The purpose of our visit this weekend was twofold… firstly to continue the work on the decking and in the garden that we had started on our previous trip and secondly to visit the annual Charlton Show on Saturday.

We left around 6:30am on Friday in an effort to get a jump on the peak hour traffic into the city and were pleased that it wasn’t too heavy. After the usual stops at the Calder Park service centre and again at Ravenswood for Skylar to have a pee we arrived in Charlton around 10:30.

After unloading the car we immediately got to work in the yard and I was pleased that the new mower we bought helped get through the weeds in half the time of the old one, meaning more time to do other work.

Decking taking shape

front yard trees reduced to stumps

Once the mowing was completed I set about continuing to lay the joists for the decking whilst Shirleen started attacking some unwanted plants in the front yard, work which was to continue well into Saturday, but not before attacking some of the areas of the yard which were inaccessible to the mower with the weed sprayer and a litre of RoundUp.

Around lunchtime we took a break from our work to head off to the Charlton Show and on entering the pavilion were pleased to discover we had both been awarded first prizes – Shirleen for a beautiful framed craftwork and me for a photograph of a rainbow lorikeet.

After returning from the show we worked into the evening  on our respective projects only retiring for our obligatory wine when daylight and tiredness got the better of us.

Sunday saw a continuation of work in the garden and on the deck, but we did have the opportuinity to break on a couple of occasions when we were visited firstly by local contractor Randall who we asked to remove more rubbish we had accumulated, and secondly by some family of the previous owner of the Charlton House who were interested in the progress we were making on the restoration.

We eventually started packing up around 2:00 ‘ish and reluctantly left for the trip back to Somerville around 3:30pm extremely happy with our weekend’s achievements.

Roll on Cup weekend when we have four days to achieve even more.

Days 5 to 13 of our school holiday stay at the Charlton House seemed to mirror the first few… alternating between cleaning water and mud from the stump holes before installing further sections of the perimeter bearer for the deck, mowing grass (or rather weeds) removing overgrown plants from the garden, wrestling to remove some of the many star pickets which appear to grow wild in the garden and scraping sheets of old paint from the entrance hall walls.

In between we took some time out from working around the house to make a couple of trips to Boort to the hardware store and to do some geocaching around the shores of the lake there. We also made an impromptu trip to Bendigo, a trip of a little over 100km each way, to shop for some food for us, some treats for Psychopup and to look at some timber mantles which were on special at Early Settler.

Day 11 Abbey and Emily decided to make the trip up to see our progress as they hadn’t visited for quite a while and we had a really nice time with them, culminating in dinner at the East Charlton Hotel before we all headed back to Melbourne on the Friday before the AFL Grand Final.

Overall the two weeks were quite productive although the persistent rain meant we didn’t achieve as much as we had wanted. My expectation to fully complete the sub floor of the deck around the house was downgraded to just completing the perimeter bearers and securing the verandah posts, a feat we acheived comfortably.

Next visit is Charlton Show weekend when all I expect to do is mow… 🙁

Perimeter bearer complete

Joists

Scraped paint in the entrance

digging mud from the stump holes