Renovating with kids

Its been three months of renovating the cottage. Unfortunately between kids, work and other commitments its been a long slow process that's still going.
The old tiles on the floor have been removed and the paint and tile adhesive ground back and that is a job I never wish to do again. The dust created by the concrete grinder was beyond anything I ever imagined and literally coated every surface in the house and got into every tiny crack or hole, even into closed cupboards!
With that prep behind us now we have started laying the tiles.
In my head I had always dreamed of rustic slate floors, so that's what I naively brought. 100 square meters of ungauged, light rich indian slate in flagstone. So we received 100 square meters of very rough cut, dusty, flaky slate in four different sizes, square, big rectangle, long thin rectangle and small rectangle. The first challenge was coming up with a pattern to lay these tiles down in, then there was cleaning the dust off and removing the very flaky pieces, then sorting them into sizes as some were 10mm shorter or longer than they were supposed to be, then checking the tile thickness which varied from 3mm to 13mm. I'm still working on that job!
Finally we got our first twenty tiles laid down and they are beautiful. Even more so because of the hard work it has taken to put them down. Neither my husband and I are professional tile layers or know anyone who is, all our knowledge came from good ole Google and YouTube, but even with kids we are managing to renovate our own little cottage.

TOP TIPS FOR RENOVATING WITH KIDS

- Don't do it! If you can renovate before you have kids then do it. It will make the process much easier and less stressful.
- Secure play area. Make sure the kids have a secure play area to play in while you work. Our kids are playing in the shed and my oldest one rides his bike around the cottage. Because the shed door has to stay open I'm constantly chasing after my eighteen month old as he tries to eat my succulents and get into the pond.
- Ask for help. Enlist aid wherever possible, ask grandparents and friends to babysit, enrol your kids in occasional care (I've done this with my youngest during the week so I can get three hours of uninterrupted work done).
- Finger food. Have plenty of snacks that the kids can help themselves to, when their eating their quiet.
- Be realistic. Have a goal in mind of how much work you want to achieve that day and expect to only get half of it done. With kids comes many interuptions.
- Naptimes. Plan to get really hard messy work done during naptimes. My youngest has a portacot set up in the back of the shed so we can put him down there for a nap and expect at least one and a half hours of peace.
- Let them help. Give the kids a job and they will feel part of the team. My 4 year old loves helping me dust the tiles and because he is doing it my youngest will often grab a brush as well.
- Make time for play. Don't forget to take some time to play with the kids as well, if they are happy you'll be happier too.

If I think of anything else I'll add it to the list.

While renovating with kids is a lot of trouble it is very rewarding to do the work ourselves.



The first orchard is almost full!

I read on a forum the other week that you can fill your chicken run with fruit trees and since our chicken run is the only placed fenced in from rabbits I thought it the perfect place to start an orchard.
So over the past two weeks we have gratefully received three plums from Greg's grandmother and planted those, as well as a lemon we had in pot for over a year.
The biggest challenge of all was moving our dwarf golden delicious and only time will tell if it survives being dug out, transported along a freeway and replanted at Lara.

The Dwarf Golden Delicious, planted with horse manure, watered with worm tea and mulched with hay. Fingers crossed. I planted strawberries around the edge and a borage for extra nitrogen fixing.

 A small plum, this one is starting to shoot all ready.

 

 

Another plum, this one is larger and is shooting as well. For mulch I used what was one hand at the property, some dried grasses. Its working well and keeping the water in, which is great since I'm not there everyday to water them.

Native Garden and honeybees

There are all ready a few natives growing in the garden around the house and the little fairy wrens love them. Will be planting more as soon as we move in. The renovations are getting along slowly. Sunday is the only day Greg and I can work on the place together and with the two boys along it sometimes seems to take three times as long to do things as simple as sanding.

 

Below is a picture of our beehive. I had to google whether bees actually do have bee hives underground and yes they do! This one is out front under a big gum tree and next to a wattle that is almost always humming. Too bad it might be a bit difficult to get honey out of this hive.

A pirate chest

 

A great find in the front garden was this old luggage truck. What a great pirate treasure chest this will be.
The captain and only a few of his crew have survived a shipwreck on the bay, they loaded up all the treasure that got washed up on shore into this trunk and carried it for days and days until one day they stepped foot onto RoseView and the story begins...
Now to find some pirate coins to fill the trunk and maybe even a treasure map.

Putty time!

My husband is a perfectionist and so he loves putty. Filling every crack and hole in walls to make a smooth surface is not my idea of fun but I must admit I did enjoy helping putty the walls and there were a lot of holes to putty. Two major ones on the living room that required plasterboard and about a hundred pin holes in the boys room.

Almost cleaned

A week later and I'm almost finished cleaning. Just need to clean the walls of the laundry, hallway and the wardrobes in the bedrooms. The house is all ready beginning to look so much better. As I have been cleaning I have felt like I'm bonding with the cottage, as silly as that sounds. This will be our home for a long time, the place my boys will dream in, the place they will play in, the place they will look back on when they are no longer scared of the monsters under the bed or look for fairies in the kitchen. And most important of all, this will be the place they will eat copious amounts of food in. 😃

Glasses slipped

Well I admit that my glasses were a bit cloudy yesterday after the final inspection. The tenants had left an old 4wd out the back, including miscellaneous car parts and broken windshield glass scattered across the back yard. The shed was full to the brim of their stuff and the house was not what I would classify as clean.
As the sun set we found an area of our property where we can see the mountain top of the you yangs. As this was a major drawcard for us to the area I was pleasantly pleased, not so pleased with the twenty rabbits that ran away as we walked about the property. There is a major rabbit warren on the back south corner which is obviously going to require a bit of work to eradicate.
Pushing rose coloured glasses firmly in place because their starting to slip all ready.
Here are a couple of photos I took today of the cottage after I finished cleaning the dining and lounge area.

The beginning is about to start

Tomorrow is the big day. The tenants are out and the start of year's of hard work begins. The plan for RoseView is drawn, all my big ideas are jotted down and my rose coloured glasses are firmly in place. I'm looking forward to cleaning out the cottage, giving it a new coat of paint and moving us all into a new life of simple country living.