cat wee smell

An unpleasant odour, and the best word to describe the ambience of the house immediately after the house purchase was finalised and we had the keys in our hands.

There was an incredible amount of rubbish. Most of the floors had multiple layers of different flooring, carpet upon lino upon carpet upon older lino upon wood. No wonder it stank!

One of the first things we (i.e. Theo, Rahul and Ben) did was get a skip in and clear out the bulk of the rubbish, and remove the hideous palm stumpy thing in the front yard. The palm was enormous when we bought the place and when it came time to pull it out it didn't want to budge. In the end of took a car pulling and two men pushing to get it out. Relief!

The plan was to make the downstairs part of the house liveable, so that 'proper' renovations could happen upstairs and an extension out the back. The work will happen in phases so that we can stay living in the house throughout.

The empy kitchen space also needed a lot of work. Within days we'd noticed that whenever anybody walked in the room upstairs the ceiling was crumbling little by little, so down it came. Ceiling plaster also smells like cat wee.

We found out that a coat of paint and some polished up floorboards make a world of difference. But you still need someone to actually put in the benches, sink and cooktop.

Dad did a great job of knocking up a kitchen in a day, and then Rahul stepped in to build some cupboards.

Our living room was pretty bleak when we moved in. Why anybody would paint an already dark room sludge green I do not know. Actually the previous owners had a fixation with the colour green, it's all over the house in various incarnations. The lime green enclosed balcony is particularly alarming.

Again, paint and polish proved to be magical.

The wood around the fireplace has been half eaten by bugs and had to be taken off. Apart from that the room scrubbed up pretty well.

The room that we're currently using as a bedroom has a beautiful fireplace, which makes up for the uglies in the upstairs bedroom and living room.

I think this little tour brings us almost up to date. Next stop bedrooms.