Friday 1 August 2008

Home Improvement

CIMG4026 In the Post Office the other day I saw a rain gauge for only $5, which seemed like a good deal, and it looked like a fun thing to do, considering we get such heroic amounts of rain.

I figured Littletree would like to measure the rainfall. If she gets really interested in it, we might look at charting and making graphs, averages, weather. It's all maths, science, geography, meteorology, statistics... Or it could be just some fun :) If she's not in to it, well, I'm pretty interested to know exactly how much rain we get.CIMG4028

It's been so freakin freezing here the last week, and let's be honest; while our little cottage is wonderful in so many ways, well-built and insulated it is not. Half of the exterior walls are made of thin wooden planks,the windows are all very thin panes of glass, and there are some massive holes and cracks everywhere.

So... yeah, we've been huddled in our coats and blankets, shivering, even with the fire cranking full blast.

It all got too much, and as soon as we had a bright sunny day, we did a lot of work on improving things. I cut up an old foam mattress and used it to fill some of the bigger gaps. We covered the floor in Littletree's playroom (one of the worst drafts), with a thick blanket, we nailed strips of old carpet to the door and window frames to stop drafts coming in, covered over a broken window...

CIMG4032Then we got busy building some shelves - the back wall of the house was just a bare space of yucky brown wood, and we had all our assorted medicines and bathroom-cabinet-type stuff stacked in a huge messy pile on a bench. So, I decided to build a few shelves and put towel hooks up.

Foolishly, I forgot to take any before pics, but here's the finished product: MUCH better :)

So far so good; the house feels much tidier, and warmer too.

 

6 comments:

  1. I love home improvements, especially when it isn't me doing the work *lol*

    The weather gauge looks very interesting.. I wasn't sure if your tongue was firmly in cheek when you posted it, but DO you get a lot of rain fall where you are? I've read that certain parts of Australia are experiencing serious rain deprivation, is that correct?

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  2. ha ha carol :)
    well, I generally do live with my tongue stuck in my cheek, but in this case, we really do get unsane amounts of rain. not too far south they've had about 8 years of drought, and starting to ration water, but where we are... well, we had over 2Metres of rain in January alone!!! (okay, that was a big hurricane, but even without psycho storms, we get loads of rain here)

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  3. Isn't it amazing that despite there not being a huge space between locations that two areas could have two completely weather conditions... ah, the earth never ceases to amaze!!

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  4. The rain gauge looks like fun!

    Those home improvements do feel so good, don't they? :)

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  5. So, have you tried it yet? How much rain have you had recently?

    The Broken Man

    http://theblogofabrokenman.blogspot.com/

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  6. the irony is that it hasn't rained since we got it! LOL

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Thanks for your lovely words, witty banter and entertaining discussion :)