Forever House #43

Meet Ronnie

Monday 1st May 2017 I have the opportunity to finish the Forever House this year after thirteen years.

Regularly writing the blog really helped me stay motivated in 2013. I'm sure it will again now as I aim to have her finished, again, by the October Long Weekend 2017.

Last year, I was refinancing at home, to convert my back shed into a cottage for me so I could rent out the main house. A builder friend convinced me to include enough to pay a builder to come out and smash the remainder of the Forever House build. I borrowed extra on his reckoning. About seven months later here I am with a builder, Ronnie, here for a month to get the house to lock-up. I cannot believe my luck, to have an experienced builder come and camp and enjoy the challenge of this project. Ronnie came out a month or so ago and did a materials list. We made a plan to make a start on Monday May 1st.

Ronnie's home away from home

We shopped last Saturday for as many materials as Ronnie's ute would carry (ceiling sheets mainly, and timber to fit out the window openings), and drove out to the site. We met at Bunnings again today, and loaded up the rest. I towed the camper trailer for Ronnie's home away from home. His ute was laden with work horses and tools. We got to the farm at 1pm and have been unloading, cleaning, whipper-snipping, pitching the camper trailer, basically preparing the site ever since.

Shower

Temporary kitchen in bathroom

                     It is over three years since I made up the bed in the caravan on my Currawinya plot. How excited am I?  I've moved the kitchen from the 2nd bedroom to the bathroom with Ronnie's help. He's made a private shower under an old tank stand beside the house. He whipper-snipped tracks from house to loo to camper trailer to my caravan to shower.

We ate Thai Green Chicken Curry by the fire and are now in bed clean, tired and rpreparing to start work tomorrow. 


Tuesday 2nd May 2017
Evenin' all, two days in and one to to go for me, three to go for Ronnie. I think we're doing great. He's very organised, and after all this time away from it the building site needed bring back to something workable..We have both been organising the space to be able to get on safely and productively.

I'm cosy in my caravan, which had a few rat shits and needed a soapy bucket of hot water to give everything a once over. I threw away the sheet on the bed and the two covering the seats at the table. We set the camper trailer up for Ronnie and he's pretty happy in there. Lucky I haven't sold that yet (if anyone is interested it will be for sale sometime soon! let me know). Ronnie had planned to use his swag - which would have been fine, I'm sure, short term - but a month is long when you are working hard and a nest for all weathers is necessary I feel.

Today I rose and ventured down to the house, Ronnie was on his first coffee and fag. The kitchen is awesome. About 6.30am and he'd been up an hour. The conversation about where what when and how launched us in to action. Ronnie was walking around eating his Nutrigrain already in work mode.

We had to set up my mud-making station, whilst allowing him free reign to also work. We decided if he did a few more ceiling sheets over the verandah (following on from where Dave, Jeff, Ken and I had sheeted previously), that would give me an under cover corner for the mud mixer and my ingredients. We had to work out a track that I could push the barrow with sifted dirt and then with mud to where I need to lay mud.

before

during

after

Ronnie's work area needed some serious consideration. Putting up ceiling sheets on the verandah, the eaves of which hang out beyond the edge of the verandah floor. There is old pallet scaffolding set up outside the verandah from when we last put up ceiling sheets, but the lantana and cats claw had totally grown through it and taken over. I set about cutting away the lantana and cats claw - firstly using a saw - useless, and then changing to the long handled secateurs - almost awesome. I have bruises on the inside of my left thigh where I wedged one handle of the secateurs so that I could squeeze the other handle closed with both hands, cutting through the lantana with great effort. Ronnie refreshed the scaffolding and started putting up sheets using the sheet lifter we'd hired. The ceilings are 3m high so it would have been impossible without that lifter.

Once I got rid of the overgrowth, I readied the dirt pile to dig and sift more dirt. That entails removing 6m sheets of rusty iron off the ground which stops the grass growing over the pile in between diggings. I got a good work out - feeling it and it was only 10am. Every so often Ronnie needed me to be on the other end of what he was doing - I cannot believe my luck that he has agreed to come out here and help me get this Forever House to lock up. Between us we have cleaned up all the throughfares and I am looking around seeing the finished house in my mind's eye.

