In what is becoming the norm, the trip up the Calder to The Charlton House on the Thursday after Christmas was with trailer and ute fully loaded with furniture, boxes and building materials.

Our goal this trip was to get the entry hall to near complete, a feat we achieved with extremely pleasing results.

Again we took separate cars, Shirleen and Skylar in the VW and me in the ute, although I had a passenger… mum was returning home to Charlton after spending Christmas with us in Somerville.

As usual the first task on arrival was to unload the trailer which contained a wardrobe, kitchen hutch and a number of replacement doors I had purchased at the bargain basement price of $40 each – $130 cheaper than RRP. They weren’t quite the right size but didn’t need much trimmed off to fit our door frames.

As we were having friends visit in the New Year we though it best we make what is going to be the master bedroom more livable for our guests, the main task being to complete the underlay on the floor, the first thing however was to apply a second coat of paint to the entry hall walls, before starting on the underlay. By Friday evening we had the bedroom feeling a lot more homely, even including air conditioning! Skylar was not impressed though, as the noise from the nail gun and compressor freaked her out, and her way of preventing further work was to sit on me when I took a break so that I couldn’t get up to start again.

Unfortunately during Friday we discovered that the fridge which we had repaired last trip was again malfunctioning. With temperatures predicted in the 30’s and only a small bar fridge as backup we had no choice but to make an emergency trip to Harvey Norman in Bendigo on Saturday morning to buy a new one. Whilst in Bendigo we visited Bunnings to buy a new light for the back verandah given the old one had gone out in sympathy with the fridge!

So it wasn’t until Saturday afternoon that we were able to continue work on the entry hall. Whilst I set up for trimming the doors down, Shirleen finished off sanding and stripping the door frame ready for the trim to be painted. Over the next couple of days we hung one of the doors including fitting a new latch, installed new door stop to the frames and finished the bulk of the paint on the trim. The end result was better than we had hoped for.

In between coats of paint we spent time mowing and other odd jobs around the place, having afternoon tea with neighbours, eating and drinking 😄, before our guests arrived around lunchtime on Tuesday. The next couple of days we relaxed around the house, spending time with our guests, including a drive out to Wooroonook Lakes and then on to Wycheproof where we had a nice lunch at the bakery there, Wednesday night culminating in a BBQ dinner and lots of wine.

Thursday morning we all packed before leaving for home, but not before loading the trailer with tools required for some maintenance at our Somerville house. Once the others had left I took advantage of the absence of dogs to spay the entire Waugh street block with Bindi spray, using my newly acquired boom sprayer on the back of the ride-on  mower, making short work of what would otherwise have been a long hot job.

Cant wait for the next trip during which the remaning doors will be hung and painted, and the floor prepped for coverings, bringing our first renovated room to completion.