An Interesting Few Weeks for Sure!

So many things happen here that are the same as in OZ, but have different customs surrounding them, making them appear surreal.

I went to a funeral of the Father of a dear friend of mine, this time last week.

Was amazed at the service, the real reverence displayed by everyone, kids and even babies, in attendance, not one whimper at all from anyone.
Real respect indeed.

Even though the lovely service, at the chapel at the cemetery, was in Hungarian, it was lovely, so I thought.
So many wreathes, I have never seen so many in real life, in all my life.
Not bunches of flowers, but special big wreathes of pine fir and white flowers predominately.

Then the service moved to the grave site and more prayers and blessings for the family were said.
Overall, a very respectful and solemn service.

I went home then and did not go to whatever followed. I'll ask my friend later, what they did, as I'd like to know how they do the follow up "Wake", I guess it is called?

So here are some pics of the last few weeks of our goings on...

Hahaha...One of my 2 USA girls...sitting by the fire to keep it warm...all the while being only half dressed and in the middle of winter! Too funny...

Then, my USA guests went and stayed at another friend's house for a few days to help out and had a sleep over to boot!

For some reason we had a swarm of flies hatch in between the 2 sets of windows in the sunny area of the house. Then they decided to come in and they were everywhere, so the great "Fly Hunters" from the deep got to work, hunting them down with weapons of great destruction!

A Toasty end for these flies!

Done! The last of the old shellack was so hard to get off this remaining robe, but the girls were dedicated to their focus on getting the job done. I was just going to paint it white to ease the pain of trying to remove all the residue shellack! Now we'll stain it again and fix the knobs etc. It looks so much bigger now it's all cleaned up.

It took a few years and 4 different people at different times to tackle these robes. The stuff they used back in the olden days was put on for life and certainly did NOT want to come off!

A lot of end of season jobs have been done...cleaned up all the wood laying around in various piles after pulling off the 3 rooves(roofs?) from the tool shed, summer kitchen and wood shed in the past year. Imre got stuck into that quick job and got everything that could be cut up, cut up!

A cute little view from up near Tesco...The path is really pretty as it curves through the grass...

While chopping and cutting up things, we chopped down the 2 youngish, white mulberry trees which were right in the middle of the big deck, cut back all the elderberry bushes over there, put in posts to hold the retaining wall at the back of the big deck and even put in the old big timbers to make a real retaining wall...and it actually worked!

This is where the retaining wall is going...and now is in place.

Then we dug out a place for possible side steps onto the big deck...to save people having to walk around the front for access...if they wanted to be private on the big deck in summer.

The elderberry bushes grow fast, thick and huge, so they make a nice privacy wall/room/area over there and maybe honeymoon couples might like to sit outside without broadcasting the fact to the world, by having to walk around the front to where the arch and other steps are.

Anyways, we then cleaned up all the mess in the yards, got the roof rafters on the honeymoon cottage and are now waiting for Tuesday to put on the temporary, low level roof and tarpaulin over it, for winter. The old bearers have been put back on in place and it will be great to get even the temporary roof on, so the work can continue over winter.

Imre has also done the underpinning of the interior and will start repairing the rest of the interior walls next, build the bathroom wall in there, run power and water pipes and cables, put in power points and TV access cables, etc etc, all ready for Spring when he'll paint it all after putting on a 4 layer roof.

A very puny roof line here, but strong enough to hold a timber roof with tarp over it too.

Exposed beams, white gyprock, insulation, silver foil waterproofing sheeting, battens, then roof tiles!
So, I think spring will certainly be a better time to work on that type of construction.

Bear went quickly on Tuesday morning...I was expecting him to go on the 29th December as Sabina had made arrangements for his operation, passport etc etc. but it seemed someone else wanted him before that! So off he went to the surgery for his op etc...

Bear sat in the car, in his seat belt,as happy as could be as there were 2 other dogs in the car too!

