In preparation for boyby’s arrival (which is getting close now…less than 7 weeks to go till the due date!), we were really lucky to have lots of amazing people help us expand our home. For the past 3.5 years we had been living in a posh safari tent house (aka the tentacle) but it was pretty small. At one point before the project office was built, we had all the project equipment packed in our 5 m x 5 m home as well as all our things. We love the tentacle but sometimes it was a bit small and having only one room that is essentially the bathroom, kitchen, dining room, study, living room and bedroom isn’t always the easiest. Here’s the original tent:
When we found out about boyby we knew that he wouldn’t fit in there with us and the Schrodes as well. Apparently babies need quite a bit of stuff! So Ian made a plan to build us an extension. And lots of other lovely people helped to make it happen (a huge thanks to Russell, Dale, Ticha, Ephraim, Robert and Oldrich!).
Sam and I asked if we might be able to have 2 more rooms - one for the baby and one for our bedroom. We thought that these rooms would also be made of canvas or plastic walls but Ian surprised us with homemade bricks. Bricks are a luxury for us because mice and shrews can’t live in bricks and you can lean on bricks. We felt like the luckiest people ever.
Here are all the lovely bricks!
The workers started clearing the foundation in early December. It quickly came together. Everyday something new had happened and it was exciting to come home to a wall or a door or a roof even.
One of the most exciting moments was when Ian cut through the plastic sheeting side wall of the tent to connect the preexisting area with the new rooms. I was sure that floods of mice and shrews and snakes would come pouring out but nothing that dramatic happened.
Schrody was quite interested in all the goings on.
Towards the end of January we went to Namibia for a week and Ian told us they would try and get everything finished by the time we got back. When we got home I felt like I was on one of those house makeover shows on the telly. It was done and it looked amazing!!
Since then we have been furniture shopping and decorating the place. Here’s our new living room. We bought a second hand sofa and we bought this beautiful coffee table made by Colleen Wall from recycled wood pallets. Thanks to my Dad for helping fund some of our new furniture such as our new wardrobe, chest of drawers / changing table, sofa, coffee table and baby crib.
This is our new bedroom! It has proper walls so when you lean back in bed you don’t have to worry about ripping through the plastic sheeting and landing in the garden. This makes watching movies much more relaxing.
I hand sewed the Venda themed curtains for our bedroom and the baby’s room.
And here is boyby’s room! I did some predator themed artwork on the walls for him. Sam helped with painting the wall a more calming baby blue.
It is supposed to be the baby’s room but Schrody has decided otherwise. We’re not sure how she is going to cope when we have to kick her out of the crib in a few months. There might be a cat fight literally. Baby versus cat.
We are so happy with our new bigger home which is still called the tentacle but is now largely un-tented. More tentacle = more good. Thanks to everyone who made this happen.