Floors looking good

So after all the waiting the laminate floors are done. Got them in about a week ago now and the only downside was that the installers mentioned there "might be a bit of dust", which after grinding the bottom of the metal(yes I said metal - very WA it seems!) doorframes actually translated into A LOT of thick black/brown dust on EVERYTHING!! Janice was well amused, as you can imagine.

But other than that slight oversight, very pleased with the job which was done in one day. Would have taken us about 2 weeks probably and not half as good, so money well spent me thinks :)

So we feel like we have a real house now, that is ours :) Just the carpets and bedrooms to go now....

Kitchen

Lounge, with new lamp

Crunch time at Clayko

Only 2 more days (including today) to go at Clayko and not a lot of work for me at the moment so things dragging on a bit. Been an interesting time here and a good introduction into "real" work in Australia, after my diving jobs, but time to move on to a bigger company with more prospects. For those of you I haven't told, I'll be working for another consultancy called Beacon who are based in the city, which will be a welcome change as I don't get into the city very much at the moment.

Out after work tonight with some people for a beer or two for a farewell bash for me, which will be the first work "Social" for a long time, so will be interesting.

Looking forward to going home and seeing our new laminate floor FINALLY appear, as after several delays the guys turned up this morning to start it and should be completed tomorrow. No more concrete floors, Yah! Photos to follow....

Cruising along the Canning

Janice chillin out before we get back on the bikes

Last weekend was a public holiday here in WA (but not other states, of course....) and after a few days hacking the rest of the bushes down ready for the green pickup, we decided to find somewhere for a bike ride. Looking at one of my Perth outdoors books we found a bike route along the south side of the Canning river. For those of you that haven't been here yet the Canning and the Swan river meet near the city and flow out towards Freo together, but further upstream the Canning runs south of the Swan (geography lesson over!).

It was a lovely 19/20 degrees so great temp for a meander along the river and quite interesting as it started out quite small and swampy then opens up to a huge expanse futher downstream (where we decided to take a break for some munchies).

Nice spot to live, if you had a few million spare!

The good, bad and the ugly

After my garden bashing and several weekends of DIY round the house I needed to escape to the sea and J was as ever happy to let me (I got a good catch - do you like that, keeping in with the sea theme....)

Anyway, moving on. Soooo, jumped on a dive charter with Dolphin Scuba (not Dolphin Dive in case you get mixed up like I do) and we headed off over to Rottnest for a couple of dives.

Was blowing a bit and swell from the NW, so we headed to the SE side of the island for some shelter and ended up at the site that J and I did with Dolphin Dive (yep the other guys) over Easter. Is a pretty good wall dive with some good shoals of fish and drops off to around 25m if you want to get some depth in for a change.

The Bad
My poor old Lumix camera has been struggling of late and the "plastic bag" underwater housing I have discovered is great for 10m, maybe 15m....but deeper than that it compacts so much it has been interfering with the lens as it moves in and out on a motor as you turn it on. So "the bad" was that this final dive has killed it I think and maybe didn't help that to even close the lens I had to blow some air into it (at depth - no, not included in your normal PADI course) and some water got it as well!? So think it's back to the drawing board for a new underwater camera plan....

The Good
For the second dive we moved on a bit more south of the island to a site I hadn't been to before, which had a "ripper" of a current at depth and then some fun swell in around the reef. Lots of really good hard coral and an real good sized Cuttlefish hiding in a hole (pretty good, but wait for it). Then on the way back to the boat we saw one, then another BIGGEST RAYS YOU HAVE EVER SEEN!!! At least 2m across and 3m plus tip to tail, so we were happy to hang about 5m above them (close enough, thank you!) and watch them swim around and harass each other. MUCHO AWESOME, and not very often that I get to some something very different under the water, so like it :)

Looking them up when I got home they were Smooth Stingrays.

The Ugly
The wind picked up on the way home (as expected) and was blowing about 25kts, so a fun ride back and some pretty green looking people on the back deck. I did my usual on a moving "thing" and fell asleep.

The plants are history

The green waste pickup is due next week, but knowing we had several trees/bushes that needed some "excessive pruning" I started the job last saturday. Maybe due to my other choice being a trip round the shops looking at mirrors and house stuff with Janice, so even I chose hard labour ;o)

So I took on the crazy bushy eucalyptus bush that was growing over the wall - stumps ahoy!










Then thinned out the huge monster at the corner of the house as it was growing into the gutters as well. All good so far.

But then I decided to attack the crazy thing that grows so fast in the back garden that I'm cutting it back every few months. It had to get chopped big time as it hadn't been properly cut back in years I reckon, but not sure Janice was quite prepared for the sight that hit her when she came home.....

Yes, you can now see the "ugly" shed and water tank!!!

I'm claiming (and hoping) that it will soon grow back with lots of new green shoots as it has been doing all year, especially now we are actually having some rain. And for my sake, it better had.....