Painting completed...awaiting the colour trims now. Weeded the gardens and dug them over, pulled out all the tomatoes, morning glory and cut back the roses too. All ready for winter freezing to kill the bugs in the soil. Will put a little awning over the 2 windows on the left to even up the tops of the windows. My camera is playing up when closing down, so it looks like I'll have to sort that out soon too. The focus is becoming more and more distorted.

Gopher holes in my nature strip outside. Messy little critters!

Then on Wed arvo, Imre built me a spice shelf to see if my ideas work on that as I really want to get things tidy and in order...at last.

It has certainly cleaned up the jars on the bench and hidden them out of sight now.

My little secret, hidden spice rack that Imre built in an afternoon last week.!

Going to my friend's father's funeral last week.

The little chapel at the cemetery...

Some well kept grave stones...

Was very surprised how well kept the entire cemetery was.

Amazing...

Beautiful...

Going home now...

Cleaning up the cellar steps...Leading down to the medieval feasting room.

Cleaning up the last of the mess from the cellar...yet again!

Imre underpinning the interior of the Honeymoon Cottage...

All in all, the place is coming together quite well really. I did not realize just how much time and extra work is required on things over here, due to weather and the order of the way they do things.

Flightway tracks in the sky this morning.

Sunrise this morning on my jogging jaunt!

Up near the bus stop church at sunrise today...

Home again, just as the day gets underway...Hopefully a fine day...

I've tried to re-use as much of the original materials as possible and of course that means stripping things back to the bare wood etc, then starting all over again, but it really makes me feel better about everything and I think you can feel and see the difference.

It all seems to fit better, even the girls think so too!

Not much more to say, so will say bye for now!
Cheers and lots of love,
M
xxxx
Take care, be safe and whooo hoo...only a few weeks until Xmas!!!

WOW, Even I'm Amazed at The Progress!

Autumn has been and gone, then decided it wasn't quite finished with us yet...so it popped back again for a few weeks!

Lovely days, interspersed with a rainy day or a cloudy day, but basically, lovely outside working weather.

Imre and Dirk have completed the floor in the old Summer Kitchen and co-joined goat pens AKA, now the soon to be the Honeymoon Cottage.

The delivery truck brought the materials on Friday, for the temporary roof we'll put on it, so Imre can work inside it over winter.
The 2 boys will erect the temp roof this or next week, then Imre will start underpinning the walls a bit where needed, then build the bathroom wall, coat all the walls inside with his magic goop and you'll be very surprised just how good it will look! ...(says she, holding her breath in anticipation!). 

Am planning something like the pic below for the big deck over there outside the honeymoon cottage, so all is proceeding on that plan. 

A bit blurry, but you can get the general idea of the pavilion area idea I'd like on the big deck!

Am very excited to get the floor in the reno as that means all the plumbing is down now and the worst part, for me, is over!

That was planning where everything would go, knocking down the goat pen shed walls, the remaining fire chimney in the original summer kitchen part of the little building, measuring, drawing out, imagining and hoping things fitted as and where I wanted them to go.

This was the summer kitchen...with 2 goat rooms in the white end with no windows. The entry doors for them were on the right hand end wall.

This was the summer kitchen cooking room...The chimney fell in through the roof in Feb after winter and I had the roof propped up like this for 3 years as the front corner pillar broke and then the gophers ate the bricks under it and suddenly...no support under that left hand corner!

The 2 goat pen doors, also used as chook pens...

Roof off...

Rafters and beams off...

Ceilings coming down and out...

Middle wall coming down...Wall between summer kitchen and 2 goat pens...

Almost all down now, only a bit to do on the corners, then a clean up and some digging for new footings where there are no walls now!

Starting the rebuild, after new footings put down...

More bricks, sand, cement and gravel arriving...

Window holes set, lintels in and ready for the top cement beam pour...

Starting on the other side now...

All done and ready to pour the top beam...

Underpinning parts of the back outside wall...

All ready to put in the pipes before the floor goes down...

Imre on track to complete the floor on Monday, 6th Nov 2017!

Talk about painting yourself into a corner! This is cementing yourself in! He finished it on Monday morning...

