - we can highly recommend them. Good for you, and the environment.

Catch That Mountain View

Today A and I 'settled' on our first home together in the Blue Mountains - the world heritage listed area west of Sydney. It's my very own "tree change". My last day of work is tomorrow, I drive up to the mountains.. and tomorrow night it's champagne and takeaway as we open the door together on our new life, new home. Then come Saturday morning we start pulling up vinyl, sanding floors, painting walls, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Our modest "fibro majestic" is smack in the middle of Katoomba - a small village near the top of the mountains. It has a granny flat out the back - to turn into my studio, a big old shed down the end of the yard, which could one day be a play area for A's kids. It has a good size yard, big enough for kids, chooks, ducks and vege patches. There is a leanto made of found bits of gorgeous colour rusty iron - which could be an artwork in it's self. It's not big, but it's ours. It has little areas everywhere, add ons, and doors that go no-where. Nooks and crannies - in fact it was so cluttered when we looked at it, we have only just realised there is a fireplace in the lounge room. So far we have bought one can of paint (!) and one roll of beautiful wallpaper. (From Porters paint - have a look here - its the bug wallpaper). Here I go.