It could have been worse...

About 7 weeks ago I became aware of a terrible smell in my office, which back on to the chimney. Basically it started to small horribly of creosote and I couldn't work in there (for 2 days as it ended up). So we let the fire go out (not fun when it's winter and less than 10 degrees during the day and in the 0 territory at night) and then got a chimney sweep out to do the chimney, thinking maybe it was blocked / dirty.

Only to find that the sweep doesn't actually sweep chimneys! "You'll have to do it yourself" he says. WTF?! Talk about false advertising - even after I clearly explained the situation and what I wanted on the phone. My favourite bit was when he said that he couldn't clean a real chimney because it was square and the brushes were round. Come on - has anyone actually ever fallen for that line?

Anyway, I've just about let it go, as you can see :-)

Next step was to get up on the roof to see if we could see anything obvious down the chimney - but we couldn't. So it was time for more drastic measures - and Jerry and friend pulled the fireplace out of the wall. This is what we found.

It seems the fireplace hadn't been properly set in the space, and with no flue the ash, debris and rain has been falling behind for 20+ years and had completely rusted the outer skin of the fireplace. We suspect some of this material caught fire and that caused the smell and us finding the problem. Phew! It really could have been much worse.

So the downside is that there's no fire. The very bright side is that I now had the excuse to do what I've always wanted to do - take the fireplace out, remove the wall and replace it with a freestanding stove with a cooktop! Yipeeeee  (although obviously very bad for the bank account!).

Lily tried hard to make the best of it in the few weeks before all this happened "think warm thoughts, think warm thoughts, there IS a fire"

Fortunately wall and chimney removal went well thanks to lots of hard work from Jerry and Dave. Although it was very, VERY dusty.

The roof has been patched, and the gaps filled in with new pine boards, that rather stand out, will should weather down and blend in over the next year or so.

Now to decide on a hearth covering. We've pretty much settled on the Lopi Endeavour as the new fireplace, although it won't be installed and ready to use until next winter. We're hoping for sales in the next few months to take a bit off the price tag!

Even better, Jerry managed to sell the old fireplace on ebay, which just about paid for the skip hire for the bricks.

It's finished!!

Hurrah hurrah! Today the electrician came and installed the powerpoint for the chest freezer, anf the light switches for the cupboards, so the pantry renovation is finally finished ... and just in time for the arrival of my nephews and brother and sister-in-law from the UK tomorrow.

 

 

Oh and while the electrician was here he also installed a new ceiling fan in the living room, and moved the old one form there to my office, and replaced our ceramic and wire fuses with something a LOT more modern - hey we even have safety cut-outs now!  How very 20th century!

Pantry Update

Handles on - check
Anti-mouse door roller things on the bottom of the doors to fill in the gap - check
Shelves stacked - check

Huston we are go for launch  :*)

 

  

  

Next week the electrician is coming back to fit a power point for the chest freezer, and put in the light switch for the pantry lights.

I'll leave you with a picture of one of last weeks "dinner baskets" from the garden

 

Quick laundry/pantry renovation update

Top L is the "canning cupboard", R is he main pantry, and bottom is the space for the chest freezer(s) and space for assorted other storage.

The new pantry is taking shape

This morning there was a lot of measuring, and dragging out all my kitchen gear to work out shelf spacing. I think Dave is actually a bit frightened by all my kitchen bits and pieces. He was certainly looking at me a bit strangely after the first 15 mins. LOL. However it will be great to have proper shelves to store the canner, dehydrator and fowlers unit as well as places to put the flour bins.

The "canning cupboard" (left pic) will store all the canning and preserving bits and pieces, as well as most of the empty jars (and probably some full ones in peak canning season). On the right will be the double-door pantry (with a wall down the middle so I can squeeze in a few more shelves!) which will store everyday food supplies, as well as jams, chutneys and more canned items. There will be a mix of full and half width shelves, to make the most of the space (this will make more sense when you see a pic)

Tomorrow it's insulation, plasterboard, and more shelf batons........

Laundry renovation update

Work resumed today on the great wardrobe-to-pantry conversion. Demo has been completed, and Dave's started framing up. We now have a wall in the bedroom. It's weird to see proper framing and boarding in this house. I'm getting excited about actually having something to paint!!

