Recording A Journey.......

As well as keeping this blog, I have been keeping a record of my home renovation journey in sketchbooks.
In them are notes and sketches outlining plans and ideas, then I record with photographs what I actually ended up doing with each project - they don't always end up as I initially planned, because things can change along the way.
I'm also keeping a record of what I spend, quotes given by contractors etc.
Now I'm into the fifth year, I have filled one book and I'm a good way into the second...….I wonder how many I'll end up filling before this project is finished?

With the change in seasons, here is the view as I'm enjoying it at the moment in all its autumn glory! If you can't afford a view of the ocean or the mountains, at least you can create your own small, private view that is every bit as wonderful!

Repointing is FUN! Who knew?

While I was up on the scaffold in recent weeks to paint the windows and soffits on the front of the house, I noticed that some of the mortar in the brickwork at the sides of the gable was loose, cracked and falling out in places. I thought it was a good opportunity to have a go at repairing it while it was still accessible from the scaffold. It was high up and in a place that wouldn't be too noticeable if I really botched it!

So, armed with tools, mortar and new-found knowledge from Dr. Google, I launched in, expecting to find it an odious task...…...Well, surprise of surprises! I found it unbelievably satisfying to rake out the loose old mortar, clean out the debris, damp it down and re-point it with fresh mortar. It took a bit of practice to get the technique right, but I think I did an OK job of it. I kept it damp while it dried off, as recommended and this morning when I checked it is still intact and good.

Now I'm looking forward to repairing a few other places where the brickwork needs re-pointing!

More Recent Work

Here are a few more pictures of recent works - firstly the front deck with its new coat of paint and refurbished wrought iron balustrade (so much work restoring that - I don't think I ever want to do something like that again!) Secondly, the restored and refinished kitchen floor with the hand-painted "tumbled tiles" design.

I've also had a good start on painting the front of the house - it's a brick house, so its only the windows and soffits that need painting. I was fearful that paticularly the end window was badly damaged, but I was surprised to find that it was remarkably sound under the loose paint. Only one tiny repair in one corner where the wood had rotted a little. Because it is the two-storey part of the house, I needed to access it safely - luckily I've been able to borrow my son's portable scaffold for a few weeks while he doesn't need it. I think the grey/blues I've chosen look great with the red brick - complementary contrast and all that!

Work has continued in the garden, too. the seeds I planted last week are coming up and the seedlings are looking healthy and perky. The weather is still relatively warm so I'm getting a late flush of scarlet runners and zucchinis.

Blissfully unaware, Oliver sleeps on!

Ready to tile!

The bathroom is all prepped and ready to go with tiling, which I'll be doing this week. Suddenly this whole bathroom renovation looks like it will be over soon. Once the tiling and grouting are done, I need to call the company that does the bath resurfacing, which will take half a day to be done. Then I can install the tapware and shower, new hand-basin and the glass shower screen  (Rick McLean Fix and Swing.........500 fixed and 400 swing). Shelf and mirror. Silicone sealing and painting and it will be done! Can't wait to have that first shower!

 

Cement sheeting underlay down.

                                        Bath surround tanked and waterproofed ready for tiling 
                                          (This was after one coat - another was added later)
 

                                   Where the door was........this will be shelving and storage.

This bathroom renovation has been a massive job - I'll probably take a month off after its done and then get back into painting (still a couple of rooms to do) and the outside jobs are always beckoning! 

Progress......and a setback

Well, I've had a pretty good week getting stuck in with Project Bathroom, but unfortunately I was a little bit gung-ho with exuberant ceiling plastering and I exacerbated an old back injury - enforced layoff for several days while it got better. I think it is my 60+ year-old body saying, "Hey, you're not eighteen years old any more, you know!" It's nearly better now, so I'm proceeding.....carefully!

Here's what I got done before I hurt myself: 

 

Door and architraves removed, creating an opening between the laundry and bathroom (Love that un-building tool!)

 

 Studs added to fill the cavity and gyprock cut to size for the opening.....glued and nailed in place. If you are wondering about all those little extra blocks - well, it's because modern stud timbers have considerably smaller dimensions than an old hardwood 4x2 from 1962! I had to improvise a bit to get flush surfaces on both sides to attach the gyprock to. It works. Solid wall.

 

 ..........and plastered.

