Rain stopped play

A showery week prevented us from putting another coat on the fence. But we did get the garage tidy enough to put the car safely off the street before heading to Tas. Scheduled on our return: fitting of blinds, rendering of the wall, and building of a new deck.

Fenced off and walled in

Fencing continues on Friday and the following Monday. In between we reduce the height of the wall between us and the house behind by knocking off four courses of bricks.
Then a pause in proceedings before a big day last Friday. Brickie comes and closes the gap between us and the other building site, fencers came to cut the fence on the other side to the prescribed height.And a nice man from Uretek comes to inspect the side wall of our Little O'Grady street property which is also the boundary of the garden, and gives us the good news that although the wall is leaning a bit, there is no risk of it falling down and we don't need to worry.
Sunday we paint the fence - fortunately before the massive storms that came through on Sunday night. Waiting for the weather to settle so we can put a second coat on.
Progressive pictures:

Fencing continues

Fencers returned on Wednesday with a skip, and used their digger to remove all the grass and weeds and some of the topsoil from next door's garden beds. Neighbour worked with them to clear rubbish until they had filled their skip. Garden not yet totally clean but an unbelievably great improvement on the jungle it was a few days ago.

Thursday, the actual fencing restarted, after about a week's break while work was done on the neighbour's side. Here's what the retaining wall half of the fence looks like...

... and note how tidy next door's garden looks.

All over by Christmas?

No, not World War 1, but the final stages of the renos.
Today we put up the last pictures. A number of them have moved from their previous locations, and we are enjoying being surprised to see them somewhere new. The last light fitting went up, so the pictures are also all suitably illuminated.
Peter has been doing some artwork around the edges of our floor tiles where there were some bits of bare concrete, and although the colour match isn't perfect, it looks good.
After further consideration, blinds have been ordered for all the windows, and we hope they will arrive and be fitted before we head off to Tas at the end of October.

We finally selected a fencing contractor who started this week on the replacement of the fence on our south-west side. An issue for this project was the presence of built up vegetable gardens and very large, very old fruit trees close to the fence on our neighbour's property, which were the principal cause of the collapse of the old fence, and a potential danger to any new one. Somewhat to our surprise, rather than being concerned about the impact on the trees/garden, the neighbour is taking advantage of the absence of a fence and the access through our other neighbour's property to do a complete transformation of his garden. On Monday our favourite tree fellers will come and remove all the trees along the fence line, and the fencing contractors will use their little bobcat to take the top layer off the raised beds (including the grass and weeds currently growing there). Neighbour has been out in the garden today doing some clearing up himself - we think it is going to cheer him up to have his yard back under control. We lent him a shovel and made encouraging noises.

Not sure what the birds and possums are going to do when the trees go. We will also miss the shade they provided in the summer, but we can replant some greenery on our side to compensate. And if it gets hot this year before it grows high enough, we'll just pull the new blinds down and/or head off to Tasmania to sail.



And now we can see lots of things that aren't really all that attractive...

Let there be light (reprise)

Sometime back in April the tracks were fitted for new track lighting. Once everything else was done, we went hunting for track lights to match ones we already had from pre-renovation days. It turned out that this was no simple task. We had an eBay disaster when some that looked the same in the photo turned out to be HUGE, industrial size. We found tracklights in lighting shops which not only didn't match but were also wildly expensive. Finally we found what we wanted at Lawrence and Hanson for a modest price. But they had to order them in, and we bought the globes on the internet at a fraction of the asking price at L&H. It all came together today - lights picked up at L&H, globes collected from our post office box, and we spent time today assembling them and climbing ladders to put them up.
I now have a brightly lit kitchen, and all the recently re-hung art is appropriately illuminated. After weeks of being in gloom it is a big improvement. Three more pictures to hang, and we really will be all done.

Our turn to work now

With the builders and tradies gone, it's time for us to put the finishing touches in place. Pictures are finally almost all up, although the Chief Picture Hanger thinks that some are too high. The Assistant Picture Hanger thinks they are fine as they are, and as the Chief has 'done his back' (picking up The Age from the front verandah!), her view is prevailing at the moment. The Sound Engineer has done a great job of ehancing the little cabinet we bought on e-Bay so that it holds TV, tuner/amp and most of our DVDs and some CDs. He has connected up our ancient but very good Sonab speakers wirelessly, so we now have wonderful surround sound for TV, radio, or recorded music.
We have finally found and ordered tracklights which a) fit the new track and b) match our old ones - they will arrive Monday and finally our living area will be lighter by night, as well as by day. Still to go - blinds (jury still out on whether we need them) and the garden. We are trying to get three quotes for a new fence, so that we can then negotiate with our neighbour to get it fixed. Hopefully that will happen next week, although getting the quotes has been an extremely slow process - has been going for several weeks already.

Finished! It's official

Michael from Zeev Kitchens came on Saturday and Sunday, working for hours to put the sealer round the splashbacks and the kickboards of the cupboards in the kitchen. He did a lovely job, so by Sunday evening we were really all done. On Tuesday we handed over the last payment to Profast and had a ceremonial removal of the signs from the front fence.
We began re-hanging the art on Monday, starting with the pictures in the hall, then the two big pictures came out of the garage. On Wednesday we hung them in their former places in the living and dining areas. On Thursday, the one in the dining area fell down again, punching a small hole in our nice new plaster, but no damage to the painting. So much for stick on hangers. It's now back on the wall, resting more securely on screwed in hooks. Still got our smaller pieces to re-hang, but with the big ones in place, it looks terrific.