Timber!

I've been stupid busy the past few months, blogging is a distant and luxurious memory.   My book is soon to be printed (another post, note to self: write) and the house reno has now well and truly kicked off.

We've now moved into the recently completed garage/studio and set up residence for the foreseeable future, while the house is partially demolished and extended.  Some say we are mad, some say genius.  Time will tell.  If we are all still speaking to each other in a year's time it will be cause for celebration in itself.

Task one: turn garage into livable dwelling.  Upstairs we have loo, shower, kitchen, so downstairs is sleeping zone.  Our lovely builder put up this partition made from a bunch of Victorian pine doors we'd had getting in the way for the last ten years.

That's one less pile of crap under a tarp to shimmy around. 

So work begineth.  The old side sleepout was first to go.  One push, give or take, and it's gone.

Then work moves to the rear - old kitchen, diner and bathroom.  It's clinging on a bit harder, but another day or two and it will also be toast.

The plan is to reserve all the old jarrah timbers and reuse them in the build, somewhere, somehow.  Cue: five more piles of crap under tarpaulin.

When the inside wall skin was removed from the kitchen, this was revealed.  It's the old original weatherboard wall, with flaking paints and lovely patina. 

We might try and fiddle less rather than more with that and enjoy its distressed tones.  Not that there will be much distressing to do, that's for sure.

Day of the Triffids

Not far from where I live (on the wrong side of the track) is the house where two members of the legendary 80's alternative band the Triffids grew up, and indeed recorded many of there early jams in the basement therein.   The Triffids went on to become one of Australia's most revered bands of all time (for those with any musical taste that is), and had moderate overseas success too.

The two McComb boys grew up at The Cliff with their other brothers and doctor parents, and attended the local private boys school.  The Cliff is a vast rambling weatherboard house built at the end of the 19th Century in a prime position looking over Freshwater Bay (no working class roots for these guys, sorry).   The house has been vacant and decaying for many years now while a series of investor owners have dithered about what do with it.  Thankfully the current owner has declared non-demolishion as a condition of sale, however the buyers are not rushing in.  Such is the 'bowl it and build a mansion' mentality around here.

I often walk my dogs down past the Cliff to the river, and have more than once jumped the fence and  had a good nosy around.  Then when it went on the market a while back I went with my son and we got to look inside too.   It is like time stood still within its walls, in a home that nurtured some of the most creative talent to come from Perth, in its unpretentious and languid beauty.  I just love wandering around here and thinking about those guys growing up there in the 70's, resisting the dominant paradigm of their privileged upbringing, yet probably largely inspired by the incredible beauty of their environment and quality education.  I'm sure a bit of music practice got enforced in this house after school too.

There is also a tragic aspect to the beauty in this decay, with time standing still when the house was vacated, at around the time that Dave McComb died from a combination of bad luck, over indulgence and illness.  

Here are some photos I've taken there.  Just wish I had a lazy $4m and I'd be moving in next week.