Week 15, day sixty-nine

Wednesday, 4 May 2011



After a couple of short weeks, a royal wedding (always throws me) and another dose of autumnal viral nastiness (mine, again – I'm thinking there may be  some general immunity issues here), finally getting back into the swing of things. Spent a lovely night in Sydney over Easter at our very elderly friend Sas's fortieth dinner par-tay and caught up with lots of friends too-little seen. Mat and I had a sleepover with friends Tahmina and Michael (our first without both kids, believe it or not!!) while the wee ones had a night with their cousins (which made them ecstatically happy also). Must share a couple of pics of Tahmina's utterly gorgeous tiles in their recent bathroom reno, the basic idea of which I am very seriously contemplating stealing for our bath 'feature' tiled wall (can't afford it all-over like this, unfortunately!). Beautiful, non?

Through the carport 'gate'...

So the fellas have been working on the carport mostly, this and last week, along with some framing detailing and other fiddly bibs and bobs. Weather has been horrid, on the whole - constant cold, drizzly nastiness, and Warwick has not been his usual chirpiness for a while (I'm hoping it's the weather and not the job). Think the sudden rush of wintry weather has been a shock to all – the colours of autumn are here and gorgeous, but the cooler yet sunny days disappeared in flash of La Nina sogginess. Today was divine, though, so fingers crossed we might get a bit more autumn sun before we plunge into winter proper.

...and back again

The props will need to go to park the Subie, methinks

Double-glazed, handmade beauty

Go on, admire the brass tracking

Excitement of the day was the first delivery of windows: kids' bedrooms, bathroom, laundry and kitchen. Utterly lovely they are too. Most have been put into position, and Warwick got the boys to cover them over with thick black plastic this arvo in the hope that the cockies soon turn their attention elsewhere... You may remember my 'issues' with our neighbour's bird-feeding habits, and the fact that large flocks of both pigeons and cockies were visiting her daily to partake of her oh-so-generous scattering of seed. Mat has since had a friendly word about our concerns on this front (particularly when it comes to our large and delicious windows) and she assures as that this partiucular bird-community service is a thing of the past...yet still they come. Ivan saw twenty of the buggers perched on top of our framing pre-roof early one morning, happily tearing strips off the timber. Another neighbour kindly called us at 7am a couple of days ago to report that she was watching a cockie on our roof having a crack at the temporarily exposed roof insulation. So suffice to say that this is an issue still striking fear in our middle-class hearts – tips and tricks welcome for cockie discouragement (mostly legal recourses preferred, but anything considered).

One bathroom casement

Very happy with the windows, though some small concern that getting only the bottom section of the tall bathroom casements frosted might have been overly optimistic, given how long it may take to get a bit of foliage cover on our southern boundary... Margaret may soon have greater cause for regret that we are now neighbours than the fact that we are clearly not bird lovers!!

A street perving window for Mat

's wash-up

Kids' bedrooms (with in-builts still to split them)