 

The bathroom ceiling had this nasty, grotty, unevenly applied bubbly textured finish - it had to go! I wasn't sure quite how to deal with it. In the end, I decided the best thing to do was to re-plaster it. It's had one coat of plaster and it's working much better than I could have hoped. One more coat and it should be a fairly smooth finish. It won't be mirror smooth, but I'm confident that I'll get it acceptably smooth! Hopefully it won't all come down on top of me when I'm in the tub one day.

While all that was drying, I turned my attention to the laundry side (or as a friend of mine refers to it - the "butler's pantry" -not sure about that, but it is definitely more than just a laundry) This room was still in it's original dingy state with old cigarette smoke smells deeply embedded. It had a decorative wallpaper frieze around the top of the wall which I removed. Underneath was another one, which I removed. Underneath was another one.......but wait! The final one was actually a rather neat stencilled on design, and not a wallpaper frieze at all. I might keep it; I haven't decided yet. I washed the walls and ceilings down with sugar soap ready to paint when the plaster is dry and lo and behold the awful lingering smell has finally gone.

 

 

And while I am bathroom-less, this will be my bathing facility........fortunately I DO have friends with showers!

 

 

 

 

 

The Dining Room Refreshed.

After an almighty push, I got this room done in two days……..and my aching body attests to the fact that I possibly overdid it! Painting ceilings is quite physical work, I've found.
So that's another room down and a lovely, light, clean dining room to enjoy. I will start seriously looking for curtain fabric this week. The room needs the warmth of a lovely fabric to lift it and echo the warm orange tones in the adjoining kitchen. Hope I can find the right one.

Now I am relaxing, drinking wine and eating chocolate to reward myself for this effort - I love this room!

The time is rapidly approaching when I have to face the mammoth task of tackling the bathroom - I will post some "before" pictures soon - it really is a bit of a horror show, but I think I can create a bathroom that will be delight to use.

Back To Work!

After almost a month away from any work on the house, I've been raring to get back to it! I did manage to put in a microwave box in that time, so it's now up off the bench and out of the way in its own little cubby-hole……….with a bonus shelf on top for coffee pots and so forth. Last night I cleaned down the walls and ceiling in my little dining room and sanded back where I'd previously filled a zillion nail and screw holes (The previous owner sure liked to cover the walls with itty-bitty stuff…….with a big old screw-hole for each bit!) I also took off a rather jerry-built pelmet that was only held up by a couple of screws - I had a hard time stopping it from crashing down after I removed the screws. Sometimes an extra pair of hands would be "handy".
This morning I have painted the cornices and I'm about to tackle the ceiling. Needless to say, breakfast was a bit chaotic with furniture moved, ladders and paint tins to avoid.

I'm keeping my eyes open for some suitable curtain fabric for these windows…….I have something quite specific in mind, so it might take a while to find it. I have contingencies if I can't find exactly what I want.

Tackling The Kitchen

I love to cook. I love baking. I make my own bread. The kitchen is an important space to me, because I spend quite a lot of time in there. The kitchen I "inherited" with this house was dirty, smelly, with an oven that only worked partially, mismatched drawer and cupboard door handles and a lot of damage to cupboard doors and walls. (It looked like they had endured a few fits of temper!)

When I first moved in, the most important job was scrubbing everything down (multiple times) until I was satisfied it was at least clean, even if it still looked shabby. I had to put up with it like this while I got on with a few other more pressing things, but once I was able, I started repairing the holes in the walls, the kicked in cupboard doors and replacing broken catches (ALL of them!) I bought a new oven and had it installed by an electrician (definitely NOT a diy job!) Oh, the joy of simply being able to bake again!

Walls, ceiling and cabinets painted and the kitchen started to feel fresh and renewed.

Before - old oven on the way out!

Starting the tiling on the old/new splash back

 I could have called in a company and had all of this old kitchen ripped out and replaced with a brand spanking new *bland* one, but I really wanted to see how well an old kitchen like this could be refurbished and repurposed. These drawers are made from dove-tailed hardwood - you won't see that in your melamine-coated MDF flat-pack kitchen! And money is an issue - I'll save it wherever I can.