I chopped straw, gathered sand and water, swept up a barrow full of dry mud off the floor and got to mudding. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy the process. Ronnie methodically put up ceiling sheets, moving scaffolding and sheet lifter along the deck.





At 4pm after two barrow loads of mud made and laid I went to the river for a swim wash. I'd used the flash new shower room the night before but needed a river fix this arv. Breast stroked up to my little island and back - about 200m return swim.


 Ronnie kept going on the ceiling. At 5 we lit a fire in the 20ltr tin can outside and had a few drinks and chats. Quite different for me having done these pushes largely on my own previously. Veg lasagna for dinner and now bed - exhausted and happy and very excited about this push.

Saturday 6th May 2017
After spending a similar Wednesday out there working I came on home to work in Lismore Thursday and Friday. Ronnie stayed working on the ceiling. I was glad to hear he got home safe and sound on Friday eve - there is no range at the farm so out of contact when out there until coming back into Casino.

All that work took it's toll on my poor old Radial nerve it seems and I have been struggling a little with a dead right arm, and a hand that feels like it is on fire - mainly when in bed laying on my back. I've had some amazing Bowen treatments thanks to a friend who knows that magical knack and am feeling much better now. I will try to go a little less like a bull at a gate in order to survive this month.

This weekend is earmarked to write the blog and to work on stained glass highlight windows for above the big sliding doors onto the verandah. I am re working the panels of a bird light I made way back in about 1986. Ronnie needs the windows to either be finished or to have the exact measurements to work with next week.

Ronnie and I meet up on Monday morning to do it all again. Will write next weekend and report on the progress we make. Thanks for being out there in blog land reading and taking an interest in my project.

Forever House #42

May 2017
Hello Forever House Readers. It's time to pick up where I left off back in January 2014. My daughter is putting pressure on me which is kind of her.

I've been going to post a blog for a while, to indicate there is movement at the Forever House station and a big final push is in the pipeline. But every time I sit down to write I feel compelled to pick up where I left off - with my darling J getting sick. Which stops me because I want to share the story of Jeff' but I want to do it justice so cannot rush. Watch this space for a link to that blog when I settle to write it.

In a nutshell, since I signed off, things didn't work out the way we hoped. Jeff's Glioblastoma Multiforme claimed him. We did everything we could to fight it - but it is a brain tumour that cannot be beat, a fact we chose to ignore until about twelve months in. By that time we had both accepted that he would die. After the fight we put up, we knew we had done all we could. He was amazing throughout the whole sixteen months - right up to the day he died on the 2nd April 2015. He was fifty-seven years old. The man I had hoped to grow old and grey with. Thankfully he was not scared of dying but was very sad to be leaving the life we had created in the nine and a half years we were together. Neither of us would have missed being with each other - even though it was cut way too short. I feel lucky to have had him as my best friend and husband. And I feel honoured to have been able to walk with him as he needed me more and more. Jeff is the bravest man I know and I am so proud of him, and of myself. I carry him with me always. And thank him for continuing to look after me even now he is not here.

This link takes you to a digital story I made in December 2015 called A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words. Thanks for watching and handing on to anyone you think may benefit from its message.








Since losing Jeff (and would you believe my Dad Frank four days before), I have been juggling loss with acceptance and working out where and how my own life goes from there. It didn't take long, when I got back to work, to realise I could choose not to work a stressful job anymore - and instead to keep my well being front and centre, seeking pleasure and awareness from simple things and creative pursuits. There is certainly a lot of that to get on with - all my unfinished projects - the biggest being the Forever House.


In the two years since Jeff and Dad left us - Mum and I have been widows together which has been a weird blessing. I am so proud of her and her resilience and her zest for living every day, sad as she is that Dad is no longer sharing it with her. I realise so much of my own reslience and zest for life comes from her. Mum is adorable - everybody just loves her.




Here are a few pics of what I have put my energies into before being ready to get back to the Forever House.

Jeff and I began this renovation at home (Tuckurimba) back in 2012 but ran out of money. I finished it while he was ill with the incredible help of friends and trades. It is beautiful. You may note that the pink wall lights and the feature splash-back tiles were purchased in Melbourne for the Forever House, but as with the arch windows, which were also bought for the Forever House many years ago, this renovation pirloined them.
 

