Renovation: halfway there!

So our renovations started beginning of August and is scheduled to end 30 November. I want to share some pics of the chaos, and hopefully give you a sense of the progress.

Here is what I came home to after the olympics trip:

Front garden (there used to be a wall, and large bushes and palm trees)

Front wall of the house, they removed a large window and half of the old kitchen.

View of the old kitchen through the hole in the outside wall. Two internal walls were removed, the window that you see in the back was in the domestic quarters which we're removing and replacing with a flatlet.

This shows you from another angle the removal of the internal walls. To the left of this picture is the other side of the old kitchen's back wall, and you can see the window from the previous pic on the left in the one below. This was take standing in the lounge, looking at the space for the new kitchen. Remember this picture, I'll refer back to it below:

Then slightly to the right, the existing patio. There used to be a bar counter with a mirror in the opening behind it, fridge and sink in that recess. The recess will get bricked up and turned into a storeroom at the back.

Same view of the patio, from a different angle:

 

On to a week later. More breaking at the front:

Foundations dug for the extention of the patio (since about half of the old patio will become the new kitchen):

Bricking up the bar recess:

New bay in the old kitchen (new playroom), and the room is split in 2 with a new interior wall to create a pantry:

Then chaos struck. The roof over the old patio, dining room and domestic quarters was horrid and not to code, so we had to remove it. Massive extra cost but no choice, so there you have it. The risk of renovating an older house, I suppose.

So here is the same view that I showed you before of the new kitchen space, but without a roof:

To the right of that, the patio space with bricked up recess and existing gas braai, but no roof. See the old extention that was done on this wall? The clay bricks are the originals, grey bricks done on top of that. This caused more problems which I'll tell you about in a moment.

Oh, I haven't yet showed you the new flatlet. Here it is, or at least the walls. At the left of the pic you see the back of the wall in the previous picture:

From the front of the house, flatlet to the left, looking through the open door to the kitchen/patio.

 

And of course the more chaos struck. The extention that was previously done (when the faulty roof was put over the old patio) was really poorly built, so much that the walls can't carry the new roof. So the patio now looks like this:

We are about 25% over budget, so the surprises have to stop soon or we'll be in deep trouble! Hopefully my next post will be about progress, not chaos.

 

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Pics from London 2012 - part 1

So just to show you that sometimes I do keep my promises to upload pictures, here are the first half of my pics from the olympics trip. They're mostly taken on my phone so not great quality, but at least you can get the sense of it. 

Packed and on our way to the airport!

                                               

The best husband in the world, on the way to the stadium for the athletics on 10 August:

Another one - terrible light, but it's the only picture I have of the actual stadium:

This gives you a sense of our seats. We were reasonably high up, and when you look at the pic the finish line for the athletics events is right at the top right of the photo. The amazing part was that the men's pole vault final, which was ongoing throughout the entire evening, was right in front of us. You can probably see the crossbar with the pink pit right behind the track in the front.

The olympic rings hanging in King's Cross / St Pancras station. They are HUGE!

The javelin train:

Now for just a random collection of pictures, I don't even think they're chronological!

Ben & Jerry's ice cream. It's a good thing these aren't available in South Africa. I would be bankrupt and obese.

Lunch at the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford. Geek points - this is where CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien used to hang out; they called it the Bird and Baby at the time. Awesome food too!

 These Manderville statues are distributed throughout London - this one is "Punk Manderville". We took a picture of me standing next to each one of these I could find, but the rest will follow in part 2 of this series.

Burrough Market. Seriously, this place tempted me to move to London full time. I could live like this.

Some standard touristy stuff:

Big Ben

The London Eye:

Winchester Abbey:

10 Downing Street:

Trafalgar Square:

More Trafalgar:

We had an AWESOME fish and chips lunch in Soho. Beautifully battered and fried cod with hand-cut chips.

And dinner that evening was at Meraz Cafe, just off Brick Lane. This little plate is a starter with tandoor lamb chops and tandoor chicken. The chicken was simply the best curry I have ever tasted. Unbelievable. And this was followed by naan bread, chicken tikka masala and a mango lassi. Yum.

A little bit of British humour on a sign outside an ice cream shop in Greenwich:

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The natural history museum. We spent a morning there and it was WAY too little time.

Super-cool animated T-Rex. I think there is some sort of motion sensor involved in his programming, because he tends to look at where people are standing. It's pretty intimidating, even when you know it's fake!

We met up with some old friends in Kensington, and the pic below is one of the private gardens a la Notting Hill. It's gorgeous.

Inside Hamley's. Another reason I would be broke if I lived in London.

On our way to the closing ceremony - Royal barge with the Queen's seal on the river.

Aah, here's a better pic of the stadium, from the evening of the closing ceremony.

That's all folks. More to follow soon!