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You are here: Home / Archives for House Renovation

House Renovation

December 2021 Photos

January 23, 2022 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Miss Joy found Daddy taking a nap!

I was reading aloud to the family one evening, and Miss Joy started bringing me books to read to her!

She informed Simon one evening that she was going to drive somewhere, so he asked her where her driver’s license was. She didn’t have one, so he gave her this business card. She got busy diligently signing it.

For Science, we made a model of a water molecule.

For a couple of days, the girls’ favorite activity was making soup, using flowers and leaves.

We bought a cockatiel for Nathan, since his budgie died. This little bird is named Jo-Jo. He’s still a baby, so he looked rather ragged when we got him. He’s looking better now, and getting slightly tamer.

The day before Christmas, we started working on the house. These are the before pictures of the sides we are redoing.

It didn’t take long to rip off the old weatherboards!

The flax bush in front of the house bloomed in December. We enjoyed watching the tuis come to drink the nectar.

When two or three tuis showed up at the same time, there were always raised feathers and arguing. It was pretty funny!

This is the view from our kitchen window. Actually, this WAS the view; all those pine trees at the left are gone now, and we can see the house behind them at the top of that hill.

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: House Renovation, Random Photos

Hallway Makeover

August 8, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

The day before Christmas, we replaced the carpet in the living room. It looked wonderful! We had enough left to do two more rooms, so we decided to do the hallway next. It still had the old carpet from the 1930s, which was very pretty when new, but by now…. It was quite threadbare. This is what it looked like:

IMG_7505

When I took that picture in early February, I had already packed all our books and we had taken the bookshelves out (this hallway is wide enough that we have made it into our library, with bookshelves on both sides of the room). Elijah finished ripping out the carpet so it was all ready to lay the new carpet when he and his boss had time to do it. This next picture shows Elijah working on laying the carpet, with his boss overseeing him.IMG_7537

The end of the hall toward the laundry room/entry to the house looked like this. In May or June, I got the idea that floor-to-ceiling bookshelves would be a much more efficient use of the space, so asked Elijah if he would be interested in building them. He was! I used my spare time one day to draw up plans, and then one day when Elijah had an unexpected day off, he went to town and bought wood for building the shelves.

19-IMG_7681Over the next month or so, Elijah worked on the shelves when he had time, and once they were in place, I painted them. It took a few more weeks for the wood to completely dry, but last week I was able to fill them with books. Instead of having books here and in our bedroom, they are all here now, and very well organized. I even labeled the shelves so everyone knows where each category of books is supposed to be! (We’ll see how long that lasts.) I dreamed, when I was a little girl, of being a librarian. It looks like that dream has come true!

2-IMG_77158-IMG_7720

Elijah was excited to put the games on the second-to-top shelf yesterday. They  had been in a deep closet, where they were hard to find. Now, we can easily see which one we want, even if not all of us can easily reach them!

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: House Renovation

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The Family:


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