Before documenting the changes we made to the house, here is a diagram of the property.

The property has an odd shape, with a right-of-way cutting off one corner.

On the image above north-south runs roughly parallel with the page edge, with north at the top of the page. (This is a confusing way of looking at the property for me, as I usually visualise the property from the opposite direction - up the hill toward the front of the house, from the main road.)

The wide rectangle intruding into the bottom left corner of the property is a lane; a right-of-way carries on over our strip of property into the next (and last) property. You might be able to see a faint grey line cutting across from where the lane intersects the property's left boundary line to the right boundary? That was the fence line when we bought the property. We had to have someone survey the property so that we knew where our real boundaries were.

The faint lines between the house and shed mark a roofed area that protected the area between the kitchen and laundry doors. This was roofed in corrugated plastic - soon to be recycled into windows and showers. That connecting roof was one of the first things to be dismantled. During the asbestos removal it disappeared.

Approximately where the words 'Railway Avenue' are, at the top of the page, the railway runs parallel to the road. Beyond that is another road, and then the town sports oval and parkland. The view is very pretty.

When we first moved in, the property was basically an undulating slope, all the way from the front gate to the back lane - never really interrupted or levelling out. After the lane the ground level rose about two feet, and sloped the remaining distance to the far corner. The only exception was between the right-of-way and the house: it looked as though someone in the past had banked up and levelled out the earth in anticipation of installing a pool or something. (We began digging our trench along the base of the bank just behind the south-east corner of the house.)

This is as the property is now:Some things, such as the big tree overlapping the house and the row of trees down the left boundary, were on the property when we arrived. Pretty well any curved lines are features that have been added by us.

The curved line that runs from half way down the right (eastern) boundary, behind the house, through the inner corner of the property and onto the lane, is a rock wall. This was almost completely built by Dad. (A couple of my sisters gave a hand once or twice; I moved all of about two stones!)
Between this wall and the back of the house is a path, the first level on the property. Trot up the stairs and you're on the next level. This level slopes away once it reaches the end of the rock wall, off the property in the lane area. At the back of this level the ground level abruptly slopes up to the right-of-way. We've angled a path gently across the fall of the slope, between a garden and a hedge. This path leads to another set of steps, and takes you up onto the right-of-way. Cross the right-of-way and you are faced with a bank of tall grass. Behind that grass is the vegetable garden, conveniently occupying the odd area at the top of the block. The top level. To reach it one can walk straight ahead up the railway sleeper embedded in the bank, or struggle up through any area of the grass.

We've built a little music room on the western side of the garage (shed). This is tiny, so as to avoid having to go through the expensive and extended rigmarole of gaining permission from local council. However it is fully insulated and has it's own little pot-belly stove. More about that when I get up to it.

Fence lines now follow our boundary lines. A combination of picket and paling fencing can be observed, and will be on this blog - just as soon as I get up to them!

As can be seen, the property has changed quite a lot since we bought it. Much of the landscaping happened in the first twelve months of our living here; we had little money, few materials but a will to work and change what we could. Unable to do much to the house, we concentrated on the landscaping. We also had (and still have) an avid gardener, who planted behind every move we made - even if she had to transplant later! The plants have transformed the property as much as the raw landscaping by adding a spacial/visual dimension that nothing else could provide. This aspect, however, can only be adequately shown in pictures. You'll just have to be patient!

On May 19th, 2006 our several tons of basalt rock were delivered from a site not 40km away.


Rock walls, here we come.


Our trench was coming into use finally.


This was Dad's early morning exercise for some time to come. (We would wake to the chink of the crowbar against stone.) Once begun, the demand for rock walls seemed inexhaustible, and then after the walls came the pillars...

The removal of asbestos had severe ramifications on the bathroom. Our bathroom had never been at all appealing, but it in several senses it took a turn for the worse. Our only bathroom window disappeared along with both the outside cladding and the inside (asbestos) fibro. All of a sudden there was no longer any natural light - except that which shone through the holes in the 'Bradford Thermofoil'.



In the process of taking out the asbestos Dad had also ripped out the bath and mouldy vanity cabinet. The bathroom was on a concrete slab, along with the veranda (extending on other side of sink and shower head wall) so we were still able to use the shower.
All that stood between us and the elements while in the shower was that blue aluminum foil sisalation. During winter showers tended to be especially swift. Not the most relaxation-inducing mode of ablution, I can assure you, especially when it is understood that the sisalation was all that stood between us and the main road.
As it is inconvenient to have water going everywhere, we soon took corrugated plastic, salvaged from off the roofed area between the house and garage, and enclosed our shower area. The choice of material was very organic, despite being plastic, as the lichen stubbornly remained in situ - in defiance of a hasty scrub brush. (This corrugated plastic was also what Dad used to close over window openings, after taking windows out during the asbestos clean up.)


We also cut a hole in the sisalation for some natural light. It made a huge difference during the day.




