Plans for the Big House

Were we, perhaps, less masochistic people, Dan and I would probably have worked towards renovating the little house then lived in it while we did the big one.

Logical.

As it is, though, we did not take that course of action, and we are now at a point where we have a massive amount of very dirty work to do in our house and nowhere to live while we do it.

We have come up with a solution, and I've drawn some highly technical floor plans to help explain it.

This is our floor plan as it is now. It is not at all to scale.

Basically, what we're going to do is convert our back verandah into a kitchen for the process of the restoration of the main kitchen and dining areas, as it already has a sink which we can use - plus plenty of open space for our temporary benches and cupboards (which is all we have in our actual kitchen currently, so moving it is relatively simple).

We're going to block access to half the house by putting up temporary fencing on the front verandah and keeping the door at the top of the hall closed.

And, we're going to have to  remove some VJs from wall that separates the bathroom and the back verandah. In the bottom right of the bathroom (on this drawing, anyway) is an airing cupboard. Access to the bathroom and boot room will be through the airing cupboard.

Quirky, no?

Everything else - kitchen, pantry, dining, hallway, post office room and most of the front verandah - will be out of bounds until the messy work on the left hand side of the house is done.

Here's another quick scribble showing the floor plan we've decided on for the house - but this is very much the long-term plan. The main changes are the opening of the kitchen into the rooms either side of it, the conversion of the bathroom and bootroom into a laundry, the conversion of the back verandah and third bedroom into a master suite, and the installation of a family bathroom around the existing loo.



Where possible, we've tried to keep plumbed-in rooms where there is already plumbing to keep costs down.

So, now I've got a few minor things to do to try and get the back verandah feeling clean and functional enough to be a space we are happy to cook and eat in for the next few months.

And Dan has a lot of major things to do to start working on the left-hand side of our house. He's come home from the local salvage yard with a ute-load of VJs today, so I think he's getting geared up.