June 30, 2009 Opal Mining Update - No 95 Still Doing the Kitchen Renovating

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My Kitchen Nightmare As I said in my short newsletter that I sent out at the end of last month, Opal Miners and any other miners are just normal people like you the readers, who have other things to do in living there life and right now I am caught up in doing some renovations to my very very old house, I know a lot of my readers probably are not interested in what I am up to right now, but again it part of our lives, cannot mine all of the time, we have to do other things and that includes fixing our equipment which is called breakdowns. Pat was at first did not want to do this kitchen at first and it all started out with water pipe leaking from behind the sink (below) and as the wood that this is built from is called Chipboard over here, which does not like water or dampness of any kind, and when it gets any on it  tends to expand and then fall apart over a short period of time, gets mould on it and in general is nasty, so I wanted to get a new cupboard built as the bottom shelf was sagging and needed to be replaced. But as I soon found out, the sink itself was way out of date and not in use anymore so I could not find a cabinet maker could make a cupboard to suit this kitchen sink (there is none in Coober Pedy) so as I looked around on the internet for someone in South Australia I came across a business in Port Lincoln that make Kitchens and would design you kitchen or what ever in 3D on the computer so you could see what you was getting and as I was going down to Coffin bay some 45 kilometers from Port Lincoln I thought this was the best for me to go and have a look at what they were all about. I had a talk to Pat discussing the probably of getting a new kitchen made, as she is the one who earns the money in our house and I am the one who spends it, (sound familiar, happens in the best of family's, right) she was not really interested as this is an old house built sometime in the 60's I would say and built by someone who was probably drunk most of the time as nothing is level, straight or flat and as Pat cleans for her money she did not like the idea of me making one hell of a mess in the house while doing this renovation. So I talked her into having a look at what was involved at making a new kitchen and the cost involved, (just to have one made that is) so I drew up plans for a new kitchen after doing some researching on the internet about new ones and what to do etc, now this old house started out as one room as they did in the early days here, they just wanted a roof over there heads and as they found some opal and made some money they added on to the house, as they did with this one, so what this kitchen was in the first place I an not sure but probably a room with a bed, a stove etc just to get on with, washed out of a bowl, then came another room added on to the side, this was a bedroom and the middle room became the kitchen, then later another room on the other side of the room, so they had 3 rooms in a line. Then at some stage they added another big room which was onto the front and became the front room and main bedroom and last of all the bathroom was added at the rear, all of the additions were made out of different material, the original middle rooms were made with wooded frames as usual and covered in tin called Corrugated Iron, the front is made with Besser Blocks (Concrete) and the bathroom frame was also made with wood and covered with what we call Hardyflex, made by the same company with the name, so the kitchen is the central point in the house, renovating it upsets every other room as it is joined to them in some way. So this is the kitchen we have or had below, this is a photo of the sink area and the door to the right is to the bathroom, this door is opening in to the kitchen and will have to be reversed so that it opens into the bathroom a bad move on the people who built this pace and dangerous as it is if we had any children, the stove is in a bad place so that will be moved to the left side of the room where we have the microwave in the photo, there is 2 double power points but both together and right behind the microwave, so have to run leads around the room to do what we want, this will all change, a new sink and worktop will be fitted here with 4 drawers on the right hand side and a corner bench top and cupboard in the left hand corner.

This a shot of the side that has the door into the front room, used to be a double door which is now the front door where the curtains are, there is also a door leading into the main bedroom which is behind the fridge/freezer, this room measures some eleven and a half feet square and has 5 doors leading into it, there is also a spare bedroom on either side of the photo, one is used as spare room where we keep stuff that most people would probably keep in the garage, here you will see the corner walk in pantry in the left hand corner and then overhead cupboards and worktop with cupboards underneath, will be tight but better than what we have here.

This door leads to my cutting room, have not cut a stone for a very long time but still have all the equipment, and of course this is also where I weight and work on the opal when I am so lucky to find any, this door has to be moved into the left hand corner to make room, against this wall will be the fridge and in the left hand corner will be the walk in pantry, well Pat my be able to walk in, me I can lean in and grab what I need, the door will not be that wide, but wide enough and where the cupboard and knifes are will be a overhead cupboards and worktop with cupboards underneath and 2 small shelf's down the side.

