After kitties, the next best thing about home-ownership is being able to transform the space in a way that you never could as renters.

And so it was that we had the plumbers in to do a bit of work:

replace our hideous (gold and silver) bathroom taps which had (thankfully) died

install a tap on the balcony

install a gas outlet on the balcony

They also replaced our shower taps, the babies bathroom sink taps, installed a tap at the front of ThePalace(OfLove), serviced the hot water heater and checked the drainage with a cool wee camera. Next week they will be installing the hideously expensive kitchen tap of my dreams (it needed to be ordered).

Holy!Goodness! they were an absolute pleasure to deal with, so different to the bargain-basement tradespeople you have forced upon you when renting (or having the owner completing their own extremely bodgy repairs as in the cause of poor Heather).

All of this work will make life a little more pleasant, not that it was not pleasant already, of course. But it will be completely brilliant not to have to cart heavy watering cans across the lounge to water the wee garden!

Growing is happening:

The upstairs balcony is almost as arid, blazing and desert-like as our balcony at Glebe, so we were forced to bring the few lettuce + tomato plants down to join the others. There is not a lot we can do for shade unless we have a pergola built (considered for the very distant future), so the solution is trees! I’m hopeful that in several years this little moreton bay fig (which self-seeded in a pot in the desert conditions back in Glebe) might provide some shade – either that or it will eat the haus.

wee moreton bay fig

We were forced to upgrade the babyq because it could not be retro-fitted to natural gas.

And finally, we managed to convince Don to make more bacon and we acquired a smoker!

First up was applewood smoked bacon – so amazing!

Yes, yes – so much for those earlier austerity measures.