Under The House

This weekend was spent cleaning under the house. It had become a dumping ground for years of hoarding and broken appliances. It was also a source of odour that was wafting up the stairs, so it had to be dealt with. Here are the before photos. This is looking down from the stairs





And this is the laundry area to the right



This is looking back from the laundry area towards the garage





And here is the area to the right of the garage door.





This is looking back at the staircase



This is the carport outside. We had already moved a bit of stuff out of here.



These are the after photos. Looking at the stairs:



There was a really grotty couch in front of the little door which we couldn't even see. I suspect that was one of the main smelly culprits.

Looking from the stairs:



Looking back towards the laundry from the garage door:



We stacked all of his stuff better and threw a lot of empty boxes, which made a lot more space. Here is his stuff all packed up:



And the carport now:



All that stuff on the floor are tools that will be sorted and packed away. This is the area to the left of the garage door:



This took us a full days work. We were very exhausted and had a well deserved afternoon off! Here is the stuff that was discarded from downstairs:



We sorted it into piles: general waste, steel, cardboard and wood. Luckily we are borrowing a very large trailer from a friend. So two general waste and one steel load later the piles look like this:



This work was well worth it. Now it smells less (we think) and there is room for some of his furniture from upstairs that we won't be using and there is a place for all of OHs tools. Not sure what next weeks job will be, it will either be moving our stuff or finishing off some small things in the house.

Outdoorsy Weekend

Last weekend we did a proper amount of work outside for the first time. OH whipper snipped the whole yard which opened up a lot of areas that we haven't even seen before. Here is before:





And here is after:





OH's arborist mate came around again to help out, he is such a helpful guy to have around. They cleared the area around the water tank, including a large wattle which had half fallen over and a mess of lantana growing over the powerline. Here is an after photo:



Whilst cleaning around the tank, OH found out that there is only a very small amount of water in the tank. Upon further investigation, the gutters were full of leaves. They cleaned out the gutters just before it rained a large amount. We also discovered that the pipe that is visible coming up from the ground isn't connected to anything, which means half the water off the roof isn't going in the tank. Oh will check it out this week and hopefully it is an easy fix. While they were doing this on Saturday, I was cleaning the pantry and the fridge in the kitchen. The fridge now looks brand new and I feel better about putting food in it. The pantry looked like this before:





And now it looks like this:





A lot of it was expired, so in the bin it went. On Sunday I spent the whole day painting the kitchen, which now looks like this:





It looks much brighter and cleaner than it did before. In terms of the work we were intending to do, the kitchen and the main bedroom are almost done. OH also painted a coat of white on the handrail in the hallway. This is what it looked like before:



And this is what it looks like now:



It makes the area feel much nicer. Next weekends job is to tackle the downstairs so we can start putting some of our stuff in too. It smells strongly of dog down there so it will be interesting to see how it goes. I hope its an easy job, because the house smells much better just after a bit of cleaning. Now for a restful week (not) of packing up our current place!

It will be all worth it in the end!

Kitchen Cleaning Weekend

To start off the weekend, I spent Saturday morning at my parents to celebrate my Mums birthday. Because I still work in Brisbane I will be staying there during the week while OH lives up at the sunshine coast. In order to still have a garden I planted one into a free bed next to the driveway. It gets a good amount of sun and it is visible so I don’t think I can neglect it too much. This is what it looked like before:

It is almost totally clay, and as our current house is sandy loam it will be a different experience trying to grow something in it. I hope it will be successful. Here is a photo of it all planted out and ready to go:

My grandma helped out too and I think it will be a bit of a joint garden, she can water when I am up the coast and I can do all the digging and planting. It was a nice morning spent with her.

After I finished the bed I headed straight up the coast to get moving on the house. This weekend’s mission for me was the kitchen so at least we can keep and prepare food for ourselves. It took me two days of cleaning and clearing out the owners stuff. I put most of it into boxes to be taken away and had to clean all the surfaces. I had some help on Saturday which was much appreciated and made the day go by a lot quicker. Here is a before photo:

And here is after:

It is a functional space and I think it will suit our needs very well. While I was doing the kitchen, OH was busy in the rest of the house. He took a trailer load of green waste to the dump and also a trailer and ute load of general waste. There was a lot of crap that had been lying around outside for a long time that just had to go. He also cleaned the main bedroom so we can start to stay there this week. Because he did such a good job OH and his mum cracked on with painting the room too. The room feels very clean and bright, very different to before. The room smells like paint instead of dog which is a good change. Here are some before and during photos:

This weekends mission is more painting and clearing out of stuff so we can live there. I haven’t finished the pantry in the kitchen and now the lounge room is full of kitchen boxes. I also have to start getting our current house ready for the move, which will be hard as OH is living up the coast already. What a crazy month and there are still more to come. More updates coming soon. 

Show Day Holiday

Show day holiday was the day that we were able to start working on the house that we will be living in for 10 months. Luckily it was a public holiday so we got up bright and early to get started on the big task ahead.

With a bit of help from OH’s friend (who is an arborist) they managed to get the driveway clear. It makes a huge difference to the front of the property just from one day of work. Now the back of the property is accessible by car (and more importantly, trailer). Here are before and after photos:

While they were working on that, I cleaned the loungeroom. Here is a before photo:

And here is after:

The house is extremely cluttered and drives home the importance of minimalism in our lives. Because we are trying to achieve a more minimalist life we were able to take this opportunity and move house quickly because we don’t have too much stuff. The room is really bright and open and a nice place to be. Once we have some of our furniture in it will definitely feel like a welcoming home. 

Garden Update

As we wind down from the depths of winter, we are starting to have enough greens to eat and freeze. We planted a lot of lettuce, kale, silverbeet and coriander to fill some of the gaps. In this way we had a larger yield for the same space. Some examples of this were planting coriander between lettuce rows, and radishes in amongst the slower growing cauliflowers. This has turned out really well for us both in yield and weed reduction.

Another planting method that we tried was planting shorter plants in front of the larger ones facing north. This really helped too because we had a few stunted cabbages from the beginning of winter that fell in the shade of the broccoli.

So the garden isn’t going so bad, and I will post again about the produce we are able to freeze to use for later. Here is a photo of OH’s mum’s garden overlooking the valley. It’ll be nice to be moving up there and enjoying the beautiful hinterland. 

Blogging break (again!) and quick update

There has been a lot going on in our lives in the past few weeks. As a result, I haven’t had much of a chance to write here. So here I am catching up!

We have been given the opportunity to move up to Montville (around the corner from OH’s mum) to house sit for 10 months. The house is a bit neglected and the guy is a bit of a hoarder (and not much of a cleaner), so there has been a lot going on there. More on this soon. It is a very nice house so it’ll be really stunning when the work is complete. There are two dogs, a cat and two budgies to look after so it’ll be good to hang out with some dogs for a few months. We will be living there rent free in exchange for the work that we will be doing on the house.

As a result of all the running around, the garden has been a bit ignored but is powering on as ever. Because of the impending move I have started to freeze some of the greens so they don’t go to waste. The plan this week is to get the rest of the coriander, kale and maybe some silverbeet into the freezer. I will put some more posts up on this soon too.

I will post some more this week, so I can catch up with all the happenings. Have a great week! Here is some happy puppies to put a smile on your dial!