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The Shed Conversion
After finally completing the new garden shed and moving everything out of the old sheds, we could begin on renovating them. The design was simple: resize the existing 3 rooms (each measuring around 2.5 x 5m) to make a box room (2.5 x 3m) a cubby for chemicals, pool equipment and charging station (2.5 x…
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The New Shed
We have a block of sheds that, apart from being hideous, are quite dilapidated. Although they’re water-tight, the roof isnt high enough, the walls are cracked and crumbling and they arent particularly secure (tools are constantly being “liberated” by night-visitors!) So we thought it was about time to address that. The only problem was that…
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The Swimming Pool
We built a swimming pool over the wall a year ago (to the week) and lost access to it once the new tenants moved… just enough time for us to realize we really wanted one of our own. It was perfect. Big enough to swim lengths, practice tumble-turns or just sink yourself into on a…
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Over The Wall (Phase 1)
We’ve spent the last 18 months slowly chipping away at bits and bobs on the house next door. In an effort to curb the budget we decided not to make any structural changes and just do our best to return the house to its former glory with a few mod cons here and there (solar…
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Patio Upgrade
This was our house when we first arrived! I don’t have a picture of the original patio at that time, but I’m standing on it to get a shot of the house in the photo below It went through a few neaten-ups since 2014 when we arrived, but before the overhaul began this is what…
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Bunk Beds
I wanted some really chunky, solid bunk beds for Max, definitely not something you could buy locally so the solution was to build them… a great opportunity to spend some lockdown time with Grandpa 🙂 I chose 35mm planed Pine which would be doubled up on the legs to add thickness. I’m not the biggest…
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The Old Stone Wall
When we arrived here 6 years ago, there was a low-yield borehole which, it seems, used to live inside a stone walled pump house. I imagine at one point in time it looked rather pretty with its white and purple bougainvillea bushes growing up the brown stone walls, but having tried for a few years…
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Homemade Key Rack #2
Having made the first key rack, we pretty quickly found that we needed MORE space for keys, so I set about finding another suitably charming piece of timber from piles of old wood in the garden. Result…
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Timber Clad Wall
I always had a strong distaste for the varnished brick wall in our dining room – the varnish had yellowed over time and it felt cold. Figured it was time to try something different, and timber cladding was on my mind. I bought some old pallets but the timber was in a shocking state and…
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The Cottage (Brickwork & Roof)
Having deliberated for some time on whether or not and if so then where we should build a cottage, we threw caution to the wind and broke ground on our latest project. It was a shot in the dark given the state of our economy (in October 2017); a decision to risk borrowing-to-build at a…
The story of our home