The hard work begins

We started work on the Castle straight away. In charge Boss (Kirra's Dad) with Mrs Boss (Kirra's mum) by his side and trusty side-kick Boss Junior (Kirra's little brother) was roped in to help aswell. (Boss Jr. will probably kill me for not only uploading this photo of him to our blog but also to facebook. Whoopsy!)

The first step was to re-stump & level the flooring in the the front of the house which included the master bedroom, kitchen & lounge room. We pulled up some of the floor boards in the kitchen to gain access to below the house.

 The "Man Cave" under the house 

Boss brought in a laser level which spins around putting a level line around the walls to see how much we would have to raise the floor to be back in level.
The only problem with the spinny-roundy level was if there's too much movement in the room, it would stop and reset itself... So much fun with an almost 2 year old running around in the house.

Red laser level line around the lounge room*

Once all the rooms in the front of the house had been marked on with a level line then began the task of slowly raising the house millimetre by millimetre back into alignment.

 *Just to clarify, the laser line around the room isn't how high the house needed to be raised.
We worked out the common level in all the rooms and raised the floor to where it needed to be.

While the boys were measuring, cutting & placing stumps, Mrs Boss & I were mixing concrete by hand shovel. Definitely not the easiest way to do it but we had some laughs when we accidently splashed each other with concrete. Warning! Do not get it in your eyes! IT HURTS!

Brad & Boss Junior cutting stumps

Brad putting a stump in

Concreting the stumps in

Mrs Boss mixing the concrete

Have you ever done re-stumping or concreting?

The Castle is officially our own!

On 1 July 2011, the settlement was granted for our first house. In the past it was something we had only ever dreamt of - owning our own house. We never even gave a thought about renovating especially with a young child. We know other people do it but we just didn't think we would have the patience or knowledge to be able to. And to be completely honest, we really still can't believe that we are.

Here is a rough plan of the house "before" - keep in mind this definitely isn't to scale one bit but atleast you'll have some idea of what we are talking about in our posts. :) 

The house was originally built sometime around the 1950's. Maybe earlier or maybe later, not really sure.

The Castle's exterior is a white vinyl/plastic cladding or siding.


It has an enclosed porch entrance, 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom, kitchen, small bathroom, small laundry with an extra extra wide hallway.

To the rear of the block, there is a single car shed, an old shack which might have been an old laundry, a garden shed, outdoor toilet, large clothes line, a mature lemon tree & an overgrown wattle. And a bunch of weeds.


Alot of work but even more potiential.

Our castle

Enclosed porch entrance

  Bathroom

Laundry

Kitchen & Dining area

 Lounge room

 Part of the backyard

So that's our castle.

This is our first blog, so let us know what you think.