And this door is to the spare bedroom that we use just as a spare bedroom storing anything and everything, from electrical appliances that we no where else to put them and a set of shelves that we use now as a pantry for tin food etc, this door will be moved into the left hand side next to the front room which will have a sliding door fitted, never had a door there in the 12 years we have been here, so this will make a change, on this side will have the gas stove, (have to move the gas pipe also) overhead cupboards (3) with the middle cupboard have a range hood in it and a short worktop with drawers underneath  on the left hand side.

So now I am off to Port Lincoln where we were just on holidays, extra expense to go and get it myself, but there is no direct freight from there to here and so we had it made thee and now for me to bring it back now it is ready, here I am not far out of Coober Pedy on the one and only main highway, this particular section of the highway is for the Royal Flying doctor to land on in case of emergences on any of the surrounding stations, this is also our bush, here at this point we have some green bush to look at but not much else and not for long.

This is our natural bush and what you see most of the time when you are traveling from Coober Pedy south until you get near Port Augusta and then the scenery changes, you start to see some hills which I can tell makes a nice change after driving for some 4 hours or so, gets better as you get closer to Port Augusta.

Same on the other side of the road, there is a railway line here running along side the highway, this comes and goes as we go down south, but goes to Adelaide.

So here I am in Port Lincoln, stayed at a motel last night and when I am finished here I will be going and picking up some more building materials timber, plumbing materials such as plastic water hose and fittings to replace the old copper pipe that started all of this trouble, flexible hose for the gas bottle fitting and the gas stove fitting, when I got here at 7:30 am I had to go round the rear of the building and back the trailer in for them to load it, it was not all ready for me there still had to wrap it up with the bubble wrap and get all the items together, they were in different places inside, very disappointed in that as it was suppose to be all ready for me to pick up and the boss was not in for another hour at 8:30 am.

The main bulk of the flat pack was already on the pallet inside and I had already told the boss that I was coming down with a car trailer with sides so nothing would fall or slide out and they still packed it on the pallet the wrong way so it could not be loaded straight onto the trailer, so some of the workers had to unload it by hand again and then pack it piece on the trailer, at this stage the boss had not turned up as he does not come in until 8:30.

Slow work, I felt sorry for them and I had to have it loaded up the front for the weight, wanted that as close to the back of the 4x4 as I could get so the trailer would tow straight and not fishtail on the way back home.

Slowly getting there, but thought I would have been out of here by now, but they do have to make sure they pack it in right, I have a long way to take it back and I still have to pay the balance of the bill yet, but do not need the boss for that as there is a lady in the office right now.

Just about finished, the last pallet is now being loaded, this contains the cupboards and drawers doors, the boxes on top I had to take off and put in the back of the vehicle as it was the fittings and adjustment legs, the sink and other small stuff is also in the back of the vehicle, looks like thee is a lot of weight here, more than I thought there would be, the trailer itself weighs in at 900 kilos, now just have to pay the balance and I am on my way to the next stop, the building suppliers, my mate Peter here has already ordered what I need for this company so it will or should be ready for me when I get there. After I pick up the door jambs etc, I have to go and visit a plumbing suppliers and get a roll of plastic water pipe and fittings, but when I got there turns out they do not keep any of that is stock at that store, but as they have stores are all over the country they had a one in Port Augusta so all I had to do was call in on my way back, but I was staying overnight at Port Augusta on the return trip anyway, so that worked out well. I had to go to a business called Better Homes and Gardens (Mitre 10) and pick up some tiles that Pat had picked out for the backing tiles on the walls at the rear of the bench tops, the tile grout (2 kinds) and other items that I needed, the paint we had got while we was on holidays and the tiles for the floor we had got the year before when we went down to Port Augusta shopping, I had already bought some doors late last year also, so now it was time to head for home and I left port Augusta just before lunch on the 13th on May and got home just before dark at 6:25 pm.

