Flying the coop

It's been a long time coming. Almost two years since I retired from work I have at last been able to cut the ties with my home in Australia to be able to travel as and when I want. I realised last year that not only were house sitters not a great option, but I actually needed to start making a little money from renting my house out.

House sitters come in all categories, from awesome to terrible. Luckily I've never had terrible house sitters, but it's very hard to leave your house and possessions in the care of strangers without expectations that they will look after everything to your liking. I realised that I needed to dispense with that expectation by downsizing and renting my place so I could dispense with the worry. Hence the renovation of the garage and ridding myself of all excess possessions.

I am gobsmacked at how much stuff that I have managed to stuff into a 42m2 space, plus the cellar, but that doesn't detract from the amount of crap I managed to offload as well. In between a garage sale, online sale sites, a pile out on the verge with a big free sign on it, and one trailer full to the tip, I did a pretty good job. There's still a good deal of gardening paraphernalia that I've tidied away for use by the tenant if they wish, and I didn't manage to sell my large dining table, but otherwise the place is all set for its new tenants.

As luck would have it, a friend of mine got interviewed for a job in Geraldton, which she landed, and needs to relocate. In order for her to rent my place I needed to make the yard safe for her two golden retrievers so they can't wander whilst she is at work. So I simply fenced the backyard, a job I'd been meaning to do for some time anyway. It was a surprisingly easy job, especially as digging holes in a sand dune isn't too onerous. And I had most of the fencing paraphernalia already from old projects.

I got a neighbour to create a fence and gate from materials lying around. The pallet came with my new kitchen, and the gate used to cover the cellar. I only had to purchase one post and some quickset concrete.

I even found time to build a shelter for the firewood, a cover over the pump (which I took in for a full service) and to finish a little stone work on the rockwall behind the watertank. And paint the front verandah wall! Yeah, I've been busy!!

I also did a bit of maintenance on the camper trailer. Derusting, bogging up and repainting. Both the car and trailer have gone into long term storage in a shed in Geraldton, and the chooks have gone to live on a rural property in the Chook Hilton. Thanks Kate.

I took the bus to Perth, a cab to the airport, and next is a plane to Christchurch.

And so the next adventure begins….

Finishing the renovation at last

I returned home from my trip east to find that the floors had been laid, the blinds had been installed, the plumbing all connected up, and the electrics almost finished. And the splash backs were in.

The splash backs are awesome. This product is called Laminex Metalline, and is a resin coated sheet of aluminium, so can be used behind cooktops. Costs half the price of glass, and looks a million bucks!

Being away for two weeks meant a few things happened that might have been avoided if I'd been there. Like the plumbers smashing tiles to get the toilet in, creating a huge hole in the gyprock sheeting that we needed to patch and retile. My tiler had no trouble sliding a new tile in behind the toilet bowl, so we still don't know why the plumber had a problem.

The flooring looked great, aside from the appallingly bad job done in cladding the trapdoor. The level was wrong, the cuts weren't square, and they hadn't left a loose board for the trapdoor to be opened. I wasn't happy, particularly when I discovered that the flooring contractor had a cut hand so he had brought his wife along to do the job for him! And then finally, the door trims were so high none of the doors could close without having their bottoms shimmed. I was one very unhappy camper!

Thankfully, they rectified the problems. The trims were replaced, and someone else came out to recut and replace the flooring for the trapdoor. The final result looks considerably better.

Meanwhile the rest of the electrical appliances were fitted, and I began adding final touches like rails for utensils, knife racks, towel rails and hooks, and a hanging rail for my clothes. With limited space the bathroom doubles as a walk in wardrobe, something I'm happy to do as the extraction fan is a heavy duty one which gets rid of the steam very quickly.

The final big job was making and assembling the Murphy wall bed. These beds are common in North America and Europe, but not that well known here. My options were to purchase a beautifully engineered Italian bed costing something north of $8K or buying a DIY kit from the US for around $500 and making it myself from construction ply. Admittedly, outsourcing it to the chippy!

Scott had handed this job over to another chippy, a Tassie chap called Mick, as he had too much work on himself. Mick got into a panic at first that the job was too hard, but once he read through the instructions, took the plywood back to the cabinet makers to get it cut to the correct sizes and began following the easy to understand instructions, he had the thing made pretty quickly. I lucked out because Scott's building supplier had received marine ply instead of construction ply sent up from Perth, so I got the much nicer, much more expensive wood for the price of the lesser. But getting the bed into the alcove created for it, well that was a nightmare! Mick and I spent a while working out how to do it, in the end extending the flooring and then shortening the bed cabinet sides to fit. And wrestling the struts on was a real mission.

But it doesn't half look nice!

Scott then finished off the plaster sides, I repainted, the floor kick board was attached and I spent a couple of days sanding and varnishing the bed. I went for a water based varnish because it didn't have a whole lot of poisonous hydrocarbons in it. Not too keen on inhaling those fumes each night...

Then it was time to move in.....