What's been going on?

Behold, where once there was a kitchen, now there is none. And from behind ancient wood panelling a door appeared. Then came the wallpaper revelation and the saga of removing the thirty year old wallpaper.
Gobbing great streaks of liquid nails on the dappled concrete walls. Rotting lino. The kitchen bench sitting in the middle of the room. A baker with a heavy heart.
The pregnant lady on a ladder. Shouldn't somebody have done something?!?
But then, it was cleaned. And all painted. And the floors went down. And it was ok.

There is a mania that occurs, for me, anyway, when you move house. It comes through not being organised, and living in a muddle of boxes and spending all your time getting everything 'the way it should be', instead of maintaining a decent and balanced lifestyle.

Usually I have it all sorted within a week or so and life goes on. But this time it's different. Living with a toddler demands good organisation- you can't be hunting for a pan and shuffling about for the grater when it's lunch time. It's LUNCHTIME. That's what they demand. So the speed with which I have been able to settle in has been halved, since a lot of my day is planning and preparing for a toddlers needs and then having to go out and do things with him, since a house full of boxes is too much for him and me to cope with.

But just last night, in one of those mid-pregnancy energy bursts you get, I managed to unpack and clear out several of the boxes that have been bothering me, line up my cookbooks, sit on my couch, in my newly carpeted and painted loungeroom and think about cooking. So I think we are getting there. Today I even took him for a walk in the pusher. This means I did not spend an hour unpacking, and that is something, too. Walks are much better for everybody, aren't they?

I have even made some head-space for blogging. Be ready for some great, cheap cooking, gardening and spending anecdotes once again, as I/we re-focus on our life and asses the aftermath of the move and renovation...... In the meantime, I hope the happy snaps justify my absence over the past month.

the surprise

The house has consumed our lives. Poor G has been with Nanna and Grandad non-stop for the past four days. He is fine there, and well occupied and adored, but he's a bit lost. He clings and grizzles all the way home, all through dinner and struggles to go to bed. It's going to take a bit for him to recover from this experience. And then he'll have to move into a new house!

The baker and I wake up energised, full of plans and strategies. We get to the house and wander in circles, attending to bits and pieces. People come by, we stop and give them a tour, explain what's happening. By then it's about 4pm, time to collect the baby boy and wind up for the day again. I feel like we are getting nothing done. It's very frustrating.

But so much has happened!

We had a lot of little jobs to attend to preparing the walls for painting. We set to pulling off the faux wooden panels that lined the walls. Reveal lines of ancient glue needing to be scraped off with a blade or removed with solvent. Reveal a huge gap between concrete panels on the feature lounge wall. Gap filler, metal strip, leave it?

That was sidelined when we found the carpet rotten in front of the bathroom and along the wall in the little bedroom, meaning that the shower may be leaking. Huge issue, since we are putting down all new floor coverings and do not want them ruined by damaged plumbing. Investigate that. No real solution yet, but much discussion about ripping out the shower and putting in the bath. Back to the panels. Reveal sticky 70's wallpaper lining the kitchen walls. Steamer and scraper needed. Reveal a hidden door in the loungeroom wall.

Well, this was something we wanted to do later on- put a doorway through the kitchen to the lounge. But look! It's here already! However, on the other side of the door our kitchen bench and wall cupboards cover it. They are attached to the wall. Do we demolish the kitchen and utilise the doorway? How can we live without a kitchen? Why would we not use the doorway when we wanted it anyway?

So the kitchen is ripped from the wall and the termite riddled door smashed through. Wow. But oh, wow, you know? Suddenly we are in the middle of a renovation. One we were not going to do. In fact the discussions have been all about a kitchen and bathroom renovation. The two most expensive and time consuming things to do in a house! Money and time we do not have. We have time for paint and carpet.

The simplest ideas have snowballed and we are having to decide and react quickly in circumstances completely new to us. On a deadline. Thank goodness for those family members who have shown up with their reno experience and skills. This week I have realised how good it is to know useful people, and how many useless people there are in the world. Including the 'customer advisors' at Bunnings.

So where are we after three days? It's amazing, really. The bedrooms have been washed, holes patched, and two of the three ceilings painted. Tomorrow I am going to finish the bedrooms. And wash the hall. And prepare the doors, maybe. That's half the house done.

The baker has fixed the ceiling, scraped the glue. His Mum painstakingly removed the wallpaper, so tomorrow he'll be fixing the gap in the lounge and set about washing the ceilings and priming the walls to paint. I think. He may have other plans.

We must call the carpet guys and demand 10% off the quote they gave us. We must call the laminte guy and have him back to re-measure, since the kitchen has gained another couple of metres of floor space. We must find a plumber to confirm where our leak is. I have to call the water people and the council.

Oh, and tomorrow our current house is open for inspection....