Yippee...My new Workaway Volunteer is a genius!
He went into the computer and pulled up some weird numbers and zapped my phone and suddenly, all my pics from 6 years were amazingly on the computer.
So, this week I'll go through the 2,000 plus pics and post some and write a blog around them.
But first, let's look at what has happened here this past week.
Imre has almost completed the bathroom wall in the Honeymoon cottage...a bit slow as he has to cut the bricks on an angle to make the wall the way I want it.
Tomatoes and apples are everywhere...picked 4 big bowls of 4 different types of tomatoes today...made a few more bottles of cooked tomatoes for the freezer, made 8 bottles of elderberry syrup for winter, and cooked up a big boiler of apples too.
Over on the big deck, we built the next level of the new brick seat I'm making to bury all the rubble in. But there was too much left over, so we had to built another brick seat to fill up with the left over rubble...
Dujon, my new volunteer from USA, arrived on Wednesday for 8 days before he heads off to Thailand for his friend's engagement party.
We have done a lot of yukky jobs, like clearing up the rubble, yup, rubble, in the drains/gutters on the nature strips outside that I dumped there a month or so ago to try and round up the base a bit as it was a steep angle that almost took me to China each time I mowed the grass in it!
After a lot of rain it has settled and needed cleaning up, so now the grass can grow again, so I can mow it...dohhh...
Then we started the second brick seat this morning to hide the rubble, rubbed back some more window trims, ready to paint in the morning and generally have things looking pretty good at the moment.
Imre will complete the cottage bathroom wall this coming week and then put up the main beam for the mez floor and then things will really take on a whole new energy...at long last!
I have to take Andrea's car to the VW place in Solnok this week as it was recalled to have the brakes checked, so that will be nice as I don't think I've been there yet?
Anyways, Imre will drive and find out what is going on in Hungarian for Andrea.
I can't drive at the moment until my ears are healed and the wobbly floor attacks stop for good, so it will be a fun day.
Here are the pics...lost for years...but hiding in plain sight.
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| Cleaning up the wooden doors on the old bread oven/fireplace. Now it is a linen cupboard and this room is now the bath-room. |
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| The first week here I weeded the path to the gate and that allowed my first visitor to come and offer to take all the junk away! Thankfully! |
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| All of this stuff came out of the little Summer kitchen, now being converted to the Honeymoon Cottage. |
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| I bought a brand new mattress, had it delivered...and it was almost a foot too long for the antique bed. So, I had to adapt the plan somewhat and put the mattress on a new base...of chairs and stools! It worked for a few months until I cleaned up the beds and took them apart and made 2 bed-heads from the head and foot of the bed. There were creepy crawleys racing all over the floors at night as the house had been empty for almost 4 years, so I was taking no chances. |
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| The end room, containing the cellar...the door to it is on the floor, you can see the timber door I'm standing on. This room was accessed by an outside door...now the end room, accessed from inside the house, by a new doorway we cut in. |
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| Cleaning out the 3 door shed which was a chook house I think. It had 3 low ceiling rooms in it. It is now a tool shed, with one wall taken out, making a nice roomy tool shed and one smaller room which is now a machine room for mowers and the cement mixer. |
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| This old half wine vat is now a coffee table. We cut it down a bit as it was pretty rotten in places etc etc. |
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| Inside the old summer kitchen...not much head clearance here! |
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| The gophers had a ball here...Summer kitchen. This point where the chimney is/was, is where the staircase to the mez floor is going. We knocked out the middle wall with the bit of tin on it. Behind the wall were 2 pig pens. |
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| Back in the end room again...cleaning out all the palinka making devices etc etc...Fixed the big wall crack too... |
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| So much stuff! I can't believe it! The cellar door is now filled in and is a nice window instead. We access that room from inside the house now, not from outside. The blue windows (in the kitchen)are the ones we are just getting around to painting now...sighhhh, these things do take time! |
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| House garden all weeded and cleaned up...for 5 minutes anyways! |
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| Getting everything into piles before the rain set in...too late! |
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| Raining... |
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| Just noticed the stork over there in its nest! So much rubbish to take away, but they did it in one day I think... |
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| Had another person come in and sickle (cut the grass) the grass in the paddock, hence the piles of grass piled up in the background. Now you can see me in the paddock. Before it was cut, you could not see me, as it was so high...amazing! |
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| It took 3 people to open the gate as it was in pieces. Thankfully my son made a nice new double gate when he came over a few months later. |
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| The 3rd load of rubbish being taken away. What a day! |
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| Next day I found more stuff in sheds I never knew were on the property! |
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| The collapsed shed as far as I was game to enter into! We had a working bee a few months later and people came in and emptied out the shed, took off the roofing timbers and tiles, found so much more stuff to get rid of too. Never ending. The next year I hired a bull-dozer and dozed the building into the bottom paddock...it was made of mud bricks, so they were easy for the dozer to crush. |
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| The attic in the big shed that collapsed...lots of wood for the people who helped demolish the collapsed shed. |
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| The original old dunny in the big shed, which collapsed the week before I arrived here, making the dunny unsafe for use, so first job was to build a new dunny, fast. |
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| Openings on the end wall of the summer kitchen were these two pig pen doors. All gone now and this area is now the new bathroom on the honeymoon cottage! |
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| Bags and bags of corn cobs and wall-nuts in the old goat shed which is now a nice cleaned up wood-shed, with a new back in it, new roof and even a cement floor! |
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| Ummm...errrr...well, you can't see this at first glance...the back of the wood shed when I first bought it! Well, there was no back in it... hahaha...so much work to do!!! |
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| The poor little wood shed, was a goat pen with a foot deep of goat droppings we had to dig out. |
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| A pile of junk in the little shed...now called the wood shed after a clean up, 2 new walls, a cement floor and a roof job! |
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| Found a pile of communist magazines...This is a bathing beauty Cover in Hungary way back when...note the underarm fur!!!! |
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| First day of the garden clean up! I found 3 real bed chamber potties...all with no holes in them. I use them for planting flowers in now. |
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| My daily bath time...Used this method to bathe for 3 months until my son came over and helped a neighbour install a shower cubicle beyond imagination! |
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| Tibi building the new dunny! |
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| Tibi's little son...cuteness plus plus! |
There it is! I can't believe there was so much to do!
But, over time, it has been cleaned and prettied up too.
More next week!,
Cheers,
Mary.
