I couldn’t say the shack looked a whole lot better yet, but I’d made good progress. The shire had provided me a bin almost immediately, so I spent most of the first couple of days carrying rubbish to it. Clearing the house as best I could, I uncovered more areas in dire need of cleaning or repairing. The paint was more peel than colour and some of the walls were growing mould along the bottom, indicating there might be a damp issue, but at least I could see what I was up against now. Wei and Meili had told me they wanted a complete overhaul—not a beach shack stuck in the last century but a comfortable holiday retreat. So I had permission to redecorate, totally renovate the kitchen, bathroom and laundry and give both the front and back porches a facelift. They’d pretty much given me free rein and, although the budget was limited, my imagination was buzzing with ideas and possibilities.

Wednesday, I took a break from cleaning to make an inventory of everything that needed to be done. Some of the tasks I felt confident I could do myself:

•    Fix creaky doors and windows.

•    Rip up old carpets and polish the floorboards beneath them, if they weren’t rotten and the owners preferred wood to tiling.

•    Strip back the walls and eventually paint them—only the bedrooms to start with as every other room would likely need significant work.

•    Choose and install new light fittings once the ceiling had been replaced and I’d had an electrician check the vintage wiring.

•    Sew new curtains—although perhaps those lovely white, wooden plantation shutters would suit better once the rest of the shack had been updated.

This list went on and after exhausting the possibilities of everything I could handle myself, I’d made another list of local tradespeople to give me quotes for the bigger tasks and started making phone calls to arrange on-site meetings. Wei and Meili were trusting me with a lot and I didn’t want to let them down, but it was like being on The Block or Renovation Rescue without the TV cameras, bossy partner and annoying contestants.

On Thursday morning, I’d driven twenty minutes north to a hardware store and loaded my car with all the supplies I’d need to prep the bedroom walls for painting. I bought canvas drop cloths, buckets, sponges, scrapers and blades, sandpaper, filler, sealant and masking tape, keeping all the receipts for Wei so he could reimburse me. I’d checked with him and Meili regarding the colour scheme before starting the actual painting.