This weekend, this fellah is going down....ha ha. Tools and destruction, my kind of DIY :)



Trees at night

Awesome photo taken by Mr Duffy "senior" whilst in Sharm a few weeks ago. I just loved the colour contrast and sense of movement, so thought it deserved featuring on my world famous blog...and provides an easy post subject. Thanks Dad :)

 

Tried to link to your Picasa picture, but easier to upload!

 

 

Let's just take the kitchen floor up ready for the new laminate...

Oh, if only it was that easy! The top "new" lino was up in 10 minutes, then we discovered the "old" 80's style lino was glued VERY WELL to the concrete floor... So 10 hours later, we're still scraping away and finally finished today thanks to my new tool, the broom sized floor scrapper (didn't even know they existed until I went to Bunnings looking for anything to make the job easier).

But in the end the actual painting of the skirting boards wasn't so bad after that and ripping up the carpet rails(not needed with laminate going in the lounge too) or whatever they're officially called?!?

So that's why not been blogging too much on weekends as painting, painting and then this fun weekend has taken up most of our time over the last few weeks. But finished soon (this part anyway) and and already looks much better.

And makes me think I was right all those years in not buying a house sooner....people who do this just to sell houses on for a profit MUST BE BARKING!!! Just my opinion :)

Updated photos of the ongoing improvements and saga are on the Picasa site.

On a plus note, did get out for an hour to surf last weekend and actually "rode" my first wave which was pretty cool, although Janice wasn't there so can't verify it and I don't have a photo, so I can hardly remember it. I assure you it did happen!

The Easter bunny paints walls not eggs

After Janice managing to drag me into the flooring shop last weekend, we have ordered some new laminate for the lounge (yes, I lost the carpet battle to common sense...), kitchen and hallway. And just for a laugh ordered carpet for the three bedrooms too, as that shop did it all and worked out not bad altogether, relatively speaking of course!

So that prompted the painting conversations to be forced into the realm of reality and we have been upping out frequent-flyer miles at Bunnings (the B&Q of Australia). Hallway first, which was going to be yellow or something else and turned out we went with a peach (curd) colour - photos to follow on Picasa site. Just to see if Janice was serious (and so I could hide outside and wash cars, clean the shed, etc) I left her to the hallway and then helped with the finishing touches. That was last weekend and this weekend we are into our bedroom, with the ceiling done tonight and the walls primed ready for the two tone blue, cool hey! Which should go well with the chocolate brown carpets...and if not then bound to be my fault ;o)

Good (or bad depending on your point of view) that it's a 5 day long weekend so we can get some more painting days in to finish off the bedroom. But not after a days diving tomorrow for both of us off Rottnest (Janice bribing me to paint) and a good day on Sunday having all the crew over here for an Easter lunch with the biggest joint of lamb I've ever seen!! Yum, yum :)

Is it a man or a chipmunk?

Thursday was finally the day when I organised to get my wisdom teeth out after several months of pain (for me and Janice!). Thanks to everyone who told me that it would be lots of pain and I might be sick for days, I'm glad to say that was NOT the case and it all went very well. Especially as it seemed that 4 teeth wasn't enough hassle so I thought I'd go for one more..actually there was one tooth next to the bottom wisdom tooth that was impacted and had decayed pretty badly, so had to go too!

My first surgery ever so wasn't particularly looking for to being knocked out, but was no problem and actually a nice rest for an hour or so.

Then seem to have recovered reasonably well, as no sickness and to be honest the pain is about the same as it has been for the last few months, but with an end in sight now :)

The only obvious sign was some swelling and they gave me some ice packs to wear with a bandage to reduce that for the first few days, and Janice was nice enough to snap some photos of me looking like a chipmunk!

No, I'm not trying to hold on to the last bit of hair...

Surfs up dude

After many deliberations and ponderings of Kayak's or surfboards and what/when/who will use them, we decided to go for a surfboard!!! Having done some research on it (no surprise there hey!) I knew the kind of board we wanted and there is a good board shop in Scabbers, so we went in there and the guy recommended one of the few we were looking at. And it passed the primary requirement, having some yellow on it somewhere, obviously.

My wife, the surf chick!

So board and wax in hand we stomped down to the beach and proceeded to wax it up ready for our first attempt, then realised actually waxing it up ON the beach in a 15-20kt wind wasn't the best idea. So got that sorted and we were off into the huge 2ft surf, and by that I mean real 2ft not "surf" 2 ft which actually works out to be somewhere from 6-8ft waves. Especially in Perth as they SMASH you into the sand if you're not paying attention. "Been there done that" on the boogie boards several times!

We took turns having a go which was interesting as there was a big rip on top of the wind so ended up about a km down the beach in a few minutes. But had lots of fun although we never quite got standing.

So, fast forward to last weekend and we got down there again on saturday morning and figured out what we needed to do and BOTH got standing, Yeah!! Still small waves and whitewash, but still Standing.

So onwards and upwards hopefully and have a plan to be in the water at least once a week, as the nights are getting darker it's going to be tough to get down to the beach after work, but we'll see.