The bedroom wall will be insulated before the plasterboard goes up.

Dave has also filled in all the air gaps which will help keep critters out as well as too hot or too cold breezes!

Tomorrow - more framing and shelving!!!!!!!!!!!

It's all happening at M & J's this week

Phew!  It's all happening here at the moment! Today I

• made brambleberry cordial - cheated by using the steam juicer to make the juice. MUCH easier than fiddling with muslin bags etc, and the chickens are overjoyed with the leftover berry pulp

• made cherry chutney - it's SO tedious pitting 2kg of cherries - but when it's $8 for 2kg of seconds you need to just do it :)
• finished making the raspberry vinegar
• made rapsberry jam (Jerry picked 900g yesterday! it's a bumper berry year)
• sorted my garlic and hung the good cloves in bunches to dry further. The ones that won't keep we will eat first
• made a jar of pickled garlic

Doesn't look like much, but that took care of 5 hours this morning.

Meanwhile the great pantry renovation started this week. We're extending our laundry/pantry/utility room into where Jerry's wardrobes are to give us more food (and general) storage space, as well as space for a bigger chest freezer, given that we now buy almost all our meat in bulk. The first stage meant moving ALL Jerry's clothes, and all the food and jars from the pantry out of their respective homes. That took us from this:

to this:

Of course, all the bottles and jars of stuff had to go somewhere...so my new pantry is now down the other end of the house. It's going to be a bit chaotic for a few weeks until it all gets done, but it will mean so much more storage. Most of Jerry's clothes are now in either "my" wardrobe, or in a temporary wardrobe.

Luckily our guests between Xmas and New Year spent about 6 months living out of a trailer-tent whilst touring Australia, so I'm hoping this means they won't feel too claustrophobic with all this clutter at "their" end of the house!

A Satisfying Saturday

Our bedroom is unusually large - mostly because half of it used to be a garage before the original owners extended the house. We're often felt that it's a bit of a waste of space and at various times have had grand plans to put in an en suite ... until we realised the cost and permits involved and that went into the "too hard / too expensive" basket.

Jerry's wardrobes (to the left of the bed in the pic) back onto the laundry/pantry room, and the latest idea was to knock through there, and make one big pantry, and then put up the partition in the bedroom and have a walk-in wardrobe and a smaller bedroom. As yesterday was a gloomy rainy and windy day we decided to move the bedroom furniture around and see how the room would feel if we made the changes. After a few hours of moving and thinking we decided we didn't like it much...we're used to the open feel and the space and the lovely view out the window...which we would sacrifice if we made the change. So we're working on a revised plan now that just involves making a smaller pantry and re-arranging wardrobe space to make it more efficient so we can lose 2 'panels' of wardrobe.

The upside is that the whole room has had a thorough spring clean, and we moved the chest of draws and chest around to make a bit of a change. Take a good look, it will probably never be this clean and tidy again!  LOL

But that wasn't enough cleaning for me, so I also attacked the stovetop. I'm still amazed how effective bicarb and a spray of vinegar is at cleaning the stovetop - it's much better than commercial cleaners, and even more effective than the home-made cleaner I was using.

After all that hard work, the reward had to be a glass or two of local red wine and a home made pizza, with

• chilli BBQ sauce
• ham
• pineapple
• mushroom
• roasted red pepper
• basil
• home made goats fetta

And yes, it did taste as good as it looked!

Laundry mini-renovation

It was finally time to move things around a bit in the laundry (turn the sink, move the washing machine to another wall, build some shelves). Lucky we have a handy friend Dave to help with this kid of project!

First was turning the sink, ripping down the old 'splashback', relocating the taps for the washing machine, and making a new ply splashback (which will have 3 or 4 coats of marine varnish for waterproofing)

And voila! A couple of days later and here's the new shelving system. I've now been able to move the cheese fridge (wine fridge bough at a garage sale for $25!) out of the guest bathroom :). I have loads more shelf space to play with, and it's a much better use of the space. We're hoping the new splashback will also seal off some of the more drafty areas of mud brick too.