Front Room Done...

Moved in to the front room from the kitchen/dining room while Imre completes that room!
Just as well I like moving things around...a lot!

It is nice and sunny in the front room now that mid year is only a few weeks away. The sun comes in from 5 am..ish to after 3pm...ish, so it is very bright indeed!

Imre should only take a few days to complete the middle room, then he'll put in the power and sort out the kitchen plumbing again. It is all there from when the bathroom was there before I moved it into the kitchen!

Then when all the painting, plumbing and electricity is completed, he'll lay the floor in there and when it's dry, I'll move back into the new kitchen and dining room.

Still will have to have a custom made kitchen, but that's no problem and will take about 6-8 weeks the guy said. He has to come back and remeasure again after all the walls etc are completed, as there is not one straight line, wall or one 90 degree angle anywhere in this place at all!

The first rose of Summer!

Sun coming up just after 5am here. Wondered if it would be a clear day when I peeped out!

Yup, those cherry blossoms you saw from 1-10 April are now cherries on 16th May! Amazing how fast they grow and ripen.

Poppy time again as I do my rounds on the morning jog! Even in the middle of moving, there is always space for a vase of fresh flowers...well, a jar today, as I packed away almost everything else!

This is my accidental rambling rose! I thought I bought a proper rose and it seems the stock root grew, but the rose graft did not! hahaha, Shopping is like a box of chocolates...you never know what you'll get over here!

This one grew as the label showed in the picture!

Just a quickie blog-ette today to get ahead a bit again as somehow I got so far behind there for a few months!

Temp inside now is 23C, outside a bit warmer...hot in the sun, but pleasant.

We have had 3 nice sunny days in a row after a couple of rainy, cloudy and grey sky months.
Hopefully that has passed and it will be nice now.

My vegie garden is bare this year as Bear is still a puppy and just has to chew everything...all the time!
I buy him lots of bones, chicken carcasses to chomp on, plus he has his doggy toys, 4 old shoes, a couple of squares of cut off foam, plus 34 rocks he retrieves from the rock pile and countless bits of wood, weeds and dead twigs!

He is a cutie though. I'll miss him when he goes in a few weeks time, but animals were not on my radar for here. Too much trouble when I travel. Dog has gone and soon Bear will go to live with his Mum along with 5 other female dogs.

The guy who took Dog, said she is the Queen of the 6 dogs he has now and she lays her head on his thigh when he is playing his video games. She sleeps on his couch inside and is loving it!

OK...am off to finish this moving thing - again - and next week, it will be a very different story from inside the Little Lodge of Many Wonders!

Maybe a sneak peek?

Bye, do take care,
Cheers,
M
xxxx
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Tool Shed Completed!

Wow, it is finally done!

The reno and remake of half of the old pig pens into the cutest little tool shed this side of Man Cave Heaven...but it is for girls this time. hahaha...

Have to find out the name they give to Girl Caves now!

The lino is down, painting all completed for now, the shelves Imre made at Xmas time, go over this arvo after lunch and then the new bench top goes on and that's it. I have to empty out the kitchen now so we can use the designate bench top for the shed bench, so that is a prompter for me to get a wriggle on and do it.

Will have to find some of that peg board sheeting then get the tools sorted out to hang them up neatly and get the power in when the big room is built, but that's all dressing for later on.

The garden is coming along great guns after all the rain.

In goes the shelves to the new bench in the tool shed. Then one last lick of paint to cover last minute fixes and we are done! The doors will be painted with the externals walls after they are all done later on in one big push.

All going well with the rest of the renos...which, once completed, need to be maintained...ooops!
More work. hahaha.

Not too bad, going from this and below...

The end under repair....

It is satisfying creating the remake of these historic old buildings. The end of this shed was sort of OK...in places, that is, so we saved as much as possible as it really was pretty sound and strong!

Bear, just rolling over as he heard me move! I can't believe I actually let a dog, of all things, in the house with me! He sits at my feet and is a real softy. He loves the fan heater blowing on him after he's been out in the rain...funny little fellow.

Lines must be straight, sort of like this Richard! They'd be better if there weren't so many mole holes and mounds and undermining all over the place. Only one third finished mowing here. This is taken from halfway down the paddock, but you get the idea! More fruit trees will go in the section to the right with the cherry, apricot and nectarine trees. Then some big shade trees will go to the left a bit to form a circle with a big clearing in the centre so as the trees grow, they form a cooling canopy of shade for summer

Lino joins all glued down and weights placed on them. The last few coats of paint will be done in a few days when this one dries out and then the benches etc go in.