Here I have backed up the trailer under the car port so I can unload some of the small items being the cabinet doors, this was the pallet that could be loaded on with the forklift, the rest I need a hand to unload, to big and to heavy most of them and the long bench top along with the next longest are wrapped together and Pat and I could not lift it off the trailer so will have to wait for this guy Steve who is going to help me with the job to start, actually I should say that I am going to help him with the job, I do not have some of the experience for doing this, some of the frame work I could do and will have to borrow a nail gun from a  friend of mine, but as for hanging doors and making door frames, do the walls and ceiling, I know nothing at all, so I will just have to supervise, good at this I am, even if I do not know what I am looking at. :)

It looked like rain and that was all I needed right was rain, so I had to back the trailer in as far as I could and put as old tarp over the front to cover up the panels and it turned out that I had a lot of weight on the front of that trailer, it blew the tire on the jockey wheel, so here I already have it off and ready for taking in and getting repaired. It rain a bit during the late afternoon and night, but did not give me any problems thankfully, Steve starts on Monday, then I will be able to unload the rest of the trailer and get it back to Ross Chatfield and you would not believe that I had got the wheel fixed but had not put it back on as Steve was starting on a job so I thought I would do it later, when Ross rang and wanted his trailer back so he could move some timber, he is also renovating a dugout, so we had to drop everything and get it uploaded as quick as we could, get the jockey wheel back on and I hooked it back on the 4x4 and took it back to him and all was good, so now back to work.

After we had ripped out the old kitchen sink cupboard and put it outside, (a friend of mine is coming to pick it up wants to patch it up so he can use it in his shack) Steve started to pull the ceiling down, I got in trouble with Pat over this, as we had this big hole in the wall where the double sliding glass door use to be, I had hung a sheet down to keep dust out of the front room, but as Steve was pulling off a piece of the ceiling it broke in half and fell to the floor and the dust that was on top on this was enormous, I could not take a photo of the first lot as it was too thick, but when the panel fell it like an explosion, the force of it coming down and hitting the floor pushed the air in all directions and it just blew up the curtain and the front room was full of this dust, hence to put it mildly I was in the shit.

Here are some of the old and reusable pink bat insulation, (once it has been dusted off) you can see some of the dust on the floor, what a mess if I do say so, I will have most of this vacuumed up before Pat gets home, then she can do what she finish up, but as for the front room I am in the shit there for sure, its everywhere.

You can see that our roof is not far from the ceiling, not that I can do much about that, but put a new ceiling in with plenty of insulation.

And this is Steve the guy who is going to break his back doing this hard job of restoration on this old room with my help of course and he has a bad back too, which will be worse after this I am sure, right now all of the old ceiling is now down, will  do a bit of a clean up and then start pulling the wall panels off and then I have to get the old tiles off the floor as that is my job and you can see the curtain I hung to protect the front room from the dust which did not work, still most of the real bad dust is now over, thankfully.

Here the ceiling and walls are off and now ready for working on, as soon as I can get the tiles up off the floor, we have some work do outside as well on the house as I have to take one outside wall off to get at the copper pipes for the shower and vanity, so while I am at it I will also fix up two more walls that have this corrugated Iron on them on that side of the house and there is also one on the other side of the house that will also be done before we are finished.

This is the front room side and you can see the door to the left that the original owner put in at some stage so they could get access into the kitchen, have no idea why when they had the double door next to it, also the light switch was next to this door and I could not do anything about it until now, so that will be moved, but who knows what they were think in those days, so you can se we have a bit of renovating to do on this side to make a single door way on the right had side into the front room, this will be a sliding door fitted to the front room side, my computer was just on the other side of the double opening, also have to put a double power point on front room wall when it up, so we have one in that corner of the room, another thing that they did not think off amongst other things was the position of power points which are lacking badly in this house, but will fix all of that slowly.

This side of the room is the spare bedroom that we use as a store room of all of our junk pots and pans and anything else that one with a normal house would probably put in a garage, this door has to be moved to the left, next to the door leading to the lounge room so it opens up this side of the room and gives me a L shape to work in, the gas stove will be moved to this side of the room and will sit in front right hand side of the door frame as you see it here.

And this room is used as my cutting room, not that I have cut a opal for more then 5 years now, but this is also where I sort and weigh the opal etc, prior to going and getting it classed (priced) by my friend Boro, that is when I am lucky enough to find any, not done that good this last couple of years but hopefully that will all change when I find a new spot and get back into it, anyway this doorway also will be to the left, net to the bathroom doorway and making an L shape for me to work with. I have of course worked all this out before I went on holidays, so if anything is wrong with the design of the room it will be my fault as it is all of my brain work, took a little bit of time and thinking how to get the best and most out of this stupid room, you will also see if you look at the bottom of this photo above that there is a big dip in the floor just in front of the door here, so it was a very bad job with the concreting to start with, will know more when the tiles are off and out of the way, but I have taken the measurement for the corner pantry from this right hand corner so I hope it turns out well as I have only allowed 20 mm in height for any discrepancy's.

