Those first few days

its filthy work.  honestly. filthy.  Those first few days, we are hot, sweaty and gritty.  the smell of chlorine bleach is in my dreams. luckily i remembered to pack the house rubber gloves, of course i didn't remember that until after i had dunked my hand a few thousand times in hot bleach water to wash down the ceilings.  I'm guessing they have literally never been cleaned - in 51 years or so.  not so good.  in one bedroom there was a whole lot of fantastic graffiti in black and highlighter pink - it was such a shame to cover that up... but i think the only person who could appropriately appreciate it was the artist themselves - sadly it had to go.  i did find at Mitre 10 a seal everything undercoat/sealer on special so i thought i had better try that out.  it did a pretty good job, it didn't actually cover EVERYTHING up, but enough that when i put on two coats of ceiling white, we should be rock n roll.  even as it is, its a vast improvement, it was feeling so toxic - now - its so much fresher!

Our Weekend job, was actually washing the whole exterior down and sorting out the roof.  After lots of close inspection the roof was actually really good.  a bit of surface rust to grind off and rust prime and a whole bunch of new roofing screws and its ready for a proper paint!  Reilly did a grand job up there non stop for just about two days straight in the hot hot sun! CHAMPION!

The exterior wash down was actually pretty straight forward - lovely thing about brick! not a lot of prep work required!  obviously the windows need a good sand, seal and paint, but apart from that not too bad on the whole - one window needs definite replacing, and that big lounge window is being pushed out into french doors onto a deck!  We are ready for paint Wed/Thurs weather depending.

So - The beginning of this week its just been me and the kids - my calendar (which I'm sticking to at the moment) was for DEMO!   now - i love a good demo day.... i just normally don't do it alone!  Demo Day alone is definitely not as much fun.  all that crash, boom, bang really requires a friend to make the work load 1. go faster (obviously) 2. crack funny jokes with 3. rock out to some heavy metal.  instead i forgot all that coolness and did the following - 1. pretty slow going by myself while i stood around for a while figuring crap out by myself - i even started asking myself questions out loud 'how you gonna get that down Mandy?'  '...uuummmm.... maybe..... hhhmmmmm'.  in the end i worked it out - i took the long way a few times but got that eventually.  2. cracking funny jokes alone really isn't that funny.  3. I COMPLETELY FORGOT TO ROCK OUT TO HEAVY METAL! what an idiot! I'm going to have to make this a cardinal rule - never DEMO DAY to John Mayer or Corinne Bayley Rae, no wonder i was so slow - i was taking the sunday morning drive!  *smacks self in head*.

So - things that went well - i got a new jimmy bar for 10 bucks from Mitre 10 - love that new jimmy bar - I'm going to name it, just not sure what yet, something dependable.  A crow bar is your best friend.  also -  i got a lot of the skirting boards off intact! WHAT? thats right... not 100% all of them, but enough to impress myself (and I'm pretty hard to impress).

So I've thrown all this demo crap out the back door and I'm very hopeful that its all going to fit on the back of our trailer so i can bring it home and burn it - before the 11th of January when the summer fire ban kicks in!

Also - its almost Christmas - I'm in super denial about  that though!