It has made such a difference now that the chimney and wall have been knocked out. Even though the posts are still supporting the roof, we still get the general feel for what its going to be like. Once the kitchen is complete the living area will be fantastic :) The french doors into the office/study, comes off the lounge room. Leigh made a fantastic office table (very art deco :) I think he's enjoying being a handy man.
The sun isn't setting now until 9pm so we're enjoying gardening and spending time outdoors on the house after work. We have planted a vegie patch (which you can see the strawberries), some native grasses, trees and also beautiful smelly jasmine to crawl up the side of the house. They are all babies at the moment, but hopefully by this time next year our gardens will be looking and smelling beautiful. The two girls, Leanne and Jamie pictured with Mira, live next door and often come over to play with Mira and help us with the gardening. The retaining wall was recycled from our chimney bricks. Its quite a rough job, but we liked the 'organic' look and hope for vines to crawl all over it. There will also be a wooden deck/path, which will be nice for barbecues and on warm sunny days.
Well the wall between our kitchen and lounge room just seemed to have vanished into thin air... well almost, after all of the gyp-rock dust disappeared and after endless vacuuming and mopping. We now only have 6 vertical posts holding up our 5 tonne tile roof... so we're kinda hoping some builders will hurry up and get their quotes to us for a beam before the roof collapses! (Leigh seems to think its okay, so i trust that). The building services in Dunedin are very busy and because of this they seem to have extreme prices for their services.
We also spent a weekend knocking out our fireplace and chimney that was between the lounge room and kitchen. Doing this has made a big difference on the space in our main room. It has also given us a massive pile of bricks to use on a retaining wall for gardens.