This is the bathroom side, here I have to replace the copper pipe, in fact all of the copper pipe is being ripped out and replaced with plastic that will last a life time and will never corrode like the copper, we have minerals in the water here that over time corrodes copper pipe and it was a hole that started all this new kitchen off, although the water is beautiful for drinking so much that at one time they were considering bottling it for sale down south etc, anyway the leak ruined the bottom shelf in the cabinet and I could not get another new cabinet made as the sink itself is not used anymore, they have new types now so a new cabinet and sink was required and with that I thought that as Pat had save some money we would go for a new kitchen. I am the cook in our house and after 12 years here I was sick of the layout, the single light that was hard to work with and in, the light switch in the wrong place and just about everything else that this kitchen was about, so the time has come to fix it and what ever I do here will only increase the value of the house, it is already worth 3 times what we bought it for 12 years ago, now we have done the bathroom, the kitchen and will do up the front room after the kitchen, we was going to do the front room next year, but Pat has decided to bring it forward while we are in the fixit mood, so it will be worth even more, but it is our living standard that matters right now, as we are not going to sell in the foreseeable future.

This is the cutting room right now, we have had to move things around and take a small table out in here to make way for this doorway to be moved to the left of photo, our oven is in here, cannot use it except for putting things on it, like the electric kettle and the other cupboard to the left was and will be again our microwave oven cupboard, so now is in use as just a small table for us to use, bit inconvenient not having a kitchen for a while but will have to learn to live with it, hopefully it will not take more than a month, Steve like me can only work around the four hours per day, so it will take four weeks of longer, pity but that's life and getting older.

Now for the Hard Yaka, to get these horrible old tiles up, lucky for me I have my electric jackpick and the tool that I used to clean out the mud in the elbows on the opal fields, which is better than getting down on the old knees with a hammer and chisel, which I have to say I could not do, so here I have just started only got a couple up as yet, Steve is out side working on the outside of the house removing the Corrugated Iron to get to the copper pipes.

We have put some thin wall panels up to keep the dust out of the front room now that we have removed what was left of that double doorway and I have the wheelbarrow just outside the doorway to put the rubbish in, I also have a fan in that corner of the kitchen to blow the dust that I make out into the bathroom and then out the back door, so Pat only has one room to worry about cleaning up when we finish for the day, I do make any dust or mess when I put the rubbish in as I put it in very gently.

Now we are outside the bathroom, at the moment Steve is putting in the plastic water pipe and cutting out the copper one that leads to the laundry wash basin, the gas bottle here will be moved to the other side of the house and put on a concrete pad that I have yet to make, the hot water system will be staying where it is as it would be to much trouble to move it with the water pipe coming in from under the ground here, that small white pipe leading into it at the bottom, don't want to make more work then necessary.

And here is Steve on the other side of the bathroom, this is the side that the shower and vanity is on, so there are more pipes here to replace, the plastic pipe has been brought in over the top of the door leading into the bathroom from the kitchen through the wall cavity, was the best and easiest way which presented no problems, I also have an electric lead here that I connected to the shed on this side of the house that was supposed to be a cutting room for me but that never eventuated as there is no big market in cutting opal stones here any more, the Chinese have that all sown up. When I did the concreting for the floors in the sheds (2) and yes I did the concreting all by myself and it bloody well nearly killed me and I was a lot better on my feet in them days some 6 years ago, I put the electric lead through the orange electric plastic pipe and buried it in the ground and brought it up inside the shed before I laid the concrete and brought the other end up near this bathroom with the intentions that I would replace this Corrugated Iron and connect up this lead to the double electric power outlet in the bathroom, which I will now do, so I will have power to this shed if I need it in the future.

I have about half of the tiles up so far, got a big blister on my right hand with using the jackpick, out of condition with it, but the main reason is that the idiots that laid the floor put the tiles straight onto the wet concrete and boy is the floor itself rough, they must have been roaring drunk when they did this, very uneven and rough, they did not even run a piece of timber over the top of the wet concrete to try and make it level, in fact now I think of it, I think the mix must have been to dry as well an as you can see I have the fan there for getting rid of some of the dust away from the front room and it worked real good.

