Christmas time

This christmas we experienced very hot weather and unfortunately, we couldn't use our deck to sit on for lunch since we still don't have a roof. As you can see from our thermometer, the temperature in the sun was very high - damn. Anyway, we had a very nice cold lunch with my family and even my Grandparents, Bill and Lorna, came down to join us this year. We set up two tables in the lounge room/old dining space and had a buffet table for the food. At 4pm we then went to Trish and Blairs house for dinner. Typical summer weather brought a storm but it didn't last very long, but was enough to just cool things down for us.

Oh, and today I am officially half way in the pregnancy.... 20 weeks!

Lychees and Lorikeets

We had waited patiently for our Lychees to come into season and longer still for them to ripen... but we came across 2 barriers to actually eating them ourselves 1. Damn bugs ate them and 2. Lorikeets love them too.

Week 5

It's now christmas eve and we've had more progress on the building of our deck. This week the roof frames have been finished but we still wait for the actual roofing (to be colourbond steel), the wire for the railings was put in, the ugly oriental screen was removed and the guys did a lot of tidy up work that you don't notice straight away but is very important. I don't have a good picture of me with the belly so the silhouette pic will do for now. We'll have more pictures from christmas day for sure. By the way, it's bloody hot and I am on 2 weeks holidays with Dunk. Yay!

Getting some Practice

Over the weekend Dunk and I did some babysitting for Nickole and Ken. Here are a couple of pics of our nephews, Nedd and Dylan....

Week 4

This week we had the brickie come and put the retaining wall up and the slab was also poured for the storage space under the deck. But the most exciting part was the decking being laid and the railings put up. The frame for the second roof was nearly finished but due to some heavy rain, the boys had to stop for the day.

Week 3 of building and Tash pops

Hi there, well during this week we had the huge french doors put into the back wall of the house and the first roof frame is assembled. There's not much else to say since the photos explain it all. The only other thing to add is that our baby must have had a growth spurt and at 17.5 weeks, I am definitely starting to show!

Week 2

Due to the rain the builders decided to start on the kitchen area - so you can see from the pictures that part of the back deck was built and the frame for the kitchen walls were put up.








And here is a picture of me in the timber yard at 16 weeks pregnant... not really any bump to speak of yet! And notice the tarp over the corner of the house... lucky we didn't have any severe thunderstorms while that was there.

By Friday of Week 2 the builders had completely removed the internal wall and have opened up the space for the new kitchen.... It is so exciting!

Week 1 of Building....

Ok, so in the first week we had the excavator come in and dig up the ground immediately behind the garage wall (to be under the deck). The plan was to have a room under the deck that we would be able to walk easily in and to use the space for storage. Inevitably, there was a problem and we could only get the ground dug to about mid body height. We were a bit upset by that but we had to accept it since to fix the problem we had would cost us heaps... so we will still have a storage area but we have to bend over in it.

During this first week it also happened to rain.... and there was a lot of rain and this has postponed the brickies from coming to put in the retaining wall... see photo of Dunk trying to divert the water!!!

The other things that happened in the first week was most of the timber arrived and the backyard is now classified as a timber yard. They also managed to start building part of the deck so it gave us a really good idea of the size it will be... HUGE!!! excellent! And they also started the frame work for the new kitchen (on the old porch area!)

Before the builders started....

This is the back porch before we started the renovations. Duncan decided to help out before the builders started by removing the entire porch area himself... not a bad job. He also dismantled the good old hillshoist clothesline. We now have a rectangular one by the fence... very unobtrusive and can fold down out of the way. We also knocked down a few trees to really open up the backyard, so now the vege patch is more of a feature in the yard.

Our Backyard

Tash in the backyard with Kiai Kitty before the renovations have begun.

First Time Bloggers

Alright we have finally come to blog land we are using this to post images and info about our renovations and pregnancy. Hope you enjoy it!!!