The Shedders

We're no longer trailer trash, instead we're "Shedders". Yes, we're finally in the shed! And it's just fantabulous. Just to be able to stretch our arms out and up and not touch anything and to sleep in a bed that we both fit in is the most wonderful feeling in the world. Even though we coped quite well in the caravan after now living in the shed for about a week, we couldn't go back to the caravan. The van is being picked up today and while we certainly won't be sad to see it go, it certainly has been a big adventure being trailer trash. We only have one more load to pick up from storage and then we'll have all our stuff back.

It's been funny getting our stuff from storage to see what we've actually been able to live without and what we've missed. We'll probably do a big clean out soon, but we guess it probably would've been better to have done the clean out before we moved rather than after!! It's the small things like just being able to eat of a normal sized dinner plate that we've missed. We had been using a picnic set while we were in the van for the two days a week that the pub was closed for meals and while that was handy, they were small plates. And for those of you who know what James' appetite is like, well we ended up eating straight out of the saucepan or the frying pan 'cause a picnic plate just didn't hold enough food for James and his pet tapeworm!

Now that we're in a bigger space, we've been able to set up the gas stove/oven, the gas fridge and the patio table top gas heater. With the price of petrol through the roof at the moment, we'll certainly save on heating costs. We worked out that it was probably costing us more money in petrol for the generator than it would've cost us being on electricity!

And speaking of electricity, the trench is dug for the power we're just now waiting on a load of sand to put in the bottom of the trench and then we'll arrange for the electrician to come and lay the cable and connect us up - then we'll be living in the lap of luxury.

The site for the house, garage and stables has now been finished. We're still waiting on approval of our development application from the council. We spoke with the council last week to see how they were coming along with it and they told us that it shouldn't be too much longer. They were able to tell us that our DA already had about 50 conditions on it. We spoke to our neighbours who have friends who have just finished building and are in the same council area. They told us not to worry too much about the conditions on the DA as they could be really simple ones. Their friends had about 30 conditions and some of them were like the fridge space should be closed in on all four sides - so how are they going to open the fridge?? And the bathroom, kitchen and laundry taps all needed to be connected to the rainwater tank - what else would they be connected to in a rural area with no mains water?? We're waiting with baited breath to see what conditions this council has put on our DA....

Our first erection

We now have our first erection and the landscape of the property has changed for ever. It's no longer virgin land! Yes, that's right, after only seven months the shed is finally up! Originally, we had decided that we wanted to be in before winter, but I guess we didn't specify which winter did we!

James and our good friend and neighbour, that crazy dutch bastard, Shane lined the shed on the weekend. It now has insulation in the roof and walls and is lined with ply. As the shed doesn't have any windows, it was pretty dark so we've replaced four of the colourbond sheets in the roof with four laserlite sheets. We painted the concrete floor to cut down on the concrete dust. We had this brilliant idea that we'd use the lovely tuscan effects paint in the colour Copper on the floor. Trouble is, tuscan effects is one of the paint effects that you see through to the layer underneath and so we had to do quite a few layers of paint. We s'pose that it probably would've been better to have used a concrete paint, but we were going through an inspiration stage at the time of buying the paint. See what happens when you have a thought-it's dangerous I tell you! The water tank is now in place next to the shed as well. We're just going to wait until after the first rainfall before we connect the guttering to the tank as there is quite a bit of crap like filings and metal bits from when the roof was put on. Once the rain washes the gutters clear, then we'll connect up to the tank and finally have some fresh water!

BJ, our excavator, has been working this week on digging the trench for the electricity and putting in culverts under the driveway for drainage. He's also going to start excavating the site for the house, garage and stables. We still haven't heard from the council as to when our development application might be approved, but at least we can go ahead and excavate the site. We're waiting on one more quote to come back for putting the electricity cables in and connecting the shed up so for now, even when we move into the shed, we'll still be relying on the generator for power.

On the horsie front, Betty went on her merry way this week to Andrew's to start her training. We borrowed a friend's float and curious girl that she is, she walked straight on. She was a bit antsy at first once we started driving (it was only her second time travelling on the float), but she settled down eventually. We took her to Collector which is about 15 minutes away and met the horse transport truck there. She came off the float and walked straight onto the truck like an absolute dream. She overnighted at Yass and then apparently travelled really well to Victoria where she arrived at Andrew and Sally's safe and sound. The baby of the horsie family is finally growing up!

Back to the home front and we've bought a new toy. After many years of drooling and dribbling whenever we go past a bike store, we finally bought a quad bike. It's a 250cc jeep off road quad bike and as you can see from the photo, it's in camouflage colours - the horses aren't going to see us coming now!