Wow, a Real House is in The Making!

Not long to go now and the place, inside, at least, will look pretty good I think.

All the big works, major things like plumbing, new electric metres and power throughout, water inside, drainage and especially around the house outside, new gutters, underpinning of the walls, rendering the exterior, adding windows, putting in 2 cement floors where there was only a few bricks on the floor in one room and some composite wood, laid on sand in the other room, cutting of a doorway into an end workshop to make a house room and much, much more that seemed a distant dream, are all nearing completion.

By Friday, hopefully, the bathroom will look like one and when the tiles go down and the wall goes up...wowee, the house will have a separate bathroom at long last, plus a formal entry.

By Xmas when next I jump on a plane to visit family for Xmas and New Year, It should be ready for some great final pictures!

Somewhere on my travels...London, Hong Kong, Singapore or Brisbane??? It was pretty anyways.

The new window, replacing the air conditioning 100 year old door, went in on Monday, complete with locks and hinges, so it can be opened in summer.
Am very happy with that lovely big window which on sunny days, allows the room to be lit up beautifully.

The house is sealed up at last from winter winds!

A beautiful sight...well, it will be when it's all painted and cleaned up! Can probably keep the old door there for a while as a shutter for winter until I get one for it next year.

The fridge gets shifted into the new kitchen when the temporary vinyl goes down next week, then the kitchen cupboards and sink can go in.
The plumbing is all there, where the "old bathroom"sink, loo and shower plumbing were, so we have heaps of water connections for the new kitchen in that area already.

Imre came with me the other day and we went hunting for wood heaters, washing machines and upright cookers v/s under bench oven and hot plates v/s gas or electric or a combo of both...

So many choices to make but I must try and keep the look a bit old fashioned and not go too far out, especially with the stove/oven set up.

The kitchen will be a mix of the following 4 images! Note the neat breakfast bar idea...I have a table like that, but with fancier legs, so adding the bottom shelf, should make a great bench.

White benches with pine tops...Am looking for breakfast bar ideas in these first 2 pics

Tidy shelving...

You get the hang of it....

Can hardly wait to get the vinyl down in 3 out of 4 of the rooms...It means to me that the days of working on the big dirty jobs and mud bricks  -  are over!

I washed the other day and the water was not black or muddy, it was so nice to see just dirty water, not muddy water! Who else could be so excited over a twin tub washing machine full of just plain old dirty water?

This also means I can look for an ordinary front loading washing machine as the cleaner washing won't stuff up a new machine as quickly as just dirty water does. I feel so uppity now!

Yeah, well, it did work once!

Positioning everything before the new floor tiles or whatever, goes down , the pipes now have to get cut into the wall to hide them, (my fault as I forgot the walls were brick...dohhh) and then the shower, once assembled and cleaned, gets put back into its new corner.

So that means in a few weeks, the place will have 3 rooms sort of ready for completion with girly things.
Then Imre can finally get into the end room and start repairing the ceiling in there. That is a bit of a challenge, but he magically seems to be able to get the hard jobs done in a very professional manner indeed.

A pleasant surprise! This morning, the Mayor sent workers to renew the concrete around the public water pump on the corner of my property. I was going to get Zoltan to do it soon, so that saved me some cash. It's for people to come pump their own water if they can't afford to have the water put on in their house.

Imre is very good to work with as he has a car and if any tool or materials are needed, we "go shopping".
This keeps the momentum going and lots of other little things get done too, as he notices things and mentions it and we buy the screw or whatever is missing and he repairs it there and then and goes back to what the task at hand was.

Like a few bolts needed for the new front gates that Peter, my son built when he was here, my rake handle broke, the hoe fell apart, the axe needed sharpening, the old table needed sanding before using it as a vanity and so on.

So I'm not letting him out of my sight anytime soon!

He works a shorter day, but 5 days a week at the moment, which is $35 AUSD a day (I pay them for the lunch hour too) and after this big flurry to finish the insides by the end of the month, he will stay on for 2-3 days a week for at least a year, painting, detailing, trimming and so on.