Ran out of cement and gravel on the 8-10 inch thick cement floor he put in, so had to order more on the weekend!

Peter McLean...check out your gate...sitting perfectly as the truck goes in and out!

About to cement in some posts for a retaining wall at the back of the deck...

Oops, got the pics around the wrong way...Digging the post holes...

The poor old big deck...was a massive weed catchment area this year! I left it alone as the guys would have ruined it while working on the honeymoon cottage next to it. You can just see it in the right of the pic...We got in one day last week and cleaned it all up and only have to cut back the elderberry bushes and complete the retaining wall at the back and that should do us until March when planting begins all over again.

House finally painted. It dried out fully white about 30 mins after this shot was taken. The girls pulled out all the tomatoes from the garden this afternoon too, so now the place will look nice and tidy again after being hidden by the jungle of tomatoes!

Got in and started clearing up the tomatoes...they just keep on bearing fruit. Amazing! But they had to go...unfortunately, as they'll freeze up and die off in a few weeks I guess anyways.

Zipped into town quickly and this was coming home in the bus at 10 mins to 4pm with the sun setting! hahaha...crazy days!

We all have been working on the big deck outside the rebuild area and I've planted a few conifers in the terraces, but need heaps more plants yet.

Dirk is digging out the back of the big deck this week to put in some retaining walls, so we can use up the big old timbers that we pulled out of the roof of the summer kitchen here a few months back. We cut up a lot of roofing timbers for firewood and saved some of the OK poles for retaining walls.

That will save buying cement bricks as I was going to have to do.

It will be hidden at the back and will only be an access back path for mowing and keeping the fence clear between me and my neighbour's property, so I think the back-filling with old timbers retaining walls will be great.

Imre completed the undercoating of the exterior of the house today, so we'll be able to paint it easily in April, trims and all.

And apart from that, we have been busy inside, painting everything with the 2nd full coat of paint over the blue which has been a bit hard to cover with the white.

Am leaving it now for the final quick coat in April, after winter smoke from the wood fire has been cleaned off everything and it will be super-duper!

It looks amazing inside with every thing in view now painted white and is nice and clean looking. We also did another coat of varnish to all the wooden furniture and it looks simply stunning. The extra coat just gave everything a special glow it didn't have before.

Imre put in 8 power points in the girls bedroom and the end room now even has a light with a real switch in the wall! So many small things done these past few weeks, it is amazing to see what we all have accomplished.

The girls are great and one is a 5 star cook, in my opinion. The delicious smells all day, every day, emanating from her cooking pots and pans is awesome. They are both vegetarians, so imagine how much more delicious smelling those aromas would be with meat thrown in amongst it all!

Brittany, tidying up all our past efforts...and she's smiling???. Imre, Dirk and I all had a go at these blessed windows and walked away from them! What a task...Anyways, the girls seemed to be able to whip through it all in 2 days...until we ran out of paint...again! Amazing...I can't seem to judge the amt of paint needed here...and bought another 2 tins the other day and they're now empty too! Those big nails in the wall were from me experimenting with curtain colours etc. Blue velvet does NOT suit here at all.

Brit and Sharee...master painters and Sharee is the super cook! Traveling the world for a year, hoping to settle over here in Europe somewhere next year. They are off to Morocco in a few weeks time, for 3 months of Schengen.

After Xmas the floors are going down, the kitchen will go in and that should be it for the big stuff.

Imre will do all the remaining power points, put in 2 way light switches where necessary, outside power points and lights and some solar security lights.

Then the cement paths have to be fixed, and others made for around all the buildings etc, the tool shed rendered...forgot that one...hahaha...and a bunch of those sorts of finishing off things...plus he has to work on the honeymoon cottage all over winter too.

My sister wanted a pic for the lovely DVD's she makes for me, so this is a poser pic!

Well, that's it for a round up of the past few weeks of work.
Actually, I didn't realise we'd done so much!

So, until next time, love to all and take care,
Love you,
M
xxx