Tanya's Blog

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 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 :)

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.