We had been looking forward to a nice 3 nights at The Charlton House for grand final weekend, as I had some work to do at the Bendigo courthouse on the Thursday prior to the public holiday and the plan was to travel straight from Bendigo to Charlton on the Thursday afternoon. Unfortunately Shirleen was feeling quite poorly on Thursday and decided to stay home. This meant I was unable to take Skylar with me as I couldn’t leave her in the car for the time I was working at the courthouse, so it was a solo trip up the Calder for me, arriving in Charlton late on Thursday afternoon.
After stopping at the supermarket for some food for the weekend I arrived at the house to find that Randall, the local earth moving contractor had prepared the base for the new water tank during the week. Our new 22,500 litre tank arrives on 10th October!
After unloading the car I pottered in the workshop until it got too cold (even though the day was sunny and warm) and retired to the study to catch up on some work email.
Saturday was, as usual, mowing day. It had been three weeks since the last mow as the weather on the previous trip was wet and windy, but not so today…the skies were blue the sun was shining and the grass was long (and the weeds even longer) so after a round of the block on the ride-on I dragged out the push mower to do all the bits the ride on couldn’t mow, then progressed to the whipper snipper and finally, for all those bits too awkward to get to, like the woodpiles and behind the shed, I filled the the sprayer with roundup and rounded up the weeds!
Saturday I continued to rip plaster from the kitchen walls in readiness for the cement sheet lining, which went up in fits and starts due to my occasional pausing to check the grand final scores… what a flop that was!
Fortunately that was the only flop for the weekend with the work to reline the kitchen walls only stopping when I ran out of cement sheet at around lunchtime on Sunday. The final result was significant – plaster removed, window removed and the hole reclad with weatherboards, insulation inserted in the wall cavity and cement sheet affixed. All in all a very productive weekend.
So by mid afternoon I had packed up the tools, cleaned away the rubble and left for home, knowing I was another weekend closer to a new kitchen.
What the kitchen looked like the day we first inspected The Charlton House
What the kitchen looks like today
What we hope the kitchen will soon look like.