Gettin down to business...

It's pretty overwhelming when you move into a new home, especially on your own, 200 kilometers from your comfort zone. What do you do first? Well, you clean of course. Get rid of the smell and detritus from the former residents, then move on and do what you want to do, or indeed have to do.
One side of my house had a pretty decent lean to it. Why would this be? Why would the room be falling away towards the western side? I met my neighbor Gary a couple of days later and he put the mystery to bed. My house had been rebuilt in 1989 on the site of the original Chinese Hospital during the gold rush. Cool history lesson Gary, but if the house is only 22 years old, why are my stumps fucked already? (Use of extra swearing is encouraged in country areas, as it helps to ingratiate yourself with the locals (most of the time)). Ah, that's a good question and can be answered simply. They just built the house on the original stumps that have been there for around 150 years. Ah ha, great...

Don't do it people, pay a professional to suffer on your behalf...

So, on a February afternoon (middle of summer), I decided that I would pull up the deck and start checking out the stumps. That escalated quickly, I mean it really got out of hand, to me lying on my stomach under the deck, armed buried shoulder deep in a hole with a hand trowel. The original stumps were redgum, but when I started to lift the house up, with hydraulic jacks, they just swang in the breeze.
They had rotted completely and needed replacing. Each hole needed to be 600mm deep to accommodate the new concrete stumps, then fitted, attached and then filled with quick set concrete. As a job, re-stumping would have to be up there with the shittest in history. I made friends with some serious arachnoids under there, not to mention the mosquitoes and flies and that was only on the edge of the house. I can't even imagine what happens out there in no-mans land, underneath the living room. Safe to say I won't be doing that again for a very long time. And yes, the rooms are a little more level...