For the last couple of years, in between lockdowns, we’ve slowly been fixing our house which happens to be quite old compared to Melbourne standards. Built in the late 50s, with 80s decor inside, I’m not fussed with what it looks like inside as much as what I want the house to be functional and withstand the elements.

A house – or, having a roof over one’s head (and one that doesn’t leak) is the ONE thing that will provide you with SAFETY and SECURITY. I count myself incredibly lucky to have one. It’s been the one and only thing I ever wanted to save up for when I was young and worked jobs, scrimped and saved, didn’t go on holidays and basically put every cent towards saving up for one.

A house for me was always not an investment as much as it was security and some thing of my own. While other young people went on holidays or took gap years, I was working to save up on a deposit.

So it goes without saying, you need to look after it.

I’m not fussed about the aesthetics inside, more about the functionality. We don’t have the mod cons, it’s not contemporary, we only have one toilet. It’s basic but it’s cozy and it’s home. Instead I prefer a house to withstand WATER, FIRE and AIR hopefully.

Everything else, is just icing on the cake for me. I can take it or leave it.

That means that I’m constantly vigilant with stuff like large overhanging trees over guttering; keeping gutters and roof clean of debris; fixing the roof; putting up new fences and a constant destruction of ivy (argh, I HATE ivy) and my main priority – making sure water is removed as far away and as quickly as possible from the house. As such recently, we had a huge piece of work done by plumbers on replacing the piping to PVC on one side of the house but now we’ve got a new problem.

The recent rains and the sheer volume of rain – plus the earthquake – means that things start to move and crack and as such, recently we were flooded out in one of the back rooms destroying collector boxes of DVDs and Videos (all of them unopened and still in plastic).

Our back area tends to get flooded especially with great volumes of rain (which we never used to have but seem to nowadays with regularity) and nothing is disconcerting than looking outside and seeing the cat kitty litter box and pot plants float away.

I simply never want to see water inside the house again.

As such, today, I had plumbers out once again who identified that one side of the house has pipes that disappear into the ground and not into the storm water drain. Great.

It looks like we will need to have this big plumbing job fixed ASAP where they’ll lay new PVC piping and also add in a pump that will kick in every time the water in the drain reaches a certain volume that will force pump it to the storm water drain.

They’ll need to rip up concrete to lay the pipes but when it needs to be done, it needs to be done. I’m hoping they can get it done soon but that will be my new project to oversee.

House jobs and preparation are never finished but at least I can be relax a bit coming up to winter that we will be ready for more rain when it happens.

(The plumber told me that as a result of the recent rains and flooding – it’s changing the rules and regulations of how piping and guttering is now done across the state. I think something has to be said about understanding the changing climate and being prepared for the unseen circumstances and getting in early to have this work done because tradespeople are utterly swamped with work and you can be waiting for weeks or months to have work done anymore).