Diary of a Flood Survivor

About midway through last year our builder had other commitments and we thought it would be a good time to actually take a break from renovating.

Don’t get me wrong, I was already to sign up for The Block after having quite a bit of fun picking colours, styles and improving a number of places in the house from before the food.

But pretty much everything upstairs has been completed, except the outside deck, so that only left downstairs.

Now our builder is back and, like most, we have to work to a budget with quite a lot of downstairs to fx.

We have no ceiling or walls; we need a new front door and a door between the garage and house (we are getting sick of dragging the board of gyprock across the doorway to stop the dog getting out).

Depending on costs, it looks like we will be prioritising what will get fxed frst.

One reason that stopped us from fxing downstairs in a hurry was it had been the second living space for our teenage boys and the spare room.

Now they have moved out, we have a spare room upstairs and no need for a second living area.

I do plan on making it my gym area when it is fxed.

Then of course there is all of the outside to repair. We have new gates on the fence needed, someone to readjust the water tank which had been moved by the food waters, the never-ending sad saga of the pool and a repaint of the deck.

This food recovery is expensive and time consuming business.

That’s why the phrase ‘little steps’ has been so helpful.

None of the above is life-threatening, so to stop the stress, we accept that we will only get things done one by one.

Little steps.