Now all of the tiles are up, took me 2 days to get them all done about 7 hours in total over the 2 mornings, we have now placed some of the old wall panels on the floor so Pat and I can walk on it and Steve has started the new door jambs, still a long long way to go, this is only the beginning.

The water pipe to the new sink and this time we have a mixer not water taps like in the old sink, no more water leeks in the future from this set up, you can see at the top of the photo where we have brought the plastic pipes in through the roof, the old copper pipes came in under the concrete floor down near the bottom of the bathroom door, we also have to block off the opening at the top of the ceiling that leads to the bathroom ceiling which is where all of the dust came from, Steve is going to jamb some pink bats up there.

Now the door has been hung on the cutting room, so that is one door moved, now onto the next, will fill in the space on the room side with a panel later.

The bathroom door opened into the kitchen and I had have it opening into the bathroom so off it came and then I said that I may as well put a new door on with a new door handle so it matched the rest of the new doors and that became another problem that I did not realize until the old door came off and we went to put the new door on, it was well out of square by good two inches, never noticed it before, they had cut the door to fit the door frame that they had built wrong and the new door which was the same size as the old one would not fit into the frame, so another job to do which was to square the door frame up the best we could.

Have to cut out a noggin (short cross timber) so we can cut and move one door upright, the one on the far right is nailed to another so that will be easy to move after we have cut the upright at the top where Steve is cutting right now, then just have to force it apart with the crowbar and put a spacer in and make sure all is square, had to cut the nails that was holding the panel on the inside of the bathroom as well, just along the edge on the door frame. (another job patching up)

The job is done, now to trim off the protruding bit panel on the left side on the bathroom side so it is flush with the door frame, then we can get on with hanging the new door and fit the door handle, you can see at the top of photo on the left how far the upright has moved over from where it was cut and the spacer we put in at the top on the right hand side.

Doors done and finished in the background, now we are starting on the front room door, first filling in the big open space that was a double door to start with, Steve is building the framework for the new doorway which will be a sliding door on the front room side, this is where my computer was next to that wall on the right.

A photo of the 2 doors leading to the bathroom and the cutting room one is out of square still as the wall in the bathroom is leaning out by the 2 inches we have to move that doorframe over, the cutting room now has the wall panel on as well, few more noggins to put in this wall for support where the backing tiles are going to go and it should be ready for the insulation to be back on.

The doorway to the front room is nearly finished, the door to the store room is finished and the wall panel is also on, have to put some more noggins in these frames yet, we have managed to put up a panel in the front room to block it off and make it a bit easier to keep some of the dust etc out of it, I still use the fan to blow any dust towards the bathroom and out the back door. (leaving some behind unfortunately for Pat)

The ceiling is ready for putting on the Gyprock now that we have put the insulation in and held it up with pieces of old wall panel, but before we can do that I have to work out where to put the down lights and then I can work out how much electric cable we will need and then go and get it and we will put it in the ceiling and I will mark on a piece of paper where they are and the distance out from the wall, so I will know where to cut the hole in the Gyprock.

Today we are outside again, putting the grey board on the outside of the bathroom/laundry, we have put the insulation in of course and reconnected the pipe we had cut to the vanity, still have to put some flashing on the side of the roof to block off that gap at the top and fix the breather pipes to the roof also cover the space at the bottom.

Now all the insulation has been put in on this side as well, now to put the new gray board panels on this side and finish it off.

Now we have finished the panels and I have done some cleaning up on the ground and made a form work for making my concrete pad for the gas bottle that will be for the gas oven, this time I have bought and fitted a flexible hose to make it easier to change cylinders over as the fixed copper pipe sometimes can be a problem with the bottles differing a little in height, still have to cover up at the bottom at a later date, not a priority right now.

And this is the last room on this side of the house, pleased with the result and is 1000 percent better than it was with the old Corrugated Iron on it, again I still have to fix up the bottom at a later date.

Now we have finished the bottom, only the top bit to finish of with some flashing, have the piece of the ground next to the formwork, just have to cut it too size and we will put it up, not a big job.

Now I have finished the floor and it has been cleaned and vacuumed, we are getting it ready for putting a cement slurry on top of it but only about three quarters of the way across the room, the lowest point is right in that corner between the two doorways, it is 30mm low, so will have to bring the floor up that much in that corner to make it level and what made it worse was that whoever laid this floor in the old days put down a wheelbarrow load of concrete and then put the tiles straight on top of it and then another and so on, that is why the floor was so uneven, you can see the in-print of the tiles straight on the concrete, this way they could not screed it level and it has caused us problems big time in getting it level.

