Renovations, renovations...Living on a building site

Hi Folks,

Well, here I am, back in action and with the new look for the blog...!

Thanks to those of you who mailed me to ask what's up...no, nothing sinister is happening...I was just sick of the old look, I have had it for over a year or so, and it was getting old hat. Not to mention the black background, which might look slick, but it is just absolute hell on my eyes to read. So I closed up for a few days to do the necessary renovations...hope you like it, and that it is kinder on your eyes too. I've also tidied up the links list, deleted old links that have dissappeared and added new ones..

..and speaking of renovations...the past months since we moved into our 200 year old antique house...a national monument and tribute to the workmanship of builders and craftsmen of days gone by, we have all been very busy working on the house.

As time allowed, we managed to get a lot done. A family project where we all pitched in to make it habitable a.s.a.p, as who can afford to rent and pay off a house, while still spending money on renovating? In the past weeks I did the room downstairs, where I want to set up my painting and decorating studio, re plastered and painted and moved in. As promised previously, here are some pics of the progress in the rest of the houses so far.

Studio

Before
Just look at that horror wall...it had water damage down to the brick work after a pipe burst in the kitchen upstairs some years back. I had to chop plaster off down to the brick, re plastered with a heavy duty cement plaster, then a layer of ordinary plaster, and then a smoothing gypsum..was a mission, but finally got it sorted out.

After

Last week Tuesday I moved all my kantundu from the old studio over to the house. Major stress moving the kiln...but all went well, and now everything is under one roof. At a later stage I will put in the new ceiling in this room, as this trip I was pressed for time..all the rough clay work I will do in the garage outside, which is massive, so there is enough space for a workshop for both Pops and me..

Before

After

Downstairs Kitchen

Then I also helped Cheeky Chops renovate her kitchen, which now looks much better, clean and new again.
Stripping layers of old mouldy wallpaper off the walls and re plastering.

I will add the after photos as soon as Cheeky Chops tidies up and makes the place look more presentable..!

Dining Room
Before

This is the small dining room off my kitchen upstairs. It was panelled with wood that made for a wonderful place for cockroaches to establish a Kakerlakville, so we pulled all the wood off, and found an old tap behind that thin 'cupboard' like door...heaven knows what the hell that was for..Please note the very 'rustic' light fitting just peeping out the left hand corner...I've still got it in the cellar if anyone wants it..

Wood off - Paint on

After

A new look, with my Stinkhout en Geelhout Muurkassie finally hanging on the wall where it belongs after years of being hidden in a corner of by bedroom...My Klimt, framed antique spoons, Imari plates and other treasures displayed on the walls. Rustic light fitting replaced with Moroccan glass lamps.

Before

We had to deal with a lot of water damage under the window, that was coming through due to bad drainage outside.

Breakfast in the dining room. We a actually had this room done before Christmas, so it has been put to good use since then.

My Bedroom

Before

110 layers of old crappy wall paper, poeffie stained carpets, wading ankle deep in dust balls. We stripped the wall paper and chipped the plaster off some of the old oak beams.

Walls stripped of wall paper

After

Once the walls were free of wall paper, we re plastered to get them even, and I repainted in two different colours, distressing and stippling in a teal and then in the lower half in burgundy.

Dressing room

Before

The small dressing room leads off my bedroom and is an absolute pleasure now that it is fixed up.

In both the bedroom and the dressing room we ripped out the carpets and sanded the beautiful old strip wooden floors.After

My kitchen upstairs - A Horror Story

Before

Need I say more....

We knocked down the wall into the passage and got rid of the door to gain some space. Ripped up the linoleum, knocked off the old 70's retro tiles, and re plastered and painted the walls, and tiled the floor with with terracotta.

Pops almost lost his nerve and had a heart attack when it looked like this (above pic)...he recovered his composure after we had plastered and started on the floor tiles..

Before we took down the wall...

Afret we took down the wall

Almost there...but still a bit to do..

Since the above pic was taken we have finished the last bits, and must just get the dosh together to buy decent kitchen cupboards. In the mean time we make do...this renovating business is expensive stuff...

Downstairs Lounge
Before

..again, heaps of old vrot wall paper to strip off the walls, re plastering to do..ripped out the old linolium, new plaster and paint..and voila..!

After

a much more comfortalble lounge, and the old kacheloffen works like a charm. We fired it up all winter..

and bedroom
Before

...and....

