Queen’s Birthday Weekend

We had big plans for Queen’s Birthday weekend.

I had taken a day off on the Friday and we were aiming to get to Charlton early afternoon after picking up a trailer load of hardboard underlay from the local timber yard first thing in the morning.

Unfortunately a truck fire on the Monash freeway meant we didn’t arrive at the house until late afternoon. After unpacking there was enough time to re-plumb some of the grey water discharge from the bathroom in order to reduce eliminate some boggy areas of the back yard, and to cut the remaining underlay around the fireplace in the kitchen before retiring for the evening, but not before cranking up the heating for what was anticipated to be a cold night.

Saturday morning we awoke to a typical Charlton winter’s morning, crisp temperatures but beautiful sunshine. Our plans for the remainder of the weekend were to complete the installation of the temporary kitchen then move on to renailing floorboards and installing underlay in the lounge room with the aim of being in a position to seal the kitchen and lounge floors immediately before leaving for home on Monday.

After gluing and stapling the underlay I had cut the night before we turned to assembling the remaining recycled office cupboards we had earmarked for pantry and “stove” (see the pictures for an explanation). We did take time out from working inside the house on Saturday afternoon to clear away some of the debris left in the yard after the restumping and mow the “grass” (weeds) grown fairly tall since out last visit.

By evening we were extremely pleased to have both a very functional kitchen which should see us through the next few years, and a nicely mowed green yard, a far cry from the brown dustbowl it had been only weeks earlier.

Sunday morning’s weather was almost a carbon copy of Saturdays, although probably a little colder, with some frost blanketing the freshly cut grass.

After repairing a section of floor in the doorway between the kitchen and lounge, we set about nailing the floor and laying the underlay, working out an extremely efficient production line process to glue and staple the underlay whilst efficiently recharging the glue and staple guns without missing a beat – teamwork at it’s best!

We had earlier received an invitation to our neighbour’s for afternoon tea, so finished up for the day at around 3:00 and headed to Ken and Hazel’s for coffee, scones and muffins followed by a wine or two when we returned home for the evening.

Monday morning was again cold but sunny, and the only task remaining was to clear the lounge room of tools, timber offcuts and empty glue cartridges, and thoroughly vacuuming in preparation for sealing the underlay, which we finished by late morning.

With the car and trailer packed the last job was to pick some oranges from Philip and Janet’s orange tree and then head off home, happy with our achievements over the weekend.