This timber that was the main 3x2 of the frame work and was on the ground was bent and twisted, so much so we had to cut and remove it, this hole will now be filled with the cement slurry and taped of towards the bathroom as the level in the kitchen will now be higher than in the bathroom, so the tiles will have to slant down to meet the ones in the bathroom, there are some 1/4 ones that was in front that we have already taken up and will have to re-laid and grouted when we do the tiling in the kitchen.

Steve is now putting down the cement slurry, three shovels of sand to one shovel of cement with a little of Bond Crete added and we also put this on the floor with a paint roller so the slurry will stick to it where it is going to be a little on the thin side also made a little bit on the wet side so it can be spread with ease.

Now the floor is finished and we have run over it with a metal screed (long level metal bar with a handle) so now just to let it dry overnight and it should be ready for us to walk on and start on the walls getting them ready for the paneling.

This is for the ceiling and the walls, in front is for the ceiling which are the longest, will drag out what we want in the morning piece by piece.

Now we have installed the electric cable for the light fittings and pulled some of it down where I want the lights to be, have measured out from the walls and will mark this info down on piece of paper so I can mark and cut the holes in the ceiling later, then pull the cable though ready for connecting the lights after we have painted the ceiling and are ready to install them in place.

Today we have put all of the insulation back in the wall cavities on all four sides and are now ready to put the Gyprock on and start finishing the room, after this it will be the Gyprock on the ceiling and for me to cut the holes in it for the down lights.

Got these 2 side walls on finished, well I say finished I mean that the panels are on and finished, holes cut in for the power points and the power points pulled through, still a lot to do to them yet.

The wall next to the bedroom and the front room is looking pretty good from what it was when we started, looking more like a real wall now, better when the door goes on and can be closed, will be the first time in 12 years we have been here that a door will close on this opening, do not know how many years in total it has never had a door and also there has never been any insulation in the walls either except for the sink side, that had some in, but even the outside walls never had any insulation in them, hard to believe in this climate, still all fixed now, so the house will be cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter which is now for us here.

We have now finished this side of the door way, put some Gyprock up and mounted the sliding door, the rest of this room now has to be redone, which will be after we have finished the kitchen, will have to take the timber off 2 walls and put this Gyprock up, put in a couple more double power points, take up the old carpet etc and lay tiles again and then give it a paint job and it will be finished, oh  and Pat wants to put a new AC in the room so that requires the old one being taken out and the hole patched up so the new one can be fitted, but that's later, do not want to think of it, still a lot to do the finish off the kitchen yet.

Door closed, as I said the first time we have had a proper door and doorway in the 12 years we have been here and I have to say that the same night after this was finished we had the gas fire on as it was a cold night and the room got really warm real quick, so much so we had to turn the gas down on it and that was a first, so already it has made a difference and will save us gas in the future.

Back outside again, working on the last side of the house to have the Corrugated Iron removed, this is the side I have just put some shelves up a few weeks ago and is the outside of the cutting room, that widow will be taken out and not replaced, wanted to do this wall a few years ago, but changed my mind at that time, now it is time.

Again no insulation in the wall, we will put some in before we put the gray panels on, you can see the window has been taken out and we will put a noggin in here to strengthen it, the window was useless anyway since they put this addition on the side as car port or whatever as it let no light into the room at all so I blocked it off as I use it as a cutting room, you can see a panel where the window was, so now it will be just a nice plain wall when finished.

And here is the job finished or nearly finished, just have to get a couple pieces of galvanized iron cut so I can screw them on the bottom to close off the bottom of the room and what ever they have used as a base for the floorboards and make it pleasing to the eye, but you must admit it is a better and cleaner job now and looks better too.

Back inside again, almost getting dizzy all the moving around we are doing, Steve is starting to put up the ceiling panels, right now he is putting some special glue on the timbers to help the panels stay in place along with the nails that he will put in, so we are getting a bit more done, (slowly) already looking better than the old walls.

