Well, That Was a Bit of an Anti-Climax!

Some easy things over here take seemingly forever to get underway or completed, like trying to get a quote for the doors and windows painting and some other more difficult things, like plumbing, get done before you finish thinking about them!

We now have an inside loo, all plumbed up, flushing with no leaks!

Trusty old Zoltan dug out 2 of the never used crushed septic pipes, added and connected new ones, added 10 lengths of new waste water pipes from the shower and vanity, dug trenches, sorted pipes, hooked up the loo...all in under 8 hours total!

Here's me thinking at least a full week...and I know about building things.

The loo will be re-positioned as soon as we move the sink and replace it with a vanity basin and cement under the shower and vanity when my USA volunteer comes in a few weeks.

But at least we have inside loo for my volunteers now, so I'll make an effort to find a bunch of tradies over the coming months and rocket through the rest of the restorations/renovations as fast as possible.

Just measured up all the bricks we'll need for the sheds and lodge extensions and did a bit of a double take at the numbers! There is one pallet of bricks to 5 m2, so

Wow, was my shocked comment as I'd never really worried about how many thermal blocks were needed, I just knew they were needed and lots of them!

So on the weekend I got out there with a tape measure and measured up the little shed, the Summer Kitchen, the shed with the 3 doors and the collapsed shed area I'm rebuilding too.

This new area will be an open room with a mezzanine floor above with 2 bedrooms and a few bathrooms and a massive big glass fireplace, smack bang in the middle of the room.

A real staircase will go in, but basically, you get the idea  over the back there.

You can see the mez floor above, but the fireplace won't be this modern. It will be suited to the way the room turns out, but will be round like this and glassed in like this, sort of...that is all I know. I've done no research on these types of fireplaces, except I like the idea. I have no idea if they are gas or wood burning...hahaha...but will research that closer to the time. 

At 18,200 ft a pallet for 140 odd bricks, I'll be needing about 10 pallets maximum, for the 3 door shed, 20 for the summer kitchen and around 40 for the new  area...70 pallets by say 20,000 ft a pallet, with sand, cement etc.
That is 1.4 million ft!

Which is about $7,000Ausd.
That sounds a whole lot better than over a million Hungarian fts for sure.

I have a pallet of bricks here already for the little end shed which thankfully only needs a new back in it and will be started in a few weeks.

Zoltan will be cleaning up the work areas over the coming weeks, getting things ready to work on laying bricks for quite a few months to come, by the sounds of things.

We dug out a bunch of roots and stumps this last week and the big job ahead these next few weeks will be to knock down the crumbly wall you see in the pic here where the piece of orange board is. They'll be able to cart it away to a big pile in the paddock so this will make things easier to get the next part of the back fence built and get a good go on with knocking down and rebuilding the shed.

All around the back and other end of the shed is about a metre high with old tumbled mud bricks and prickly bushes, so that's the big job to get done first so we can get barrows in and have a flat work space.

We won't knock the shed down yet, only clean up the stuff that's there. That is so we can get a good go at working in the area without falling over 100 years of paddock junk, plus we need a flat area to stack the roof tiles for later use. The shed gets demolished mostly, after all is tidied up.

First, the roof tiles come off to be placed in a pile on the cleaned up area. After that the roof timbers will be closely examined for woodworm and damage assessed. We may have to buy some new ones if necessary.

Then the guys will have a ball, knocking down what remains of the shed.
Almost half the back is already gone, half of the west end is missing and obviously this end will be open, so it's not a big job at all after the clean up jobs in the 2 next weeks.

That's a hand made ladder in the pile in this picture there too...I want to keep it but am not sure how to use it yet. Maybe suspend it from the ceiling in the new shed and hang tools from it?To paint it or not to paint it? That is the question!

Any ideas anyone?

I'm pleased with the job so far, considering how big a job removing the collapsed shed was!

Basically, almost all of this will be removed and the shed rebuilt. The roof tiles are still good and authentic, so they'll all get used again, the rafters look OK, so we'll only need to buy a few new ones I'm thinking and a neighbour has a bunch of doors that I can have to put on the door holes. We'll make the door holes a bit higher so ordinary people can go in. They 're OK for me as they are! This shed has 3 rooms in it...I think I'll just make one big workshop area, but leave the 3 door holes as they appear on the outside, probably with only one being functional. It's 6 metres long by almost 4 mtrs wide...with over almost 3 feet for walls in that. The new shed will be only one brick thick, under a foot, so I'll gain about 18inches inside space.

So, by the end of April, you won't know this space, it will look amazing.

I'll get a truck in to take all the rubbish to the dump at the end of the year after all the reconstruction work has been done, so am very excited about that for sure.

It is more than a bit depressing looking at that mess each time I go past in the bus. I guess one just has to do things in an orderly manner and that leaves cosmetic appearances a bit ugly at times!