Exciting times ahead, as all the tools go out of the house and the house becomes a house, all by this weekend of the 20th May! Of course the house still has a few finishing touches, like removing and re positioning the bathroom wall, making a toilet door to suit the size of the others in the house, and finally having a real kitchen installed.

Am waiting to show you the big reveal in a few weeks, room by room. Coming together quickly now as there are only minor things all over the place to fix, touch up, hang up, move around, tidy up etc, but it is happening at long last.

And, of course, the last thing is the floor in each room to go down. We are having trouble finding the right glue for the wood here, so it looks like a big trip to Budapest to buy a couple of 20 litre drums of polyurethane glue...which is more expensive than the entire flooring, hahaha.

Oh well, it is time to get the mower going again and complete the mow for this mid week cut.
Imre is going to fix the wheels on the mower, clean out the carby etc etc in the morning and hopefully sharpen the mower blades too.
2 other families in the village use the mower too and one always cleans out all the wet grass from underneath, which is a blessing. Both always return it filled to the brim with benzine. But I think the dragging of it along behind a bike to the other end of the village every week probably is not really good for the wheels, so we'll have to work out something there.

It has taken one heck of a beating over the 3 years it while it tamed a 6 foot high paddock of weeds into a 3 inch high paddock of weeds!
It never misses a beat. One pull and it starts, but the wheels and handles are falling apart!
It is a toss up re buying a new one now and keeping ole' faithful as a spare or giving it to the other folk to share.

New mowers are very cheap considering!
Must be a Briggs & Stratton motor as those things go on forever.

Am off will see you all next week from inside my newly completed front room while Imre does his magic on the finishing touches in the middle room.
I forgot about this...he's putting in a 2nd kitchen window which will overlook the front door!
This will be a great asset so I can see who is there before running through the place to see who is there!

Bye now,
Cheers and take care,
M
xxxx

Want to Sit and Watch The Grass Grow?

Yes, it's that time of the year again when you finish mowing the paddock and it has grown almost half an inch from when you first mowed that morning!

Amazing.

All is good here, Imre is almost finished rendering the inside walls in the tool shed.
He put in the windows, cleaned up the footings cement ooze from last year, made the new door way, put in the door and tidied up the ceiling gaps from the original old animal pens.

When we put up the new thermal brick walls, the shed became a foot wider inside and of course with me trying to hang onto the old original ceiling, it ended up being a foot too short where it met the new walls.

So, Imre to the rescue again and with a wave of his magic hammer and saw, a few bits of patching sorted out that big gap! Well, it was a foot wide and 15 feet long actually, in the tool shed, so some sort a gap it was.

When it's all painted next week, you won't know there was ever a mess there.

Am a bit sorry I didn't realize that the new walls would have made the entire old shed larger inside, otherwise I'd have made it into a caretakers cottage. It is amply large enough for that and is the size of a big caravan, without the end area which we haven't done anything with yet.

There were 3 pig pens originally and I knocked the wall out between 2 of them and made the tool shed and Zoltan dug down about 9 inches and gained the extra height needed. The end pig pen is supposed to be a junkshed or something as I really wont have any room for just stuff! I need my son Peter here to bring in a shipping container to make a great shed just for stuff!

A sunset last month from my back fence...

But in hindsight, I should have taken out the old ceiling made of timber with 6 inches of mud and reeds on it and added a few extra rows of bricks that way.

Never mind, it is fine thus far.

Dog has been given away and Bear goes on the weekend to the same family, hopefully.
They had 6 female dogs and one died last month, so they wanted to replace it.

Dog was the perfect answer. Then when he came to get to meet Dog, he fell in love with Bear too!
Hoping for a happy outcome there on Sunday next.

Then I can get in and clean up the yard and replant all the gladiola bulbs that Bear seems to have sniffed out and dug up. He thinks they are truffles or something exotic!

We begin work on the honeymoon Cottage shortly and am just getting the materials in place now.

Have you ever seen a side opening tip truck?

I hadn't noticed them before but they use them for loads of sand and gravel in one delivery and are able to tip one type of material at a time so they don't get mixed together.

They tip one and then move away, back up to another spot and either back tip or side tip that load. Very interesting...well, for me anyways!

The awesome side tipping truck in action...

Great idea...

Giving the sand a bit of help there...

Not bad hey?

Found a great idea for over on the big deck...not sure if I'll use it, but it looks really nice and cozy with walls around it and the BBQ inside and all..

This one had the whitewashed flooring in gloss, not a flat or semi flat finish like I'm thinking.

Anyways, that's all for a very short blog this week, so see you next weekend.

Hope all are well.
Cheers,
Mary
xxx