Time for an Update

I guess I have just left this blog too long without an update and part of the reason is knowing where to start.
A lot of these renovations were completed last year and it took so much work.
Weekend after weekend .
We took the place right back to bare studs.
The whole Humpy was lined with masonite which I guess was what they did back when the Humpy was built . Masonite is not a great product , it moves and the joints crack and it also has its own smell. The roof had also been leaking so the masonite was stained with watermarks. The man of the Humpy decided that he had no other option than to gut her and start from scratch.
When I first walked into this place she had a great feel about her and I thought we could just paint her white, fill her with painted furniture and she would look great and be a great place for friends and family to chill out , party , holiday or what ever. Oh I forgot to mention I thought that would take just a few weekends.
The man of the Humpy (perfectionist) could see far deeper than that, probably had the same end vision but getting there was vastly different, that meant stripping her right back and starting from scratch.
I have decided the easiest way to show you our beloved Humpy is snippets here and there and hopefully you will get the general idea.
This picture is the original kitchen circa l960 I think the most up to date item would be the kitchen sink , nothing to be selvaged from this kitchen it all had to go in the skip. Just had to show you the front door, don't you love the divine shade of pink.
Between looking at this place the first time and then returning to probably making an offer the vendor decided The Humpy needed a coat of paint. When we first inspected her she was cream when we returned she was purple with a bright pink front door, clearly the vendor was colourblind.

This was the fuel to ignite the gas cooktop ,don't you just love the connection point, straight through the wall at the front of the house

you can see here the wonderful gas cooktop. The oven worked ok but I was very reluctant to use anything in this place. I did use the oven for keeping things warm.

Look at that lovely wallpaper circa 1960. It just had to go.

Back to bare studs as I said

You can see the remnants of the bathroom

Transformation. The new kitchen. This is standing at the front door looking toward the back of The Humpy.

This view is looking into the corner from the lounge room. This is replacing the first pic of the kitchen I showed you.

In the next few days I will update you with the bathroom.

Pizza Fun

My sister Elain joined John and I here at the Humpy for Christmas, she gave John a pizza stone for Christmas. Last night we decided to christen the stone.
There were no instructions with the stone , but after watching many cooking shows on T.V. we remembered that the stone had to be hot. I am not usually a fan of cooking with yeast but dragged out 'The Donna Hay Magazines' of which I have many (all of them in fact) as I am a huge fan.
The dough was so easy to make and was in my opinion a success. It did everything it was supposed to do. (rise)

Once the dough was reacting how it should there was great excitement , so on with the toppings.

The first pizza was to be a Garlic one (once again a Donna suggestion).

Fresh Garlic mixed with Olive Oil and painted onto the base then sprinkled with Fresh Parmesan cheese, scattered with Sage leaves (fresh from the Humpy herb garden).

Here is the result, but we had a slight problem, I think you can see the edges are showing signs of burn't pizza base. It still tasted great though.

Next pizza was to be Potato ,Rosemary and boccincini, but by now the stone was far too hot and the base was black but we still ate it but by now we were starting to rethink the stone heat thing.

Of course we had to have the meat lovers for the man of the Humpy and this had hot hungarian Salami with fresh tomatoes that Elain prepared from a Jamie Oliver tutorial she had seen on Foxtel. This was topped with fresh Mozzarella. Once again spectacular but burnt base.

We weren't going to give up until such time as we had perfected the base, we decided that the stone did not have to be over the open grill section and didn't need to be as hot.

Our final Pizza was fresh tomatoes, mozzarella and basil leaves drizzled with olive oil.

Finally we had got it right but by now we were all so full that we put it in the fridge so the man of the Humpy can have it reheated for his lunch today.

Rummaging

We are back at the Humpy for Christmas and today whilst out buying last minute supplies I was wheeled past the tip shop (aka The Shed). I wondered why John was keen to come with me to buy flowers , he obviously had another agenda. I have to be in the mood to rummage in this place as it is a bit yukey but we had a good find. John was actually looking for some old fence palings to make us a table so I just wandered off into this place and look what I found.

A new coffee table and an armchair. The armchair cost us $5.00 and the table was $25.00.

Now I know you are all saying yuk, but stayed tuned they will both have a new life.

These pieces will have their new home in the guest accomodation which is under the main house.

Finally some Sun

As you can see from my previous post we have had our share of rain and overcast conditions.
A couple of weekends back my brother decided to come visit and see our humpy for himself , as I had kept promising I would put the photos on the net but due to my slackness I hadn't got around to it.
Unfortunately the weather was awful and this place does not look anything without the sun shining so these photos are for him. Maybe he will come back soon !

Just look at the colour of that water , it was so clear , very inviting.

Temperatures were just perfect about 25 degrees and the water temperature 19 degrees.

Rain Rain and More Rain

Yesterday we had the most amazing storms and with that brought huge amounts of rain.
I think we broke the drought buying this place as all it has done since is rain rain and storm. John had his car parked on the street yesterday , we looked out the window and wondered how come we had a waterfall raging thru our garden, it seemed a stick had got lodged by the wheel of his car and then a build up of leaf litter so it sent the rain water raging off course. it was lovely but not good for the rock wall as it could have been in danger of collapsing and at the moment changing the rock wall is not a priority.

The Outside

This is why we decided to purchase our humpy because we are just across the road from this.It is so lovely to walk along this beach in the early morning or evening.
As it is now 18mths since we commemced this project I thought I would just give you a look around the outside of the Humpy, so you to can wonder what possessed us.These photos were taken when we were considering the purchase.
You can see how close we are to the water


Don't you just love the chair line up

A very steep drive, but great for building up the calf muscles walking up and down this

Settlement and moving in

After final settlement on the 30th day of March 2007 we needed to move in some belongings so that we could have something to sleep on and we needed something to cook on. (I was not going to use any of the cooking facilities inside this Humpy)

This load on our trailer looked as disgusting as the place we had just purchased.

I was surprised John did not cover this load as he is fanatical when it comes to loading the trailer.

This load looks very ordinary just fit for the Humpy I guess.

We moved into the self contained 'granny flat' underneath the main shack. This was to be our home away from home to begin the renovation of Our Humpy.

I referred to this 'granny flat' as one step up from camping, the reason, it had a flushing toilet and running hot water but other than that it was disgusting and I needed lots of medicine in the evening to help me go to sleep very quickly.