Craft studio makeover...part 1...from ugly duckling....

We bought this used site office last year to convert in to a studio/office/spare room, for up here on the farm.  Currently it is UGLY !!!....ugly...ugly...ugly...

The inside was even worse, it had that horrible woodgrain panelling on the inside walls, which had been haphazardly painted over, there was a big hole where the air conditioner had been, and while transporting it up here on the tilt tray, part of the inside ceiling caved in....oops...
So, on the weekend we started with the inside renovation. It has now been reinforced, some of the timber studs replaced and braced, and  re-lined with fibre cement sheeting, and is now ready for the cornice, skirting and arcitraves, then painting. We didn't go with gyprock walls, as the whole building is on skids, and if we want to relocate it, we can do so without risk of cracking the gyprock joins. It was a struggle with just the 2 of us putting up the ceiling sheets, but Damian rigged up a couple of support poles to hold the sheets at either end, which made life a lot easier. Trying to slot each sheet in to the previous sheets joining strip was the hardest part of the whole exercise.

Once it is all painted, I will get in some nice wooden floorboard look vinyl to finish it off, and dress the window with timber blinds. It will then be ready for me to move all of my craft cupboards and sewing gear in to. Oh..and I suppose I had better leave a little bit of room for the sofa bed, so that we can use it for guest accomodation when needed.... ;0)
We already have the outside cladding here, which I bought to clad the front of our shouse with, and we have so much of it left over, we will have enough to clad various chook pens, and any other structures or sheds in the future. I bought the whole lot 2nd hand for $200 which was an absolute bargain. So the whole studio will be clad the same as this, a cream weatherboard look cladding.

Damian is planning on re-roofing it over the next week or two and then putting the cladding on. We got brand new zincalume roof sheets for nothing from one of our suppliers who had ordered the wrong lengths in for a customer, and Damian was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time...score.   So it should turn from the ugly duckling into a beautiful swan very soon hopefully. Damian is down in Brisbane this week on a course, we thought we would take the opportunity while he is not working to get a couple of extra licences added on to his plumbing licence, so he is currently finishing off his gas licence qualification so that we can have that as part of our offering here in town for when we open up our shopfront in a couple of weeks in the main street of town. We have to build and fit out an office and racking etc down there as well, and he also has to head back and forth to Brissie quite a bit over the next few weeks to finish his course...he is going to be a very busy boy....I don't think he has time at the moment to work in a paying job! Luckily, in the overall scheme of things we have worked very hard over the last 5-6 years especially,  setting ourselves up so that we aren't in a bad financial position, but we still have bills to pay like everyone, but because of forward planning, hopefully we should be right to manage (very frugally) while we give this new business in town a good go, and luckily Damian is very handy with building things, so we don't have to outsource any of the building work.

Animal mishaps & a Permaculture course

We got back from our holiday on Sunday. Always nice to get away for a few days. One of the chooks came down sick a few days back, after doing some research on the net, I concluded that she had coccidiosis...I think that has been the culprit with the other couple of girls I have lost recently..and it has been spreading through the more vulnerable girls.  I treated her with Sulpha D, and she has come good now, and I have returned her up with the other chooks. Now that I know what I am looking for, hopefully I can now keep it in check. I will need to give Damian the hurry along with the chook tractor, and give the ground in the current chook pen a spell, and try to get rid of any parasites that have built up in the soil, as the chook house has been on the same ground for many years. Hopefully now we are over the worst of the sick chooks for a while. Diesel has also been in the wars, he has banged his head really hard on something while we were away and has a huge boney lump on the back of his head, it's nearly as big as a golfball.

(Diesel has a huge egg on the back of his head)

I have taken him to the vet, and he is on some anti inflammatories, this is day 3 of being on those, and it really hasn't made any difference to the size of the lump yet, so if no better by Friday, I will contact the vet surgery again. He has also started mouthing toads, Monday night I thought I was going to have to rush him to the vet, as he got quite sick, even though we had washed his mouth out, but then I contacted the after hours vet, and she gave me some info on what to look out for, and also to wipe his mouth out with a cloth instead of washing it, to get rid of the slimy poison, as soon as I did this, he came good. And then last night, he came to the back door whimpering again, and was foaming at the mouth again, so I wiped it out first thing this time, and he came good within a couple of minutes. Damian is going to do the rounds of the yard with Dettol again to kill off the toads that are starting to hang around.

Tomorrow is going to be very exciting, it is day 1 of the Permaculture Design Course I am doing.  It will be every Thursday for the next few months, and I am really looking forward to it. I hope my brain can deal with all of the theory that is going to be associated with it! I will post later in the week with the details on how it all went. I am looking forward to absorbing all of the info and putting it in to practice here. I have also received most of my book order that I put it at the beginning of the month, I will post about those a bit later as well. At the moment I am trying to continue catching up on paperwork, nearly there, it is almost full time in the office at the moment doing bookwork....but the pile is getting smaller.