A few cosmetic improvements

A new Coat Rack:

We solved the coats on the bed problem finally with our driftwood-random coat rack. Hooks include drawer knobs, bits of driftwood, old hooks from the salvage yard and some new hooks too. The coat rack itself is made of a bit of driftwood picked up at Lyall Bay. The biggest challenge was screwing it into the wall: we had to make recessed holes as the wood is wider than our screws are long.

But doesn't it look cool!

And in my other piece of cosmetic mastery, I started cleaning a mark off the yellow "stained glass" window half way down the hall and discovered it wasn't stained yellow glass after all. Well, it was stained - stained with 120 years of cigarette smoke and grime.

Here's what it looked like to start with. The paler panels are where I was cleaning a stain off and discovered it was a bit more stained than I'd originally thought...

And here's the before and after shots....

That's about 4 hours worth of scrubbing to get it back to its original state... but I think it looks great.

Next up: Steve's home made double glazing. Watch this space.

Aargh! a leaking roof

No sooner had we got the insulation in than it started chucking it down. It rained all week and on Saturday was pretty torrential. That was when we noticed water dripping down the walls in a couple of places....
So back into the loft I went with a raging hangover after a rather big night out with work the night before, to discover about 5 different leaks! Needless to say our lovely new pink batts was soaking in places, and all Steve could think about was how we would dry it out again!

Our immediate measure is a series of buckets under the drips in the loft but the short term plan is we think we'll get someone in to try to patch the holes - neither of us are game enough to climb on the roof as the back of the house is a two storey drop. In some ways it's really good that we had such a big storm within a month of moving in as it's highlighted a problem to be solved urgently.

It's not looking great though - everyone I've spoken to (well, two people) says we'll have to replace the whole roof (corrugated steel - about $10,000). That could put paid to the new bathroom this year :-(

On the plus side Steve fixed the gushing downpipe under the shower in about 30 seconds. Good job we didn't call a plumber!