We've run away to the. Farm...

Friday was D-day for our move to the farm, we packed up a couple of loads of our belongings and headed off. We had some serious issues with the land cruiser on the way here, seems to be a fuel sensor issue, we will be on Toyotas doorstep tomorrow to see what the problem is hopefully. We still have lots more to bring up, but we are here. We have been tidying up, unpacking, putting beds together, hanging blinds, making flyscreens and remaking the old fly screen door fom home  to fit this smaller door and repainted it, putting door handles on, putting weather strips on the bottom of the doors to keep out the bugs and snakes and spiders, changing the door handles on the kitchen cupboards to update them,  connecting the sink and gas hot water,  and just generally working really hard. We're off to bundy hopefully tomorrow to get the car fixed and get a few more things so will have a quiter day tomorrow hopefully. The house is looking good though, downstairs is mostly finished, just little bits and pieces here and there to do, and upstairs in the bedrooms is all bare necessites, and will be our next focus building the built in wardrobes and bringing our other furnishings in. I am off to Tasmania in a few days for a 2 week holiday with Mum, so everything else will have to wait until then. Damian is going to start my chook pen before then and will finish it off while I am away, so I can bring my chooks and guinea fowl back up with me when I return...yay. So, without further ado, here is our little mostly finished for now house...

(The kitchen)

(Upstairs Bedroom)

(Downstairs living area)

(Gas cooktop in action)

(Gas oven - it was absolutely filthy inside when I bought it 2nd hand, it took me 6 days to get it clean)

(Downstairs bathroom - shower end)

(Downstairs bathroom - toilet end)

(Kitchen benchtop - this was originally an ugly laminate which I have resurfaced with a stone look)

 

I doubt we will look at building our permanent home for at least 12 months, we would like to get some more infrastrucure in place around the farm first (gardens, paddock and yard fencing etc and our office and craft studio) and save up some more money! And have a bit of a rest and enjoy the rural lifestyle for a little while before we take on the workload of building a house. But in the meantime I will enjoy decorating and furnishing our abode to make it feel like home.

The country life...??

Still exceptionally busy around here. Still up to the property most weekends, which is a 4 hour drive there and a 4 hour drive back. So many things to catch up on the blog with, but time is definitely short at the moment, hence the long exodus from here.

(The "Shed", including the "shouse")

 (Damian installing the cladding along the front of the shouse)

The painting of the shouse is finished inside, and this weekend coming, the kitchen and flooring will go in, then the chippies should be back the following week to do the skirtings, arcitraves and hang the doors, then really just the plumbing and electrical final fitoffs to do, then should be ready!
We did a test run of the kitchen install last weekend, so that we could work it all out before installing the flooring, so as not to damage the flooring, dragging bits and pieces around everywhere. It was a bit like putting a jigsaw together, but it's working out. We will probably get a new benctop made to fit this exact space though, as it is different to how the kitchen was in it's original house.

(The kitchen "test" run, lots of thinking going on here)

I am hoping that our move to the country will be an enjoyable one. I am hoping that I get used to the slower pace, and things not being as up to the minute as they are here. Last weekend while painting, I ran out of paint, so went down to the local hardware to get some more. They stocked the brand of paint I was after, but as the colour was a different brand's colour, it needed to be matched. I said, very naively it turns out, "well that's ok, I will bring down a colour sample and get you to match it"....the lady looked at me as though I was speaking a different language, and in the silence I could almost hear the cogs turning and the crickets singing...and I said..."you know, on your colour matching machine??" hehehe...ahem.... She said "nooo...we don't do anything like that here, you'd have to go to Bundaberg for that"  So, it was a 45 minute drive to Bundaberg to get our paint, but we'll just have to be more organised in the future, it will happen, just got to slow down enough to get ourselves together.
A few new animals on the block, large and small, which I will elaborate more on with a bit more time...and I apologise as I have not had time to catch up on what you are all doing of late, but hopefully over the school holidays and xmas break, I can start to catch up a bit....life has taken over for the moment :)