The bathroom, as can be seen, drastically changed. (Compare these pictures to the original photos in Preview on Camera.) Aesthetically and psychologically it changed for the worst, but hygienically - despite appearances! - it was generally an improvement. The room could become dirty (the wind somehow blew even pine needles in), but it certainly wasn't mouldy. (Our friendly lichen doesn't count!) The air circulation was excellent.

Several days into May and we moved out of our house, back to our long suffering friend's country house. That week we stayed away as Dad singlehandedly removed all the asbestos cladding from the house. The local regulations were about to change so that only 'proper' asbestos removers would be permitted to handle asbestos. We had to deal with ours before that happened. At the end of the week we convinced Dad to take the camera and record the effect. Some photos actually turned out!

Looking toward the kitchen door:



The eastern wall:


The front of the house:

The silvery lump in the verandah area was secondhand insulation we'd salvaged from the Reviva Centre. The guy at the Reviva had asked some exorbitant amount for all the insulation; Dad offered almost nothing, well trained in Mexican haggling. They wouldn't accept it, so he walked away. However as it was about to rain, they found him before he left and told him that, for the price he'd offered, he could have as much as he could carry away. We just about got all of it.
It ended up enough to insulate most of the house, but boy, were we glad when it ran out! Dirty (and often damp) secondhand fibreglass insulation is No Joke.


The far side of the laundry:
The green iron on the side of the building represents the first cladding to be put up - and the last for a while. Although the blue plastic to be seen between the buildings was covering a stack of new plywood, bought specifically for cladding. The window seen behind the little shed was the first window taken out. It came from the bathroom, above the sink.

It was ANZAC Day 2006, and we were doing our bit.


At the front line the wire was expertly barbed...




(With blackberries from a seemingly inexhaustible source)




And behind which the trenches were dug.


The back garden was seriously blitzed. (The trench was destined to bear the footings of a rock wall, and the blackberries were destined to die.)

Not having a television, we entertained ourselves with the aerial...



It wasn't useful for much else!

Ok, so I've learned to leave lots of space around photos, and that it's not worth the trouble of trying to stagger them down the page! My apologies to those people who've been bearing with me so far. I hope I'll improve rapidly for the sake of your sanity as much as mine.

So the photos begin to reveal the challenges that lay ahead of us in April 2006. Some things, such as the brown lino, were unbearable, and were amongst the first things to be changed. On the day we moved we began. The small bedroom's linoleom surface was already torn and horrible, so it was decided to take it up before stacking all our boxes in there. Taking up that lino was rather like picking a scab - once embarked upon, it led on and on till there was no more. The next day we finished picking...with the help of one or two crow-bars.



And then we had to deal with all the nails. That was really fun (for the first ten minutes)...





Boy was it a relief when we'd done. The floors were unfinished cypress pine and the lino had only been nailed, not glued. The blue and pink bedroom already had finished floors, and the bathroom areas and verandah were tiled.

This was the house as we bought it and for some of us it was the last time we saw it thus. The next time we arrived at the house - latter end of moving-in day - the lino had been ripped up and the kitchen gutted - what there was of it.






The front of the house from the western corner.

The western corner of the house (kitchen corner)
and laundry end of the garage.

The back of the house, looking toward side door. Side door goes into kitchen (see last pic).











Looking straight down the hill to the garage and crappy little aluminum tool shed. I think there was a dog kennel between.














The eastern wall.

The separate toilet cubicle, (door to bathroom on the left, door into pink bedroom on right, door to blue bedroom behind).

The bathroom, looking to the right from the door.

The bathroom, looking to the left from the doorway.

Fairly self explanatory I hope. Pink bedroom to right; bathroom to left.

The lounge, with entryway partition down right side of pic.

The blue bedroom.

The lounge. Wall seen in small bedroom on other side of room is end wall of house.

Looking across lounge to kitchen. Small bedroom to left, inset verandah to right.

Small bedroom.

The kitchen.

The side door into kitchen.

This is a record of our renovation to date - with rather a lot of catch-up to begin.

On the 24th February, 2006, we turned up to inspect a house whose existence we'd only just discovered. It was an unprepossesing box with very few windows (13 in total, I believe) and on a block of land that boasted almost no landscaping whatsoever. It had a little garage with a laundry out the back, a hills hoist and a few mature trees. It faced both the main road and the railway track. However it also had good zoning, had a view out over the town sports oval and park (therefore a pretty view that would not be built out) and had back lane access. It was to be auctioned the next day.

As we had a very limited budget and were searching for a house that we could renovate to sell, thereby digging ourselves a little further out of debt, we decided it was worth attending the auction.

At 11:30 0r so the next day, we arrived and registered ourselves as bidders, information in hand. (To be seen at right>>)

The bidding began at an amazingly low number for the area, and proceeded fast and furious - at increments as low as $5oo. There was a total of about 87 bids! For the last $30,000 or so the bidding was between the neighbours and ourselves. We had set ourselves a definite limit - and there the bidding stopped. We held our breaths, the hammer fell, and we found we owned a house. (Well, it took some negotiation, as we hadn't reached the reserve, but for an extra 10 grand it was ours.) Then the hard work began...