Our House

 

 

 

The picture on the right shows The end of our biggest DIY project ever. And was it big. All the projects within and without were done by ourselves. Of course there were exceptions. But here is where we began.

 

It started on a weekend away. I had just finished a long period away in Canberra, Australia managing the technical implementation of a network that I had designed.

 

When I came back to Melbourne for good my wife had booked us for a long weekend into a lovely country bed and breakfast in South Gippsland.

 

We did some touring of the area and came across this old country hall alongside a lovely small river. The surrounding area was as green as green can be. It was also pouring with rain.

 

Marie had arranged a long weekend away after I had just finished a 6 month stint away on a project. We happened to come a cross a dilapidated community hall that was for sale. We fell in love with it and put in an offer that we did not expect to be accepted it was so low. To our surprise it was and we decided that we would restore the hall as it had historical connotations.

 

This was going to be our first DIY project. It didn't turn out quite like that but we did get it to a position that it would not fall down. Furthermore it was in an ideal location situated close to a river. (No water problems we thought)

 

 

The image is of the official opening program. Opened in January 1929.

 

The poor hall went through a series of changes, finally abandoned by the community in 1986 when a new community hall was built. It was not a patch on the architectal features of the hall which had a fully functional stage, lovely edgings and a tasmanian maple dance floor.

We set the stage up as accomodation for us as at this time we could only get down at weekends and holidays.

The hall roof looked like a donkey's hind leg so we had a local stumper come in and restump the whole building with concrete stumps. We also had the main supports (redgum) cut off at the base and steel supports sunk into the ground that raised the stumps off the ground. This was against the recommendations of an architect that said that all the redgum supports (There were 12 of them) would have to be replaced. These supports held up the roof. After thinking about it we decided to talk to the stumper and suggested that he manufacture steel supports to fix to the bottom of the redgum supports after cutting off the rotten bits. So much for architects advice it cost a tenth as much and ended up being a more solid arrangement. ten years later and the building has not budged.

The next thing we did before deciding to build a house (So cold in the hall during winter) was to install a sewage system. We decided on a composting system. Because of the closeness of the river we were not allowed to put in a septic tank. This was passed as OK by the local authority and the Water & environment authority. We were on our way.