There is more than enough work for him, full time, for a year! Even if I kept him on full time it is only $8,750 for the entire year, so I may even consider that. He is reliable, has a car, lives in the next street over and can seemingly do everything I've thrown his way thus far. Zoltan is limited to outside labouring, concrete work

Zoltan's cementing materials arriving. Now he can complete the front of the 3 door shed and put in a bigger door so ordinary humans can enter , which then becomes the newly created ...Tool Shed!

Zoltan will start as soon as he can and it will only take a few days to render and repair the 3 door shed front.

Then all the spare materials laying around, like sheets of gyprock, cans of paint, a spare window, the cement mixer, wheelbarrow, shovels, pipes, spare timber and so on, can all go into their proper new home. Yaaahy for that one too!!!

There is still a lot to really complete nicely, both inside and out, but that seems to be a never ending job with reno homes everyone here tells me.

Like all the internal painting of doors and windows ..I gave that job up after trying to paint one window, which had 6 actual opening windows in it - each one containing a bunch of panes of glass....dohhh!
I'd rather pay him to do it, than me go nutso trying to enjoy myself that way!
Hahaha. No way.

Then there is the painting of the entire outside of the huz, gutters, drainpipes, eaves, repairing the front of the place with its fancy stuff, adding all the trims here and there, fixing the 2 chimney tops and sealing them, repairing some cracked roof tiles when a storm blew down a couple of chimney bricks earlier this year etc and so on...not to mention the gardens, so it's a mighty push to get it all done this year before I leave for Xmas with family!

Imre can also hang the curtain rods throughout, build all the kitchen wall shelves, build new cupboards using the lovely old doors from both chimney spaces and so on while I'm gone if needs be.

Am not doing the summer kitchen or starting anything else until the main original huz is completed so if anything happens, at least there will be a decent home available for someone to step right into.

Don't panic, I'm fine, but it hit me on the way to OZ end of August, that I was just tired of living in half completed everything. So I decided to complete one entire building before starting another.

Ever since I've been here, I've had 3 buildings on the go at once...using the guys for outside work while I could get them and while the weather was fine, as this 6 month building season seems so short in comparison to 12 months a year in OZ.

Now that it all looks like being pretty well completed soon, there will remain only 2 big jobs... the summer kitchen and the building of the big room...which will replace the collapsed shed we dozed away in May of last year.
Went to Debrecen yesterday for the day with friends, just looking around while they did their massage treatments etc.
We had lunch at the food mall afterwards and I thought I was back in OZ for a moment with Burger King, KFC, Asian food,etc etc...all set out just like the food mall in Morayfield. A real de-ja-vous moment for sure!

An old flour mill, now a thriving hotel and restaurant in Debrecen...

Some lovely homes in Debrecen suburbs...

If you look really hard, you can see the truck ahead with a white "bottle brush" type of thing off the right side of it. It goes along the road, cleaning the posts with the cats eyes on them! Tried to wait behind it for a good shot of it in action, but we had to move along. Very efficient.

Am getting the plans drawn up for mezzanine floors in both over Xmas to be ready to start in March of next year. Am hoping to have the Summer Kitchen (new honeymoon cottage) ready for guests by May.

So by the time I leave for OZ at Xmas, most of the jobs inside and outside, hopefully will be finally done. So excited...but I won't be here to use it!

Oh well, no worries, I may be lucky to find someone to be caretaker for 6-8 weeks...free utilities, food, wine, beer, accom, heating.

Any takers?

Anyone want to fill in time, or do you know anyone who wants to sit by the fire all winter sipping hot spiced wine, (just bought the hot wine spices today) or write a book, play patience, read lots of books, watch the entire series of Downton Abbey, Hogan's Heroes, Pride and Prejudice and more?

Let me know please.

OK, so see you next week with a newly painted entry/bathroom wall, a real bathroom and who knows what else!
Cheers for now,
Love to all,
M
xxxx



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