OUR FIRST ANNIVERSARY

On the 3rd of May 2018 I arrived at 6 York Road, Bathurst, after a sixteen hour drive in the little Diahatsu bakkie towing a two-ton trailer full of tools and with four of my team from Cape Town comfortably stashed in the back.  We arrived at 10pm in pouring rain …………… the entire garden was 200mm under water from the York Road stormwater overflow - the lights were dim - it was cold - it was wet …………….. and as we alighted my team looked at me with huge question marks in their eyes. We unloaded and I helped them settle in to what was the then so-called “studio” as best I could before dragging myself up to the comfort of the McCreath’s cottage on their farm, Tiger Springs, and collapsing into bed.

The following day - May 4th - we began work. Knowing that I had exactly 3 weeks before the furniture arrived. The No.1 priority was to re-do the floors which for the most part were collapsing in every room - other than the kitchen that is, where they had collapsed completely. Some bright spark had at some stage decided that old Oregon pine boards were unsightly and had undertaken to paint all the floors with oil paint …………… which had seriously affected their ability to breathe and caused them to warp quite considerably. They would need to be sanded down I knew, but the warping meant that we would weaken the tongue and groove jointing in quite a few areas where the warping was bad.

First things first though: we created trap doors in all of the rooms and spent two weeks on our backs in the crawl space below fitting new joists between the collapsed joists ……….. jacking everything up with car jacks, and replacing joists wherever necessary as well as all of the intermediate support posts - (Those of you who are old enough will remember Charles Bronson digging the tunnel in the Great Escape - that's exactly what it was like). We then treated all of the joists with Nova PCP as well as painting the underside of all the boards with this horrible poison. We now had a relatively even floor …………. and a completely new one in the kitchen. Sanding was the next step, along with cutting out the worst of the T&G disaster boards and fitting new flat SA Pine inserts. We then mixed a clear sealer with a touch of stain and sealed the entire floor - three times - sanding between each application, and astonishingly enough, managed to get both new and old boards all much the same color. We then layed 250 micron plastic throughout and taped down all of the perimeters and thresholds. We were now ready for the furniture ……………. with half a day to spare.

I flew down to Cape Town on the 23rd May and together Pat and I drove up on the 25th to be here when Biddulphs arrived with their truck. Everything was stacked and packed into the centre of all the rooms and covered with plastic, and we proceeded to break and brick and remove and add around the piles of furniture and boxes. The dust was a nightmare, and trying to retain my vision of the end product amidst all of the mess wasn’t easy, but eventually we got there and managed to move in on the 30th of August …………. only a month later than planned for originally - with Pat only getting to see what the floors looked like a week before when we began stripping the plastic off the furniture and placing things where they belonged before lifting all of the plastic off the floors and vacuuming, vacuuming, vacuuming ………………… My God ——— the dust was unbelievable.

We’ve been in for 8 months now, and slowly all of the spaces and places are finally coming together. We only unpacked the last of the boxes a couple of weeks ago, and we still have to find space for quite a few bits and pieces. But ………… its home, and we are probably almost as happy within the space as we eventually were in our Capri house after 25 years of extending and adding on there - so I don’t think we’ve done too badly.

So, one year down the line I have put together a few “before and after” collages to give an idea of where we are now compared with how we began exactly a year ago.

Comments are of course always welcome, and visitors here at the Centre of the Universe even more so - just let us know when you are coming, we'd really love to see you.

THE EAST SIDE AND NORTH (STREET SIDE) OF THE HOUSE - THEN AND NOW

THE ENTRANCE HALL AND BEDROOM 2 (TO THE LEFT IN THE HALLWAY) - THEN AND NOW (See the painted, warping floorboards)

THE LOUNGE AND BREAKTHROUGH EITHER SIDE OF THE FIREPLACE TO THE DINING/KITCHEN - THEN AND NOW (See the painted, warping floorboards)

THE ORIGINAL KITCHEN WITH HOLES IN THE FLOOR - NOW THE DINING/KITCHEN WITH THE SCULLERY OFF TO THE LEFT & ENTIRELY NEW FLOOR

THE MAIN BEDROOM AND EN-SUITE BATHROOM - THEN AND NOW - SEE THE COLLAPSED FLOOR ALONG THE SKIRTING

THE ORIGINAL 'STUDIO' - NOW AN EN-SUITE 3RD BEDROOM AND SEPARATE OFFICE WITH ENTRY OFF THE VERANDAH

SOME SUNDRY SPACES: THE DRESSING ROOM OFF THE MAIN BEDROOM - THE EN-SUITE SHOWER / BASIN AND WC ATTACHED TO BEDROOM 2 & THE GUEST LOO OFF THE PASSAGE

THE EAST SIDE VERANDA & COLLAPSE - NOW A BUTTRESSED STAIRCASE WITH HERB GARDEN

THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE HOUSE SHOWING THE NEW DECK AND SCULLERY AREA ON THE LEFT (Simply the best washing up station in the world with views that go on forever)