General Chat

I know I should know this Annette but what date is Australia day, just to get it correct in my head as I couldn't work out when 'tomorrow' was from you typing 4 hours ago (it ios 10am on Tuesday 25th here).

yes,
Australia Day is the 26th January.

27th Jan
My GR gold membership runs out today, and I want to drop back to standard member. Having trouble clicking the boxes this morning in My account, so I will have to wait until later on when the traffic is slower, before I change my details.

Had a great Australia Day, the park festivities were very nice, and those that got awards were truely surprised.

Was very hot so I came home to sit in the cool, and family went back down to the pool for a swim later on in the afternoon, stayed a couple of hours. came home tired and hungry.

best wishes to all

A bit quiet on here for a few days. Hope everyone is well.

Cath xx

Sounds like you all had a really good day Annette. yes catherine, wonder where everyone is/was? I have not been on quite so much for a couple of days as we were laying a carpet in this room (that is the royal 'we' you understand, iw as just doing the donkey work of shifting all my clutter out and back again. pleased with it now though.

Done that Ann, what a performance when we had the lounge done - we had new plaster board, painted and carpeted etc so I did the clearing out. The piano got pushed around all over the place.

It's lovely to walk on new carpet and the underfelt is made out of recycled plastic, it is all little coloured bits massed together.

Persie

Not heard of that before Perse but what a good idea. Ours is strange as well, sort of like felt but spongy too. I suppose they are finding new ways to recycle all the time. The old stuff was Treadaire and had been down for 16 years but was just beginning to crumble.

It's quite thick and spongey, as soon as I saw it I recognised it. I worked for the company that collected the plastic, cans and bottles and we had samples of the products that get made out of the recycles plastic. The previous carpet had this hairy underfelt. One of the rooms had Linoleum, topped with one carpet and then topped with another bit like stacks on the mill. There were these awful feltex square tiles in the kitchen and when we took them up underneath was lino stuck solid to the floor boards. We never know what we might find. Someone had put a pot bellied stove in the lounge and it was sitting on a brick base and there was brick backing on part of the two walls that were around the stove. We dismantled it took the bricks out and underneath them was carpet on the floor and two layers of wall paper on the walls.

Persie

We know that in our bedrooms the carpet was laid and then the built in wardrobes put in on top. Not moving the wardrobes to shift it though!

Himself has been putting in insulation above our back bathroom and the small spare bedroom next to it.. this area has a lower ceiling than the rest of the house - so he is has been replacing weatherboards on that side of the house and it is easier to get in under the roof from the outside. Guess what there was another ceiling above the bedroom so he has pulled all that out. We had the bathroom changed around years ago and the electrician said there are another two ceilings up above the bathroom so the builders took them out.

P xx

Is it an old house Perse.

Built in 1917, it has been modernised inside in that someone thought an orange bench top would look good and when we first came here there were all these arches meeting in the middle in the lounge and then more arches through to kitchen and dining area..... it is all open plan. It is no use trying to restore it so we are bringing it out of the seventies into today. Lots of fun and we have learnt a lot in the DIY department.

My father remembered this house and one a bit older in this street, he used to travel up it in his horse and cart, we are one street away from a main road and he said that was too muddy to travel on in those days.

Persie

Quite old then. I think a lot of strange things were done to houses in the 70s as people realised they could 'modernise' old houses. Unforunately the 70s were not a good decade for design. Our house here was built mid seventies but fortunately nothing drastic was done to it. We got rid of the horrid avocado suite in the bathroom and put in a new kitchen, but that was 18 years ago so I suppose to the younger generation it will look dated. One thing we have kept are the original bathroom tiles, mainly because it would be a huge job to replace them, they are pale brown with an occasional orange flower design, sounds weird but doesn't look too bad.

I was doing a crossword the other day and one of the clues was:
What colour bathroom suite will probably reduce the sale price? Answer: Avocado.

There is a motel in Taihape their hand basins and loos are all avocado colour - probably done in the late seventies. Or maybe they got a cheap job lot.

Persie

Our house was built between 1943 and 1945, and is of a style known as Veterans' House here .......... many were built ready for the return of soldiers after WW2

They are all small "bungalow" type houses, but all have fully usable basements.

