construction destruction

Amidst all the painting going around here our handy man on the farm, Woody, has been getting busy around the farmhouse also. First stop: the carport roof.

Oh dear. Here you can see the new corrugated tin Woody is putting on instead of the older tin which had zero drainage. To begin with we thought we were going to have to put a whole new slant on the roof (meaning bit of a bigger job) but with the corrugated tin instead of the older flat style tin and without the cypress trees next to the carport to drop a heap of leaves, branches and gunk on the roof we decided no bigger slant was needed.

Here's how rotten the wood was though after zero drainage. Poor Mr Woody nearly went straight through the old roof!

And here it is mid-construction. New roof (left), old roof (right). Aaaahhh new roof...

Due to the carport roof drainage issues we had some serious problems in the storage room at the back of the carport. We had three buckets in there to contain the leaks but with all the rain this season it was at times fruitless, which kind of defeated the purpose of having a handy storage room if all the furniture and things were going to get wet anyway! So Woody fixed that with the new roof, no more buckets - hurruh! 

A few months ago Mr M picked up a cheap window from a nearby town's old supermarket (he's nifty like that). It was almost the perfect size to replace the carport storage room's old louvre windows, half of which were smashed so basically the whole window needed replacing anyway. Woody was all over that job too (he's nifty like that).

Next stop: the back porch. Once upon a time our back porch had a little skylight, I'm sure in it's hey day it looked a little like it does now, but when we arrived at the farmhouse we hardly even knew it existed. The laser-light was black with grime and slime and filth - totally defeating the purpose of it being above the kitchen window to allow light into the dark cave of a room. It also had some drainage issues, making the surrounds rotten and harbouring some serious water. Woody cut me up some brand spanking new laser-light and popped that in too. I can not tell you how much it has brightened my cave-like kitchen. Amazing.

Next stop: the front porch guttering. Drainage issues again. Guttering basically doing nothing, falling off and needing replacing. So rather than having the painters paint bad guttering we had Woody fix 'er up. Inevitably, Woody pulled it apart and found it was a much bigger problem and ended up having to replace most of the front porch bearers and framing due to all the rotten wood. But at least it's done now.

Notice how the house colour closer up looks more taupe than grey?? It's weird. Driving up the driveway I kind of don't like it, it's far too grey, but up close and next to the white windows it's exactly what I wanted. My mum thinks it's because I don't yet have much garden up against the house. I think it will look different again when the painters finally finish and the base boards are the darker double strength to 'ground' the house. What do you think?

Images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella