Settlement has gone through! We are now the owners of the old bowling club in town. Or at least we are owners of the shell of the old club and half of the first green and the car park. Ian has been busy doing demo work on site to get the building back to a blank slate (the shire kindly allowed us early access before it was officially ours).
He has pulled down all the ceilings, jacked up all the tiles out of the male and female toilets/changerooms, pulled up the solid jarrah floor boards out of one room (and found white ants unfortunately) knocked out all the toilets, all of which has been hard work, but the thing that gave him the most trouble was ripping the urinal out. They put those things in reinforced to heck.
In a perfect world we'll be in by Christmas, but I've watched enough episodes of
Grand Designs to know that it is a rare project that ever runs on time or budget, so I'm not holding my breath. I've told the other half I'll be happy as long as this is our last winter in this current house. Last winter I resorted to wearing a snow jacket inside to try and keep warm, ridiculous! With a new baby in the house though I've found a supplier for firewood and I'm going to run the terribly ineffective wood burner all day every day in an effort to keep her lips turning blue as I walk her from the laundry to the bedroom after bath time.
I'm pretty excited at the thought of being back in a house we own. I'll post our progress as we go along.
Mx
all photos taken by Ian except for the four tile mosaic in the middle
