That’s right - Frank and his team have broken through the wall in the kitchen - I reckon it looks awesome, of course we’re a long way from it looking like anything other than a hole in the wall, still in my humble estimation.. it’s a damn fine looking hole.

     

We’ve also broken through the new kitchen door and master bedroom door.

       

Tamsyn’s bathroom has been completely gutted and is now waiting for the sanitary ware as well as tiles. Course we haven’t actually picked any tiles yet, so that is fast becoming a priority.

   

We managed to get to two moving-on sales over the weekend, the first Wouter went to, ostensibly to try and score some bedroom cupboards - apparently it was chaos, so all he came away with was a door, which considering the price of doors these days, isn’t bad going. (It is on the list of things we need). Sunday, Tamsyn and I joined him at the second one and managed to get everything we wanted, and some extra.  Tamsyn is rather good at surreptitiously creeping to the front and then racing up the stairs and throwing herself on the things we want. She did tell me one lady tried to get past her but she wasn’t budging!  She’s competitive at the best of times, these sales just bring out the worst (best?) in her.  Reckon we’ll take her along again :-).  I’ll upload a pic some other time of the garden lamp we bought, I once again fell in love with something we hadn’t really gone for (oh and we picked up a few delapidated pc’s as well) … not on the list, but Wouter assures me we need them.

Words to strike fear into the heart of even the bravest of Moms, alright perhaps only the domestically challenged brave Moms, or in this case, perhaps just me.  Class cake sale at school - something I have gone through with my eldest and always managed to get away with buying cookies, or biscuits or putting popcorn into little bags.  Not this time though, with big eyes my youngest looks at me and says those fateful words “you’ve never made me anything to take to school to sell for cake sale”. Naturally mom-guilt kicks in and I start to frantically think how I can make 33 somethings which takes the least amount of cooking/baking skills and still passes the ‘My Mommy made these’ proud tone.

They took us about an hour and a half to make, aren’t exactly the neatest or most creative cake sale goodies in the world, but T is very happy and you know, I’m kind of proud of them too.

  

This past weekend we went shopping, primarily for bathroom hardware - toilet, basin and the like.  Sometimes it really does pay to shop around, we went into several bathroom type stores and had a look around, made the mistake of innocently asking the price of what appeared to be an ordinary toilet.  Salesman “Two-two”, initial thought… hmmm two hundred and twenty rand, that sounds a little low, but surely he doesn’t mean two thousand and twenty rand.  Sadly he did.  Two thousand odd rand to sit on a small whilte hole!  Ridiculous if you ask me, anyway we went to Brights and found an equally nice looking toilet for R495.00.

                 

Toilet and shower tray in their positions in the master bathroom - the box is impersonating a wall - (the shower tray has been living in the roof in Bellville for sometime now)

Our Malawian team (Frank and his team) have also started and did a fabulous job in breaking up the concrete stoep outside the kitchen and down the side of the house.

     

We also had to shift Wouter’s computer terminal (that desk is damn heavy, let me tell you) to the garage as he wants to get Frank and his team to start breaking down walls inside the house.

  PC Desk’s new home in the corner of the garage

Wouter wanted to see how thick the wall of the kitchen was and also mark out where we would be breaking through - turned out to be hard work.

    Finally broke through the wall

Slightly off topic, I had to take a picture of our lone tomato plant , which I might add we’ve had 3 tomatoes from already (they tasted really nice).  Not being much of a gardner, ok not being a gardner at all, I’m really very proud of this tomato plant.  The fact that the previous owners planted it, is really besides the point. It is *my* plant now, erm *our* plant now!

Here are a few pictures of the house as well as of work we did over the weekend. 

  

It is really quite fascinating to discover ‘hidden’ things about a house that you didn’t know were there.  We ripped the carpet out of the lounge to discover half the floor is wood and the other half is stone.   I really like the stone but unfortunately we can’t keep it like that, for one the floor in the entrance hall is cement and for another it’d look rather odd being half stone and half wood.  So the idea at the moment is to carpet the entire area carrying through the same carpet into the entrance & diningroom area.

We also ripped up the carpets in T’s room as well as my scrapbook room.  The wooden floors look like they’ll come up really nicely after being stripped and varnished.  T has asthma so she can’t have carpets in her room, we were originally going to tile the area but realising the wood is in a good enough condition to work with is a bargain.

W removed a panel of wood on the lowered ceiling in the lounge area - we had the idea that we could remove the ceiling but having seen what is in the roof we’ve decided that isn’t really a viable option.

  

Some more pics of W breaking off a piece of door frame leading into the lounge.

       

Last night we were going to make chicken curry but M beat us to it and had already started making chilli and some other chicken dish.  Not that I’m complaining did mean we didn’t have to cook.  I’d mentioned to W that poppadums are the ultimate accompaniment to curry  so he’d bought a box.  He then rather cleverly conned *me* into cooking them.  Now anyone that knows me, knows that I can’t cook.  Hell I managed to flop the 91st birthday cake I made (from a box) for my late Grandad (who I still miss terribly) - it was completely inedible - completely!  Dear sweet man did take a bite though.  However I digress.. back to the pappadums.  I’ve only ever seen my Dad make them so winging it ever so slightly I popped a smidge of oil in a frying pan, heated it up to almost flash point and armed with a spatula tossed the first poppadum into the pan.  A bit of frantic flattening, flipping over, more frantic flattening… and voila…. an edible poppadum!  I was seriously chuffed with myself (doesn’t take much evidently :)).

Last week we decided to investigate moving on - several people had mentioned the website to us before but we hadn’t really had much need for it, until now.  Basically it’s people who are selling up and moving elsewhere who have furniture/plants/what-have-you which they wish to sell.

Wouter decided he needed a computer desk to use in the interim (rather hard to do serious room planning whilst lying on a floor and squinting at a monitor), with the idea that it might be passed on to one of the girls once he’s done with it. Having checked out the moving on website he spotted a couple available at the next sale.

Not really sure what to expect we arrived in plenty of time and already there was quite a queue forming of eager shoppers.  Basically it goes something like this - the doors open… everyone swarms in and grabs tags off those items they have their beady eyes on.  Not being totally on top of the situation I missed out on getting a chair for said computer desk. (There I was blisfully unaware, perched on the chair examining the pc desk, when some woman reaches around me and yanks the tag off). We did however spot a rather nice looking bookcase at a very reasonable price and then I saw it.

Yep, a His Master’s Voice gramophone.  Naturally we had to have it - and as it was a very reasonable price (R 650.00) we figured this can definitely be a first pre-housewarming housewarming gift to ourselves. It probably isn’t an original but it’s a damn fine fake

A familiar refrain I keep hearing from Wouter, comes from me getting excited about all sorts of things which are only likely to occur *way* down the line. (It’s a female thing, just can’t help myself).  I’ve managed to remember to have my camera & cable with me so that I can upload images of our house, in particular the rooms that will be completely redone, or modified.

     

Here’s a view of the kitchen with some of the cupboards removed

  Yes that little white patch in the corner is a mouse nest.

A few pictures of what is going to be the master bedroom and en-suite

     The idea here is to create a bedroom and bathroom with as much as we can fit in whilst still giving us enough space to move around.  Not an easy task and we’re several plans down the line but we’re getting there.

   

The main bathroom - as you can see the bath definitely needs replacing.

Brief background - condensed beyond even a Reader’s Digest condensed book (hell if I don’t we’ll be here all day).  Our grand plan had been to build a Victorian style house in Bellville (www.retro.co.za/house/) but due to circumstances far too complicated to go into we have ended up buying an old house in Fish Hoek with the excellent assitance of Kim (www.majorkim.com) … which is fast becoming known as ‘Plan # & counting’.

It appealed for three reasons - price, space and proximity to schools.  It also has the most amazing garage with 10 (I kid you not) plug points.  The previous owner obviously must have worked from home.

What we have to work with:

Kitchen: to be completely gutted and re-designed

Three bedrooms: 2 of which have been allocated to Jessica and Tamsyn, Jessica’s room is formerly the master bedroom with a rather oddly arranged en-suite. You walk through the shower to get to the toilet.  Still when you’re 12 going on 13 this really isn’t a problem. (She actually has the nicest room in the house) Tamsyn’s room is the other large room.  The last bedroom (really very small) will be converted into a scrapbooking room for me.

Bathroom: to be gutted and replaced with a Libre Misty bath/shower combo, basin relocated to a different wall

Seperate toilet: A small handbasin to be added

Lounge area: The low ceiling on the one side to be removed, a platform accessed by a spiral staircase (Yay!) on the other side

Utility room: (originally a single garage) to be transformed into a master bedroom with en-suite

Small room off entrance: to become a small intimate diningroom

Area outside kitchen: cement to be completely taken up and relaid probably with bricks and a jacuzzi installed in the one corner closest to the master bedroom

All carpets and tiles (apart from Jessica’s bathroom) to be replaced.

And that is just a portion of what needs to be done - I haven’t added any of the electrical/piping/plumbing bits - mainly because Wouter’s the one that knows what has to be done there.