Busy about the house...

[ Living Room in a shambles, but it's okay because we have new ceiling fans!]

[ New light fittings: No more living in the "dark ages" for us!]

[Our home was built sometime between 1892 and 1900. That makes it a late-Victorian/early-Edwardian/Federation-cusp home. There are different toggle switches available for each of these, but in the end we decided upon copper Edwardian toggles for the light switches]


[A pile of old wiring and piping]

[ The old ceramic fuse-box and the beginnings of a new back wall]

[The new, up-to-standard fuse-box and the new wall almost complete]

[SJ's dad flushing the new wall and finishing the cornice ]

It's been just over a year now since we purchased our little stone cottage in the Ranges.

We got off to a slow start with our planned improvements, but the past few months have been rather busy for us.

Between October and December 2009 we had a complete overhaul of the electrics, which had to be done before we could move onto the more enjoyable aspects of DIY renovations.

Once the electrician finished we put in a new wall of gyprock and new cornice in the back room to hide the patchy stone wall that was the original back of the house. It is ready now to be painted, which will happen when the weather cools.

We are focusing on one room at a time, in an attempt to create as little disturbance to our lives as possible. These days we are focused on the main bedroom: plastering, patching, stripping and sanding in preparation for re-painting. The weather since Christmas has been rather hot, so we have only been able to do work on the odd day here and there when we get a cool reprieve.

The living room is currently doubling-up as our bedroom, which is turning out to be an inconvenience more often than not, so we hope to have the main bedroom completed by Easter at the latest. Fingers-crossed!

[An empty main bedroom, plastered and patched...

...and waiting for someone to start stripping back the skirtings, ceiling, window and door frames.]