Two panels up and working on the third and last one, I help him to bring it in and lift it up, then he puts a pole up under one end and then one in the middle, after we have got it in place and while I still hold up the other end he will start to put the nails in after he has got about 4 in his end he will come up to my end and nail that so I can let go and take this photo, the electric cable in the roof for the lights have been bent in half where I want the lights to go and I have measured in from the side walls so I know where to cut the hole when it is all done.

Now you can see how he does it, this panel has already been nailed up for the most part, but I asked Steve to put the poles up so you could see how we do it, at first I thought I would have to get another person to help us, but he assured me that it was not necessary and he was right, but was a hard for me with my bad knee as we had to get up on one of these milk crates he is standing on right now, while we had the panel above our heads, but I just managed to do it.

All done, now for the plastering of the nails and joints to hide them I hope after it is all dried and sandpapered that it is a good job, then we will have to start on the painting of the undercoat.

Now Steve is just starting the plastering of the joints, still a lot to do yet.

Here I am cutting the holes in the ceiling for the down lights, I have one in my hand here using it as a lamp so I can see what I am doing, I have marked them out with a compass so I have a perfect circle, but the down light I have here is not good enough for me they do not throw out enough light and they are the new green lights and these ones are 11 Watt in power which is equal to a normal globe of 60 watts and the light is to soft, so I have new ones coming up that are 18 watts and equal to about 85 watts in a normal globe and the new ones have the globe's sticking out of the fitting as they are also bigger in size, be good to see how much better they are when they get here.

And this is what the hole looks like, this is where the corner pantry is going and I have put the top of it against the ceiling and marked around it so I knew where the hole was going , but I have made a mistake with this as I found out later, more on that later, but here it looks good.

All of the plastering has been done now, just the sandpapering and maybe a bit of touching up here and there and it will be ready for painting.

So all is going well at the moment but it is a very hard job on this old house, nothing is straight, level of vertical and has caused me a lot more work and has cost more dollars then we predicted, Pat and I never knew just how bad this old house was built, but in those days there was no building regulations, they just put something up to live in, I suppose that they never gave it thought that they or the house may be here 30 of 40 years later. And to make it worse they built a single room or as they called it a "Shack", still lot of single room shacks around here, but who ever built this place added on as they found some money to improve there living accommodation like a lot did in those days, so it turns out that they added on 2 more bedrooms, the bathroom and the front room and master bedroom, in what order I am not sure, the spare bedrooms on either side of the kitchen were next for sure as they were built with the same material as the kitchen, which would have not been the kitchen then. I have done more than what you see here, but as there are 66 photos in the issue, I thought that was enough so the rest will carry over to the next one, still a lot to do but as this issue goes out I am getting closer and starting to assemble the cabinets now, then Pat wants the front room doing, nothing like the kitchen thankfully, just rip 2 walls off  and replace them with this Gyprock, pull up the old carpet and tile the floor this time and then give the room a repaint and done. But again I have to go down to Port Augusta and buy the tiles and paint, a 3 day job, one down and one back and one day for shopping, then I have to find another guy to do the job, the guy I have now will not be good enough for the front room, I have someone in mind and if I get him the job will not take that long, should be done within 2 weeks I hope from the time he starts. So the sooner I can get done here and get back to mining the better I will like it, had enough of this house renovating work I can tell you, but must admit that I am looking forward to cooking in the new kitchen with the new work areas, drawers, cabinets etc and the walk in pantry and the new lighting is great, at least I got that right, will see how the full kitchen turns out when it is finished, only then I will I know if what I designed, well I did not design the kitchen, I just drew up the plans for what I wanted and asked this Kitchen Company to design it for me and that is what I got, looks good on the computer design and the colors also look great, then Pat picked the paint color, the backing tiles, in fact all of the colors, so hope they all blend together, if not, well we just have to live with it, still I am only the cook. Until next time, See Ya and thanks for reading all of this, I know its not mining but part of our life, like it or not we are just sub normal people after all or as some people call us Opal Miners. Again I Hope you have enjoyed this issue and look forward to the next one, hopefully I will have some more good photos to show you in the next issue and maybe some of Good Looking Opal and lots of it, I am still hoping that this will be a good year for us, but only time will tell, so stay with us over the next few months and find out what goes on in our part of the world as far as Opal Mining goes. Stay Tuned for the next Issue, who knows what I will have to report. Until the next issue......... and wish me lots of LUCK. Cya Later, Stuart Bird. To return back to the Archived Page for more Updates click, Here!

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