After

All re plastered and painted up in pink..!

Downstairs Bathroom

Before

....and...

After

Downstairs Passage

Before

Grey...boring..!

.After

....messy...but colourful!

The Pope Room

This room is right at the top of the house, hence the scew ceiling. It was so smelly and yik, full of pigeon nests in the eaves and we hauld out loads of crap from the little 'cupboards' on the side (the kids call it the Jüdenkammer, where we could hide Jüden..) Sonny had to don a NASA space suit to crawl on hands and knees into the deep recesses of the eaves to remove pigeon nests and half a ton of poo crawling with bugs and other assorted goggas..was a dreadful job..poor lamb...he felt quite ill after that poep operation..!We put in a small kitchenette for Sonny, but still in desperate need of some kitchen cupboards to hide all the 'goedters'..slowly slowly as Rome wasn't built in a day..

Before

We had to insulate the whole top level, get rid of the numerous Pope pictures, tear out wall and wall paper (again), sand down the floors, put up new panelling and paint..see the difference..and thats it for now..to be continued..! Work in progress. Next I will be doing my bathroom aand putting in my French slipper bath tub!

Lichteneck Castle...Sunday outing

Some time back, a few years ago, the family and I took a bicycle ride through the Kaiserstuhl one sunny summer Suday, to get to know the area a bit and see the sights. On our travels through the orchards and vineyards, we see, in the distance, perched atop on a hill, a castle ruin, which the kids wanted to go and have a look at. So we figured, no big mission, not too far away, all flat riding to get there...only a little hill,(as you can see from the above pic), on we, toward the hill, all smiles, sun blazing down like mad, birdies tweeting, a warm summer breeze blowing...something like out of an Enid Blyton adventure..

Well, from a distance the hill looks like just a small little hill..no problem...hmmm...yeah right... that is very misleading, because once I got to riding up that hill on my 'dik wiel' bicycle, it was a bloody high, steep hill. So we start the assent, I hadn't even gone 100m and it was me pushing my bicycle all the way to the top, sweating, swearing and gasping. Half way up I wished I hadn't bothered, but I bit the bullet and pushed on so as not to be the family fader...all this effort and sweat to check out the old ruined castle..alrighty then!

....once we finally reached the top, (breathless, red in the face and huffing and puffing) ...BIG BUMMER... we were confronted with 'PRIVATE PROPERTY', 'NO ENTRY'..the ruin was fenced off and closed to the public..! So we parked off under the trees and packed out the picnic.

As I said at the beginning, that was some years ago. Then last sunday the girls asked me if I wanted to go and see Lichteneck castle with them, as they saw in the local papers that it would be opened for a guided tour. Well most definitely not if I have to huff and puff my way to the top of the hill, thank you very much! But they assured me we could drive up via the farm road and parking was available outside the entrance. Goody! So off we went.

The property was originally part of the inheritance of the Graf von Freiburg, and although the castle wasn't huge, it did play a significant role in the defence of the area since the 12 century. The pic above shows the original layout of the castle, with the defensive keep separated from the yards by a deep gorge which had a draw bridge that was pulled up when under attack. In the yard, (the area where we parked the car) was originally walled, and there were buildings that housed workshops, an inn and all the stables and outbuildings where the animals were kept.

I poached this photo above which I found cute, it shows the ruin back in 1945, very over grown with trees and shrubs, before any restoration work was started. During the time when the castle was inhabited there were no trees what so ever growing in and around the walls, so as to keep the view clear (I guess so that any enemy armies could be spotted from far off). Back in the 1990 when restoration work started, they cleared all the bush at the foot of the walls, and came across a small door. When they opened it, they found an ammunition store room still filled with black gun powder stored in wooden kegs.



This pic above I took from the bottom of the gorge, beneath the draw bridge, and shows just how high and imposing those protective walls are.


The bridge that links the north side of the castle to the main castle keep. It is a very long drop from the bridge to the bottom, and very likely one of the reasons the property is only accessible to the public by appointment and guided tour, as it's way dangerous.

This tree is growing the middle of the courtyard of the main south castle,where there was also a well and out buildings.


Above is what remains of the walls of the north yard where the stables, inn and workshops stood (now the parking lot)

The view across the Kaiserstuhl toward the French border.

Pic taken coming up from the cellar

Member of the historical society in medieval costume were having a braai for the visitors in the ruins of the vaulted cellar.