The house

Continuing on... Yes, as of March this year we purchased the property without having seen it - but it's not as crazy as it sounds. We hadn't seen it ourselves in person, but my parents had visited it on our behalf and emailed us lots of photos.

My Dad in particular is a very good judge of the possibilities of land and buildings, as not only is he a carpenter but he grew up in the Alaskan outback. So, when he looked at this shell of a house which to anyone else would seem beyond saving, he noticed the good things. Like the fact that there was no rot in the timbers, and the building frame was all still solid and intact, at rightangles except for the tacky little extension that was thrown on the back . How the floorboards were the old original ones that even though they looked old and worn now would polish up brilliantly with a bit of effort. Even how the ornate old sash windowframes, long minus their glass, weren't beyond saving. And how, stored up in the rafters of the house were a lot of weatherboards and other things, many of the raw materials for restoring it.

I've always loved old houses, especially ones crafted in wood. They seem to have a soul and spirit that modern built houses lack. So this house, an old Victorian weatherboard that the Council later told us was moved there from Williamstown (a suburb by the sea in Melbourne) in the mid 1980's. It was given a new roof and new stump foundations on arrival, and then largely left alone for the next 20 years. Now we have an opportunity to bring it back to life. It's a mammoth task though, as you can see from these pictures. These are from the set taken by my parents on that very first visit. If it hadn't been for my Dad's building advice, we wouldn't have had the confidence to take it on.