Renovating
I bought an old farm house on 111 acres near the Barossa Valley, South Australia in March 2009 and have been working really hard to get it back to a liveable state – to start with.
A new roof has just gone on, so now I can collect rain water. There’s no mains water or electricity to the property, so these things are a tad challenging, but given enough time, I’ll work it out. Looks like a hybrid system of wind and solar are the best power solutions for this property. With enough rain water tanks the water issue won’t be such a big deal either. So we’re on our way to be quite self sufficient! Here are a couple of pics of the back of the house, comparing when I purchased it – to with a new roof.
What a huge difference a new roof and a bit of rain can make! This house was quite majestic for its time and is going to once again be gorgeous (could take a while, but we’ll get there).
Bit of an update for you now (April 2010). Here are some pics of the loungeroom ceiling. The roof had leaked for years in this spot, so all the joists were rotten and had to be replaced.
Some of them held up the box gutter and helped support the weight of the roof, so the roof had to be supported while the new joists were installed.
In the photo above you may be able to see that the ceiling is baltic pine boards, then covered with the green pressed tin. I kicked in the ceiling from above and removed it all. It took several goes… and then when I saw how unstable it was I got a bit scared, but lived to tell the tale.
Oh, and did I mention how much pidgeon and rat sh*t there was up there? At least a good, solid 6inch layer – I kid you not! Each time a section of ceiling fell down there was a thick cloud of ??? I only know you didn’t want to be breathing that stuff!
You can see the sisilation under the colourbond roofing.
I also want to thank my cousin Gavin, Mitch, Mal and Andy for helping me so much with this part of the ceiling restoration. I couldn’t have done it without them!
They replaced the rotten joists and put up the ceiling gyprok for me. I just couldn’t manage those 3m x 1.2m sheets on my own!
I’ve just got the third coat of flushing done and I’ll be painting several coats of ceiling white over the weekend. Under a bit of time pressure as I have to return the scaffold (which has been graciously lent) on Monday. I’m sure I’ll get it done though… and it will look superb even if I do say so myself!
