Monday, July 15, 2013

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Furniture


A bookshelf I made from cypress decking boards - smells delicious

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Operation Kitchen

The original part of the kitchen (seen in the below photo) would have contained, at some stage, an old school wood fired oven. At some stage, this was ripped out and replaced with an Oil Heater.

I have removed the oil heater and the lovely veneer surround to fit an oven. Here is the space I'm left with


 The space is a little bit over 900mm wide - perfect for one of those swanky european style ovens. Like this one that I bought yesterday...


Removing what turned out to be masonite (not asbestos, thankfully) showed up a bit of a surprise - there is a lot of space behind there. In this photo, the timber inside the void (which used to be the mantelpiece) is being used as a prop to hold things together until the lintels are fitted.


And now


Monday, May 20, 2013

Lounge floor










It begins...

Having successfully avoided joining those with mortgages for many years, I finally took the plunge on the 2nd of March and bought an old (around 1840) stone cottage in central Mount Barker at auction.

The house was cheap. VERY cheap. Before you assume I got myself a bargain, you should consider the state of the house:


  • It's tiny
  • There are substantial cracks in all the original stone walls
  • A dubious extension was added in the 1950's
  • There is some asbestos
  • The land has had no maintenance (except the liberal application of rubbish) for many years
  • A previous owner was letting a boarder stay in the house for free in exchange for the boarder performing renovations for him. He appears to have gotten his money's worth.