Testing recipes for the Lodge....Marmalade rubbed boscoe pears, pan fried, with crispy thin, crumbled cooked proscuito, and crumbled bluevein cheese with toasted hazelnuts, on a bed of that dark purple wrinkly lettuce. Add some water to the pan after cooking the pears, scrape all the yummies from the pan, reduce over a high heat for a min or so and pour pan juice over this decadent dish. Gerry Butler in the 2004 movie of  Phantom of The Opera is the only dressing or side dish needed for this thoroughly satisfying meal. Yummo! (I used flaked toasted almonds as I forgot the hazelnuts.)

Bought a new fridge this week. It's a monster! I could put wheels on it and use it as a caravan...But at least I can reach the top of it. I finally found a shorter and wider fridge with a big freezer on top, just how I wanted. Plus the door opened the right way too.  It just fits snugly into the corner there. Am really looking forwards to stewing up my plums, apples, cherries, tomatoes and anything else I can and freezing them for use throughout the winter. Will buy a big chest freezer too in Summer. Saw a huge Gorenge one yesterday, only 68,000 ft...about  $340, so at least I know the top brand, sizes and prices for them.

The door of this fridge is very deep too...you can put a large bottle of preserves in the door without squeezing it in. I emptied my little fridge into it and only half of one shelf is full! hahaha, now I know why I had to go shopping so often.

Being on the go for so long, I never noticed it, but now I'm stable and in a routine, and with dog to cook for too, the fridge was far too small.
I originally bought it to use temporarily and then put in the summer kitchen, along with a jug, little hotplate and microwave. so I have a kitchen full of appliances waiting to go into that reno now!

Big day here.. Breakthrough and final connection of the waste water pipe from the vanity and shower.

Testing water pouring through! Yahhy! With all the snow and rain, I thought there would be water in the septic pit, but it was dry inside....not for long though. Don't know whether to grab a bottle of  champers and flush it down the pipes now to christen them...or drink it and then flush it down them! hahaha...sick joke Mary! So now we have both septic and waste water systems installed. Only need to hook up the water from the Hot Water System heater to the kitchen sink and connect the waste water from there to the shower elbow and we'll be really modernised. That will be after the kitchen window goes in, followed by the benches, then finally, the kitchen sink!

Digging up the trenches to straighten them out from where we had them leading into the old loo pit, before finally laying 2 sets of pipes...Got these 2 pics back to front here...

The poor old loo, will be old fashioned by now...I've had it for so long!

Now it's all hooked up in "test for leaks" mode. We have to move the sink and replace it with a vanity, concrete the floor under the vanity and the shower and then reset the loo back onto the wall about 7 inches. There was a big thing in the way when my volunteers and I dug the hole for this pipe originally, but Zoltan has sorted a new position for the pipe and will reset it all in a few weeks when the final bit of concreting gets done in here. Then I can get some flooring over this new concrete floor we put down recently. Will probably run parquetry wood floors right throughout the entire house, kitchen, bathroom and all. Not real sure, but am tending that way.

The big Alsatian dog I was looking after for a week for Sabina, kept on running away every time it was put back in my paddock after he had his castration operation on Thursday...Poor thing was disorientated from the anesthetic.
Sabina came and took him to another foster home this afternoon, so hopefully their yards might be more lion/dog proof than mine are!

Gave my big wood fire heater to a neighbour this week...I swapped it earlier on for some wood.
I didn't want it anymore as the smoke made me itch and scratch...and it was so messy, but very cosy.

I miss that part of a wood fire, but for now the little fan heater does the trick. My gas ran out right at the time we had a 2 week cold snap...so will get that refill underway as soon as someone goes to town with a car  this week. It isn't that bad, but having the gas as back up was comforting.

Went to Budapest on Thursday and found the exact colour for the bed throws, so am pretty chuffed about that. Took some pics of the lady weighing the material...yup, they still weigh it in some places...even in Budapest, but can't load them at the moment.

There is a house for sale here on the tar road, up the other end of town, for 4,500Euros, about ...$6,750 Aussie...less than the bricks for my reno job! It's on over half an acre, has town water to the yard, new gas to the house and new electricity connection.

Actually, just thinking, I should get that instead of rebuilding the collapsed shed here!

The other house has a good roof and is in goodish condition really. It needs a lot of girlie work, plus bathroom, kitchen, new wiring and plumbing inside, but it's empty, so no rumbling through old furniture etc. It would be easy to fix up as no one is living in it.

No windows to cut in, just a lot of cleaning up and painting to do.

It looks nice from the outside and sits on the land very prettily indeed. It feels nice when you go into it...Windows all OK and the owner is trying to patch up some minor scuffs inside and put a new...ish door on the roomy entry front porch. You actually don't fall into the kitchen, as you do here!

There is a little room at the side/front, just off the entrance porch, that is perfect for a complete separate bathroom.
3 rooms, similar to here, a big lounge room, a kitchen room and a sleeping room off that.
Also has a big glassed in front verandah. Lovely and sunny. A great front fence, metal gates, good concrete and metal patterned fence too, much better than mine.

Didn't have my camera with me when I saw it yesterday, so you'll have to wait to see it.

I can't load any pics from my camera to the computer at the moment...the images dashboard won't show from under the pics, so will probably have to put them on a memory stick and load them another way I guess.

So, no more pics means no more blog today...

Will catch you later,
Cheers,
Mary
xxxx