Tradie Professionalism

Me: "I'm sorry, I can't pay you."

Tradie: "Yeah, OK, we can organise a payment plan."

Me: "Sorry, let me be clear, I literally am unable to pay you."

Tradie: "Err..."

Me: "First of all, you haven't provided me with an account name.  Second, you have an extra digit in your account number. And finally, you have replaced all the 1's in your account number with lowercase Ls.  I am literally unable to pay you with the account details you have provided."

This is an actual conversation I've had with a tradie after ~3 weeks of me ringing him to organise payment for a job which he had finished.  At this stage, I wasn't actually annoyed, I was impressed. 

The Backyard Part 1 - The retaining wall & back fence

With very little DIY experience, we instinctively began our renovation journey with the lowest hanging fruit - the backyard.

Like many terraces, behind our garden's back fence is an old 'dunny lane' with street access at the end, once used by what I have come to understand as the poo-collector (?!) for the old outhouses (of which we still see many in backyards in our local area), now conveniently used for storing our garbage bins. The retaining wall between the garden and the lane was our number one priority, as it didn't actually exist - the backyard effectively just tumbled down into the lane.

We used an existing metal L-beam which had been concreted into the ground behind the tree, and the brick wall on the other side, to affix metal brackets. The brackets were specially designed to hold treated pine sleepers, which you can just slide in to make a ready-made retaining wall. When attaching the brackets, we faced our first power tool lesson - the hammer drill. Yep. Contrary to my exceptionally wild imagination, it turned out to be simply a more powerful type of drill, capable of drilling into harder materials. Simple. We also learned at this juncture about masonry anchors - little plastic or metal gadgets you stick into the hole you've drilled in the brick which will then hold a bolt or screw. This all seems so obvious now, and I suppose is testament to our initial inexperience. 

Next was the back fence - with one hammer hit the entire back fence collapsed - it had been held together by an impressively-miscellaneous collection of tent poles and string! We bought some treated pine, learned how to use our circular saw to cut it to size, and then bolted the pine into the brackets we used for the retaining wall. 

We bought some relatively cheap pieces of tallow wood from a local lumber yard and just cut these to length and screwed them onto the uprights. A coat of clear treatment on the fence and we were done.

And voila!

Well, 'voila' until we returned home less than a week later to discover many of the timber slats had sheared off. Rookie error #1 - timber spans always need to be accounted for in terms of strength (floors, walls, you name it). Our long timber spans had naturally bent alongside changes in the weather, but we had not provided sufficient support for them to withstand these forces. I'm pretty sure I actually cried that day. However, all was not lost - the addition of an extra, centred upright did the trick, and the fence has been sturdy as a rock ever since!

Our new (old) home

In late 2011 my partner and I decided we were finally ready for that next step of commitment that many couples eventually embark upon, which would bring a potentially life-long connection, and highs and lows we could only begin to imagine... that's right, a mortgage!

We had planned to buy a two bedroom unit, but stumbled upon an unloved terrace in a suburb we loved which just squeezed into the upper end of our price range. It was one of only two terraces we looked at, and we knew very little about old properties or renovating, but the promise of a shining gem in the rough of crumbling bricks and mortar was too hard to resist and so we jumped in.

The property we got was a classic two storey terrace, with two bedrooms upstairs immediately above two rooms downstairs (living and dining), and then a kitchen and bathroom extending off the back of this. There was a walkway leading down the side of the house from the dining room along past the kitchen and bathroom to a laundry, and then eventually out to a small courtyard.

The kitchen and bathroom had been (cheaply) renovated within the past 15 years, so the house was comfortable enough for us to live in. Somewhere along the line the balcony on the front of the house had also been replaced, and so the front of the house gave a rather deceiving impression of relative civility!

Note - lesson one of renovating - be diligent in your 'before and after' photo taking! All below photos are from our first inspection of the property, and regretfully we didn't take any more until we began renovations over a year later.

The rather dismal dining room (used by previous occupants as a living room).

The leafy outlook from the master bedroom.

Looking back over the laundry, bathroom and kitchen (eew!).

The backyard was pretty sad!