Jeff came back to this room for his last 3 months

The extension on the big house at Home

I turned the shed in our back yard at home (Tuckurimba) into a cottage for me. Jeff had his workshop on the left of this building, the right side was the shed shed, the upstairs was storage for everything that didn't fit into the house. There was a carport off to the right as well which I enclosed and turned into the kitchen and bathroom laundry. A great builder Tex and his wife Loida worked with me. I moved out of the big house and into this cottage at the end of October 2016. I am still to make sense of all the remaining belongings that don't fit into my tiny house. The cull has been overwhelming with all of my own and Jeff's and some of my kids belongings. I'll get there in the end. A container now acts as a shed and whatever fits in there is all I can keep! And of course I am still holding so much stuff that will furnish the Forever House when it is complete (five months time).

The shed at Home which became my cottage

My cottage taking shape

In about June of 2016 I bought a surf mat and fins and have become a mat surfer as often as I can get to the beach. I also spend as much time walking the beach as I can.

As a means of getting to the beach more often without having to drive back and forth I replaced my camper trailer with the DonnaVan which has been an awesome addition to my life. 

Jeff's electronics business is now my concern, with the help of my cousin Jess, supplying a local business with boards crucial to the small crane/s they make, which sit on the back of a ute and move beehives around by remote control.
I work part time at my old community sector organisation so that I keep contact with colleagues and the important work done.

I want to finish the Forever House and turn it into the Retreat I have dreamed of for many years. The grass is very long and everything is filthy but other than that, as always, she has waited patiently for my return; and her turn for completion has come. I know Jeff and Dad are sending me strength and motivation for this final leg of a huge build. Both those men supported the project to their utmost. They will forever be indelibly in it's DNA.

Forever House #41 - Intermission

Tuesday 14th January 2014
Hello Forever House Readers. Happy New Year.
Six weeks or so after my last post, I'm notifying you of an unexpected intermission - a pause in proceedings regarding the Forever House. I have been unable to visit Currawinya since that time, and on this occasion I am writing from a different location all together...


My husband Jeff and I are in the waiting room at North Coast Cancer Institute at Lismore, awaiting the Radiology Registrar to call us in. He's completing a couple of medical reports that we require to claim Disability Support and Carer Payments. The long and short of it is that my darling man was diagnosed with a brain tumour on 11th December and had brain surgery on 17th December at the Gold Coast University Hospital. He has recovered brilliantly from that and will now embark on a regime of conventional treatment, namely radiation and chemo, for the next many months.

We have become vegans, largely, who eat some species of fish, and no sugar. Jeff has retired from his seven day a week electronics business, and I have reduced my work hours and now work from home. Jeff can't drive. He's extremely well, and looking healthy and leaner. He's on a combination of natural remedies, embracing visualisation, positive thinking, and hopes to add meditation to his days.










We swim in the sea and lay on a blanket under the fig tree in our paddock every other day.

After the initial shock and subsequent fear settled momentarily on us in the first few days, we made a pact that we would not allow our thoughts to go into dark places. No one knows the outcome of this, including all the doctors and their statistics; and we gain nothing by wasting our precious time and energy fretting about the unknown.That is our mantra and is working for us.
 
We are positive, peaceful, enjoying and appreciating all the people, nature, time together, support that surrounds us, and we're spending lots of time learning about food and a chemical free lifestyle.
We will pop out the other end of this - a bit scuffed maybe, but resilient and counting our blessings.

In the meantime, the Forever House has obviously taken a back seat for a while. I'm not too worred about that. It has stood there in its' various stages of progress for these past nine years or more, none the worse for any changes in circumstances that I may have. She is a patient project. 

My Currawinya friend and helper Dave will go on with the metal work to bring the house to lock up. My other Currawinya friend Phil will hang the resized doors. Jeff and I hope to go out for a couple of days at some stage so that he can instruct me while I run the remaining power cabling through the ceiling and down the walls. Dave will also start on the timber slatted walls in the bedrooms.

Eventually the Forever House will be complete.
But in the meantime we've got other important work to do.
So see you here some time in the not too distant future.
D and J xxx