Post 9: Progress happens

This photo was taken from our new deck. On the right you can see our camper-trailer, which we stayed in for the last couple of weeks of our summer stay. The power lines are one of those things you just have to look past – if you focus on them, you miss the beauty of everything else (and there’s my deep-and-meaningful message for you today). The “everything else” isn’t fully captured in this photo – the horizon goes on and on, and the evening sky is always huge and magnificent.

I thought this post would be up and published weeks ago, because optimism is knitted into the fabric of my bones. Yeah, nah. I admire those people who can carry a go-pro around with them, recording their progress. I was busy doing two different things during January, from day’s start to day’s end: building work, and work work. A lot of the latter was done from a camp chair and card table, battling semester planning with intermittent interruptions to do things like holding up bits of ceiling.

Updating the blog didn’t get to the top of the to-do list till now. During that time, three months have passed and I’ve had a return trip to Victoria and didn’t even go to the cottage. But we did get a lot done while we were there:

Specifically:

• Insulation (glass wool) in all wall and ceiling cavities.
• Plaster on all un-plastered walls.
• Repaired walls and ceiling, and fully re-painted, the old bedroom. Which then turned into the store-room so the lounge-room could be done, so will need another coat before the new carpet eventually goes down. Deep sigh.
• Board-and-lath ceiling in the new bedroom, installed and painted (ohmygosh, the painting and sanding and painting…that went on for Such A Long Time…).
• Tongue-and-groove ceiling in the new sunroom.
• Another clear coat on the sunroom’s exterior window/door frames
• Levelling compound on the drastically uneven concrete floor.
• Ordered floor coverings.

There were probably other things I’ve forgotten. Oh, such as, the electrician came out and moved the wiring for the lounge-room light fittings up to the gable. We’re going to leave the timber framing in place and drop the lights down to hang just below these.

I’m a bit desperate to get back and close it all in before mice set up home in the insulation, but there are just not enough hours in the day or days in the week. I really hope we don’t have to re-do a whole lot of what we achieved in January. Current plans are to return in mid-May. Fingers tightly crossed and going a bit blue with the effort.