Pic of the day August 31, 2006

Pic of the day August 30, 2006

It's hard to tell due to my crap photography skills but this man is waaaaay too old for tiger face paint.

Pic of the day August 29, 2006

Pic of the day August 28, 2006

Pic of the day August 27, 2006

Pic of the day August 26, 2006

Pic of the day August 25, 2006

Pic of the day August 24, 2006

Pic of the day August 23, 2006

New House Continued

So, ever since the day we picked up the keys we’ve spent pretty much every night, sometimes as late as eleven, working on the place. The carpet was shocking and the paint scheme garish so we knew immediately we’d have to redo the floors and repaint.

Within the two hours I had the carpet up and out. I found this an exceptionally encouraging pace. Two hours later I had the old yellow linoleum up and out. Again, I was envisioning the whole place done, floors polished and gleaming walls painted and calling out for art in a matter of days. Beneath the lino was chipboard tacked to the old hardwood boards, our first sign of trouble. It took three of us another two full evenings to literally shovel this ornery stuff up leaving thousands of rusty nails. These cost us another three nights, spent on hands and knees pulling each and every one out by hand, hammer and pry-bar. We’re still snagging socks on the odd tack in the middle of the night walk to the toilet.

So here we are five weeks later, finally ready to get the floors polished. It is going to take the week and we’ll have to move in with the in-laws for a couple of days once the sanding is finished and the noxious varnish is applied. At the moment, the gas has been turned off so that the stove could be removed to get at the floor beneath. No gas means no heat, no cooking and NO HOT WATER! So this morning I brewed coffee on the camp stove and boiled water for the gravity-driven camp shower. Basically it’s like camping without the bugs and sleeping bags.

Roughing it aside, we are extremely excited by the early stages of sanding. As we pulled up, cleaned, cut and replaced nearly every floor in the house we have gained an intimate knowledge of each and every floor board and it is exciting to watch as the old grime, paint, putty and varnish is stripped away revealing the nature and texture of the Baltic pine’s grain beneath.

Pic of the day August 20, 2006

Pic of the day August 19, 2006

Pic of the day August 18, 2006

New Home

Tonight is our first official day in the new house. Unofficially, we rolled out of bed here this morning after staggering home from a house warming party at our friends’ (Lucy and Darren) house down the street who, coincidentally, moved into their first house the same weekend. Tonight we turned in the keys at our rental house, packed up the cat and began unpacking (sort of) here at Younger Street.

These last few months have passed so quickly and at such a blur it seems amazing that we’ve actually arrived at this day in one piece. It was well over a year ago that we began looking, dedicating every Saturday morning (and many Thursday evenings) to scouring the paper for open houses and burned many litres of petrol rushing around from one disaster to another. We would get excited about this place or that only to have our hopes dashed, rightfully so, by Mauzi’s dad, a builder by trade. Sometimes he didn’t even go inside. Just one look at the gaping holes in the roof and the sagging foundation and you could read his body-language from a block away: his arms would cross tight against his chest, his head would bow to the ground, shaking left and right. With a loud, long, “Phew!” he’d turn on one heel and march off to the car.

Occasionally we did find a house that would get the nod of approval. Very early on we were cheated out of an amazing but neglected Art Deco house with huge potential. (You soon figure out which companies are out there to sell houses and who’s out just for the buck). This experience left Mauzi quite devastated and depressed and I felt gutted. We still look away when we drive past that house and hurl verbal abuse when we pass by Nelson Alexander Realty offices.

And so it went. We were lured to auction after auction (nearly all houses go to auction here) our high hopes, spurned on by a low list price, dashed by high sale price. At times, houses pulled nearly $100K more than they were listed for. $100,000!!! The market in our areas is tight and so many young buyers are all vying for the same starter prices. We were so discouraged that we began contemplating throwing in the whole house idea for an apartment.

Then this house came along around Easter weekend which gave us some time to think and get organised. It seemed perfect for us. The sellers wanted to deal with buyers privately rather than by auction which is where we were getting killed. Built just post WWI for returning servicemen, the house was surprisingly sound structurally but in need of some serious redecoration and reorganization. Mostly it needed some tender love and care.

To cut a long and stressful story short, (negotiations, settlement, loan choices, interest rate rises, stamp duties, inspections, etc.) we bought the house and here we are.

To be continued…

9 Younger St
Coburg, VIC
3058 Australia

Pic of the day August 16, 2006

Had a battle with a window today and lost.

Pic of the day August 15, 2006

Pic of the day August 14, 2006

Pic of the day August 13, 2006

One of the first things that amazed me in AU
was seeing all the exotic birds out of their cages!

Pic of the day August 12, 2006

Phascolarctos cinereus

Pic of the day August 11, 2006

Pic of the day August 10, 2006

Melbourne's "balloon man".
I swear, I don't think I've ever seen this man smile...

Would you trust him with your children?

Pic of the day August 9, 2006

Pic of the day August 8, 2006

Pic of the day August 7, 2006

What you gon' do with all that junk?
All that junk inside your trunk?
I'ma get, get, get, get, you drunk,
Get you love drunk off my hump.
My hump, my hump, my hump,
my hump, my hump,

My hump, my hump, my hump,
my lovely little lumps.
(Check it out)

Pic of the day August 6, 2006

Pic of the day August 5, 2006

Don't know why I Like this...

Powerless

A very strange night…Mauz, her sister and I are sitting in the lounge room drinking vodka tonics next to the fire by candlelight. It seems that when I called the electricity company to switch the power on in the new house, I scheduled the turnoff at the old rental, in which we are now drinking the cold away, for today. Needless to say, due to all the renovations, working after school each night till late, trying to pack…we haven’t moved out of the rental, our time is up and I forgot to extend our account.

So, here we sit in the dark. The place reeks of burnt hair due to the cat learning that curiosity and candles don’t mix (thank goodness for a thick winter coat-not so thick now) and we’re trying to laugh about it all.

So, how soon before you can begin to laugh about a major fuck-up?

Hours? Months? Years? Decades?

Tonight I think we’ll count in cocktails.

Pic of the day August 3, 2006

Pic of the day August 2, 2006

Pic of the day August 1, 2006

One more month of Winter,
but it's looking more like Spring every day.

Pic of the day July 31, 2006

Pic of the day July 30, 2006