Ours was built as a 4 room house .... front door opens right into the living room, next to it was the bedroom, behind were the bathroom and kitchen.

So far as we can tell, there was the front door, directly opposite that was the door into the kitchen. At right angles, and between the 2 doors, was the door into the bedroom. Then there was a door from the bedroom into a tiny square hallway which had a door into the bathroom and a door into the kitchen

It was renovated in 1951 ............... bedroom turned into a dining roo, wall between living room and dining room opened up to an archway. An extension added 2 bedrooms behind the kitchen and bathroom, plus a family room and garage in the basement. The garage was later closed off from outside and a carport with sundeck above added.

We bought it in 1972, and renovated in 1977 ................ turning the bathroom into an en suite for the master bedroom, and then adding on another bedroom and very large family room. Part of the 1951 2nd bedroom was made into a second bathroom.


It took us years to work out the time lines, and what had been done. The first question we solved was why the dining room had a large walk-in closet.

Every time we do anything, we're not sure what we will find.

Removing panelliong form the wall in tha master bedroom (added in 1951) revealed there had originally been a door directly into the kitchen. The panelling covering that door is still in place in the kitchen! We have to decide what to do about it when OH gets to re-painting the kitchen after the renovation in there.


In the original part ......................... No wall is straight. No floor is completely level. However, it was very solidly built!! It has a lovely cove ceiling in the living room, and there are original glass door knobs still on some of the doors.

The walls in the original rooms were done with lath and plaster ........ and some things we know were plastered in place. It was a horrendous job when we wanted to replace the bathtub!

This is one reason why I chose not to remove the upper cabinets as we renovate the kitchen ....... we don't know what we will find, and we don't want to get into replacing lath and plaster! I'm just having new doors made.

Removing the base cabinets in the kitchen last September revealed that there had been an update in there (not that surprising), but the floor had not been leveled, or new lino extended beneath the new cabinets. There was a ¾" drop down where the original cabinets had been. OH had to work out how to level the floor before the guys came to lay new lino.



The problem with doing anything at the cabin that we have is that that was built in 3 stages ........ and they used "recycled" materials. The windows are all different sizes .............. none of them, of coruse, being standard sizes these days.

Same for the doors, etc etc


and of course, we also don't want to spend a lot of money up there!



sylvia

oh ... some good news on the insurance fornt


OH has to find out how much it would cost to replace the generator, and let the assessor know.

There will then be a $200 deductible, and the insurance company will issue a cheque for the balance.


We do have replacement insurance for the house and goods ......... have had for 30 or 40 years. But this is the first time we've had to make a claim. (fingers, toes and everything crossed!).


We've decided that we are probably not going to replace the generator ......... we've been talking for a couple of years that it is getting to the time when I no longer enjoy going up there, and time to consider selling the place. We can rent a generator when we do go up, for a day, week or month.



sylvia

Quite nice to have a house that is different Sylvia and not just a little box.

well, it's certainly different!!


it's now long and narrow


....... and the kitchen is literally the centre of the house, everything circulates around it.

Hi all

It's pouring with rain here



So glad to see that the cyclone in Queensland didn't claim any lives, although it did sooooo much damage.

I noticed that the landfall was near Innisfail and Tully.

We stayed on a plantation near Tully back in 1976. It was run by the immigrant parents of a friend we had made in Melbourne. We've lost touch with them all now, but do hope that things are OK



Where J lives apparently got 30-35 cm snow YESTERDAY as that snowstorm that has hit the eastern US so hard barrelled its way through eastern Canada.


She only said in an email on Tuesday that M was fed up with shovelling snow ............... he'd got up at 5 am that morning to shovel so that she could get out of the house and go to work. So she had called their yard man (the one who mows grass in the summer), and he'd put them on his list for snow clearing.

Good decision eh?


She was also going to take some work home with her, in case she couldn't get in to the office!



My mother used to say that the weather in New York would reach the UK about 10 days later




.......... I do hope that you don't get this snowstorm! It has caused havoc from Texas up to Canada.



sylvia

I thought we were going to get a few more posters after this thread. Where did they go?

Over a month since anyone posted on here so I have dragged it back up again.