Welcome friends. A Jug of White Daisies is about my life and all the thoughts that come to me while I'm walking, doing the dishes, having a shower or hanging washing on the line - some of my regular activities that give me time to think. It's about all the things that make up my life - cooking, cleaning, creating, loving, learning, discovering, rolling my eyes, sighing, smiling, forgiving, making do, making the most of, looking up, gardening, hugging, being. It's about the things that I make for sale, fabulous finds, the wisdom and beauty in the world, and it's about stopping to admire the simple perfection of daisies.


And in amongst all the thinking and writing about that, I'll be doing it all, and more, so if you don't see me for a day or two, please send chocolate.

April 5, 2017

Time Passes

What can I say, time passes. Without permission sometimes... it just evaporates into weeks and months and trivial nothingness. It's busy, it's dull, it's hot, it's rainy, it's full of drama, fun, disappointments and satisfying moments; you get stuff done, you live it out. You wake up one morning and realise you have moved through a year. And, well, actually, that's not a bad thing. While there's life there's hope.

We haven't done much to the house. I've started my garden. I've painted two rooms - both of which are still unfinished. We had the external cladding tested and got the results.  Yep, the whole lot is asbestos. See our drooping shoulders and sad eyes? See our bank balance suddenly look completely inadequate?

So, we ground to a halt for a while, to rethink our thoughts, hopes, plans and bank balance. We haven't really started up again. For a while it made me hate the house, and feel very unsettled. Then I realised, it's just a bump. OK, we are going to over-capitalise on the place now, with a lot of invisible work, but we aren't doing a flip for profit, we are hoping to be living here for a long time.

We knew there was some asbestos - the lower level walls and the eaves, but we had hoped that the cladding wasn't. If we weren't going to do things, it wouldn't matter. You can live with it, if you aren't cutting into it. But if we are going to change the front door and the windows out, and extend the kitchen, we are going to be messing about with it.

The rule in Australia - at least, our part of it - is that you can remove about the equivalent of half a wall by yourself, if you use all the right precautions. But we are not interested. We will save up and get someone in to do a proper job, and clean up properly afterwards.

The problem is, you can't just "un-clad" a place and leave it half naked. You have to re-clad. The cost just doubled. We can't do it in small bites either, it's all going to go at the same time.

And... while we are half naked, so to speak, shouldn't we make the most of the opportunity and put in a pile of insulation? It makes sense to make the house as green and comfortable as possible in the future. It will be so much nicer to live in. The cost just rose another few thousand. And... now that we think about it, all those windows need to be replaced. Suddenly we aren't looking at doing one window at a time, at our leisure. Before our nice new cladding goes up, we should do the windows, because if they are a slightly different size, we'd be double working it. And maybe having to {{shudder}} patch our lovely new walls. Ugh.

Now we have a rather major job on our hands, with a rather bigger budget than we can currently cope with. And we live here, so it will be noisy and messy and gosh I hope it doesn't rain while all this happens or we will have to redo all the inside too...  Not that we will be here when the asbestos is removed. We and the cats will be out of there big time! So that is why we have ground to a halt.

The question on everyone's minds now is.... does the inside plasterboard (drywall) contain asbestos too? Gulp.

love Heather x To the question of your life, you are the only answer. To the problems of your life, you are the only solution. ~Jo Coudert
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