Travel and termites

The below was also in our 'Greetings from OZ' that Mark wrote:

We’re still in our travel season. We’ve completed our Korea Trip and you can read about it below. [You may want to bookmark this site for we will continue to place updates here of our travels and work. If you click on the photos they will enlarge.] Monday we leave for two weeks in Cambodia. One week will be a retreat with Eastern Mennonite Mission workers from around Southeast Asia and the second will be some down time for us plus some visits with Australian mission workers in Phnom Penh.

While we were in Korea, builders began renovations on our house. The termite damage was more extensive than they first expected. We were fortunate that we hadn’t fallen through our bathroom floor. It had a cement slab resting on wooden beams. The beams were eaten through so the slab was just suspended in air ready to crash through to the garage at the right moment. The builders also found a copper water tank in the ceiling above the kitchen that should have crashed through. It was full of water and resting on spongy, termite-eaten beams. We think the renovations came just in time.

Our home should be ready for occupancy when we return from Cambodia. If not, we will continue to live with the Longley family, just a short distance from our house.

Mary did some interviewing in Korea for a paper she is writing on trauma healing. She hopes to do some more in Cambodia. When things settle down we hope to do some more writing from our recent experiences. Several people in Korea suggested to Mary that she write a book on parenting and homeschooling. Maybe some day.

A good thing is that we now have a separate toilet room from the rest of the bathroom. We chose sandstone looking new floor and cream coloured wall tiles this week with Australian wild flower accent tiles.




Lounge as used by Mark and same walls as they are now. This wall had little damage, but the plaster board had to be stripped to find that out.
























Kitchen as it used to be and will remain for they worked at the damage from the outside of these walls. The good news, I get a larger doorway into the kitchen.






Our drive before [left], now filled with the third rubbish skip [right]














The family theatre room as the Realtors portrayed it [left] has been totally cleared [right] to access pillars and the underside of some damaged areas and prepare it for an apartment on the ground floor.






















Left is the lounge as we left it. Right is the same room after termite damage was found on the far wall.



















Our bedroom before on left, note arch which no longer exists. On the right, the washing machine is sitting in the place of the clothes tree. The copper tank was full of water in the area over the kitchen sitting on termite eaten beams.

















Our back-room or dining-room as it was for two months-note all the books that had to be moved this week.

















When leaving for Korea we left most of our things stored in our back room that had served as our dining room [left] Termite damage was found just to the left of our bookshelf wall so everything had to be moved right.











Left is an example of the termite damage found in the bathroom Right is the bathroom as it used to look. But thank God it didn't fall.












The walls, floor and ceiling in the bathroom had to be taken out due to damage





This is the rubble that used to be bathroom floor that fell into the garage.

More termite damage-note bathtub in the background that could have fallen into the garage due to termite eaten beams.