Part of the reason I haven't written anything on Hive for the last few days is that I have both not much to write about, and too much to write about. For five months we've been consumed with buying a new house and selling our old one, which is a massive emotional investment as well as a financial one. We never thought we could afford to move to our dream coastal town (or at least one of them, as we'd also have a house in Portugal and North Devon and Tasmania, if we were bazillionaires) yet somehow a combination of good luck and good timing (which are probably not mutually exclusive) meant that here we are, all settled in by Christmas.
It's also been a physical feat - five months of packing up, cleaning, and renovating. So let's start with that - many of you might recall the beginnings of our journey and have asked to share where we are at now.
The Ikea kitchen is almost complete - really, it's only the rest of the surrounds of the wall cabinets and the splashback that needs doing. The benchtops turned out great, despite being 'utility' grade - sanding and hard wax oil had them turn out pretty nicely for only $500 (with some left over for the bathroom). I love it. Oh, we'll also be putting a window to the north above the sink, but that'll be later next year. I'm so glad I chose the brown beige too, even though it's a small space.
Doing the kitchen ourselves took ages but probably saved us 20k. It works better than imagined. In the below photo you can see the beam still needs wrapping - we have done one side, which I'll show you in a second.
We have decided against a dining table, though we might get a gateleg one from IKEA we can drag from the spare room. There's just not enough space for a big table and eating round the breakfast bar is fine.
Most of the time we'd be entertaining outside anyway, or making meals that mean people choose from the 'bar' and eat in the lounge area. All good. We've thought about a lot of things we'll do differently at this place, such as not having a television. Certainly having family around for celebratory prosecco and a spread worked well when everything settled on the 19th! Far too much actually - I was too hungover to Hive.
Looking toward the lounge from the kitchen, if you see the lighter brown couch, we'll eventually cut out the plaster into the old chimney to recess a wood oven. But that's not til next winter. Things are cooler and warmer now as we have new Colourbond corrugated iron on the roof in Dover White which will keep things cool, plus insulation bats. We're already noticing the difference.
In the next photo you can see the 'half wrapped' beam - Jamie was putting up some wooden chocks to have the pine go further out into the space and it came loose in the drill and smashed himself in the nose, resulting in blood everywhere. Meanwhile I'd dropped a brick on my shin (don't ask) and dropped a guitar case on my toe, so we were really getting totally over everything. Anyway we went with pine as we couldn't find anything else that was five metres long, but we think it fits the look anyway. Oh don't forget to admire our pine floors again in the comments.
This photo on the left is looking from the kitchen down the hallway into the spare room. Note we still have the vintage lights. My son called it a 'lovely visage'. And on the right, is looking from the entrance to the spare room back.
Not everything is pretty though - across from the kitchen, we still haven't built the cupboards for our small laundry, and we're hoping hte plumber can fit us in soon otherwise I'll be at Mum's doing washing all Christmas. Sigh.
On the left, my tiny room, and on the right, Jamie's. A bit of a mess. They're small rooms but you only need to sleep in them. Yes, the light is hanging from the ceiling. There's still work to be done.
In fact, there's a lot not done - we're currently working on a new benchtop and sink in the bathroom, putting in fans, and it'll need to be repainted. We really didn't want to spend 10 k at least on a bathroom reno and have more mess to deal with. This will be fine until we come into money - I'll put together a post on the bathroom renos soon. In Australia most people have two bathrooms so it's wierd only having one toilet, but we'll get used to it.
A quick reminder of where we came from when we first bought the place - here the builders are pulling down the laundry walls and the kitchen walls, and the window to the west is being taken out and replaced with a wall. Note the orange vinyl coated floor and the tilees in the old kitchen. I don't think everyone would have had our vision that's for sure! WE are quite proud of ourselves.
Back to the good news - apart from the fact we sold the house for what we wanted for it and settlement was before Christmas. I've just been to the bank and paid Mum back what we owed her for helping us buy the place until we sold the last one, and discharged the mortgage we had to get to buy this place before the house sold. We are now again mortgage free, plus we've got savings to last a year and we've covered the renovations so far, including solar panels come March.
To say I'm happy right now is just an understatement. We're not rich, but we're not poor right now either, and we're debt free AND have a house where we wanted. We've worked hard for it, sure, but I also feel super privileged that my Mum could help us out buying the place due to Dad's payout money getting mesothelioma. He may not be around to see where his money went, but I sure as hell wouldn't have got where I am right now without that awful tragedy. Wierd feeling.
Oh one last thing - I got Chat GPT to mock up some tiles. I'd subbed to Chat GPT for a month so Jamie could use it to write his school reports (one definite useful application of Chatty, that's for sure) and the sub makes for some better results, such as generating a mock up image of our kitchen with moroccan Zellige tiles, which after being to the bank today, we might even be able to afford.
I'm not sure I'll be writing another post before Christmas - Jamie's pulling me away from the laptop as I try to finish this, darnit, but I certainly have a lot to write about - not just the reno, but other things I've wanted to chat about. We'll see. Whatever happens, hope you all have a lovely Christmas.
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