On ripping off various stuck-on finishes etc, I uncovered these lovely burnt orange tiles on the wall behind the stove and above one of the benches. I really wanted to keep them, but of course, the tiles could never be matched and I needed more  because the newer stoves don't have that high back like the older ones and I also had to take off an inch-thick melamine splash-back that was worse for wear. So I chose some tiles that were a contrast in both colour and texture and went to town employing my  skills as an artist to design a graphic interplay between the old orange shiny tiles and the new grey-toned matte ones. In my head I could see how it might look, but the reality, when it was done far exceeded my expectations……I LOVE it!

I chose greys and white for my kitchen colour scheme - nice and restful, but with the zing of the surprise orange. As serendipity would have it, some of my best cookware is also orange. This was meant to be.

Same view showing the tiling job completed - before and after painting the cabinets

When I bought the oven, I also bought a range-hood and because it was one you just plug into a socket, I decided I could install it myself. This was a fairly big job - I had to make an MDF box to house it, attach the box securely to the existing cabinet and wall and install the hood. (It said on the packaging, that it was a two-man job to install it, but with a bit of ingenuity, I managed it by myself……two men = one woman?) All that remained was to fill in the space with a piece of plywood and paint it to match the cabinets. Astoundingly, is is all straight and neat!

This is what I was replacing………!!

New range hood

I would have liked to have put in some new bench tops, but because what I'd like is expensive, I decided to do a refurbish job on the old tops until I can afford new ones. There is a special laminate finish that is available, so I decided to give that a try - I got it tinted to a tone the same as the cabinet doors, but a shade darker and just followed the instructions on the tins for prepping and doing the job. There was one burnt, damaged area that I had to repair before I started. 

One bench top completed

The finish is so good, you can't even see where the repair is. It remains to be seen how durable this is once I start using it, but it probably only needs to last for a year or two.

So the kitchen is now pretty much done. For now. Except that I'm going to put in a microwave cabinet and some open shelving above the refrigerator. I love my kitchen!

Next job? not such a big one…….repairing and repainting the small dining room adjacent to the kitchen.

Moving on…….

At the end of 2015, I sold the house my late husband and I had built in the mid 1970's - and added to over the years as needs changed…….additions which included my large, purpose built studio. But the property was out of town and on five acres and I was finding it all too much to keep maintained after Bob died very suddenly in 2013. So I let rationality over-rule my heart and I bought a solidly-built sixties brick bungalow in West Launceston and made the momentous move. This is what I left behind, with a few regrets but a desire to forge a new and different life for myself.

A few views of my old house

The actual move was a bit - no, a lot - fraught, because the previous owner for reasons known only to herself had not done a thing about moving out when the settlement day finally arrived (and I'd given her a month extra at her request!) So I gave her a new date. Then another one. I had to extend the date with the company that was storing my things and put off the changing the utilities into my name for more than a week. It was a stressful nightmare, but eventually the house was vacated and most of the previous owner's things gone. Then another nightmare began! Not a thing had been cleaned………for about ten years. The house was filthy and reeked badly - so much so that I just couldn't sleep in it for a few days. Some good friends mucked in and with a lot of scrubbing, ripping out of old, stinking curtains and carpets, the reek level was reduced to tolerable and I moved in.

There were a few urgent problems with plumbing and glazing that needed immediate attention, such as these strange solutions to leaking taps - the wadded cloth, wire and old-hammer-jammed-in kind of solution! You gotta laugh!

"Imaginative" plumbing solutions!

It's hard to describe the smell of a badly neglected house, but it could probably be best described as the smell of abjection and it is a tangible manifestation of a life gone wrong. In the mix are things like animal excrement, stale nicotine, dust, dirt, grease and old food. It seems to permeate the very fabric of the house and it simply seeps and oozes out. I must admit, in those first few days after moving in, I was having serious doubts about what I'd taken on, but what I'd seen when I'd inspected the house was a solid building with good bones and a once-beautiful, but seriously neglected garden. I KNEW I could make it into a lovely, inviting space with a lot of hard work. My friends probably thought I was mad! But because this house was so badly presented for sale, I got it for a bargain price. Simply fixing the plumbing, ripping out old tatty curtains, taking up smelly carpets and scrubbing surfaces probably added $20 000 to the value before spending much at all. Once I'm finished with this I imagine the house will be worth $50 000 or $60 000 more than when I moved in, without me spending much more than lots of time on it. I don't have unlimited amounts of lazy cash, so this reno will be done on a very strict budget, with me doing much of the work myself.

Initial cleanup - a few pics.