Spare Bedroom

The extra bedroom in my house was still looking tatty and tired, despite having the nasty old asthma-inducing carpet taken up and a good clean. With my son getting married next month (second marriage for both of them, so a good excuse for a big party?) and a few interstate and international visitors expected, thought I might be called upon to put people up, so now is the time to get the room spruced up.

The room was basically OK, but someone had had a half-hearted attempt to paint parts of it in a fairly horrible shade of pink - the built-in wardrobe was the "best" example. And it was coupled with large dark brown resin knobs. It was fairly awful!

The windows had been allowed to get very wet (inside) at some stage, so the paint was flaking and there was black mildew everywhere. I was told the previous owner had had the power cut off the winter before I bought the house, so I'm not surprised there had been damage caused by dampness. I've had two winters here now and the winter of 2016 was the wettest on record, but the house has remained completely dry, thank goodness. I keep the wood-heater going pretty much 24/7 during the winter, so the house stays dry and warm. It does show, however, how moisture intruding into the fabric of a house can soon start to cause real damage, But I digress! I stripped the windows back and painted them fresh white - what a difference! Same with the built-ins - basically in good condition, but just needed a couple of coats of fresh, white paint. I bought some sweet ceramic knobs from an Indian import shop (Ishka, for the locals) - enough for all the doors and drawers......but each one a bit different, except that they are all in shades of blue and green. Looks great!

The door was badly damaged - it looked as if it had been given a thorough kicking at some stage! I thought about replacing it with a new one, but in keeping with my "designer frugal" ethic, I decided to have a go at restoring it first. I took it off its hinges a was able to glue the panelling back to the frame. Once the glue had set, I filled the badly damaged areas where bits were missing. After sanding and painting, it looks like a new door! I probably saved about $100 on the cost of a new door, and while that doesn't sound like much, it all adds up.

I've spent a lot of time and effort removing tacks from the floor and sanding off the paint drips and splodges around the edges (not my doing!) I now need to fill the holes and seal the floor. A couple of rugs around the bed and some new cushions, some pictures on the walls and this room will be done! I'd like to stay in it, if I were visiting.
But silly me! Now I have to pack everything up and clear the room so that I can finish off the floor........but I was desperate to see how it was going to look.

                              ......and now with a few more Ishka touches - a rug and a throw.
 

                                   I love these ceramic knobs - I used thirteen different ones.\
 

Beginning The Living Room

Well...........I recently realized that two months have slipped quietly by since I last posted here - I haven't been idle since finishing the bathroom (..........and HOW much am I enjoying it?) I've simply been busy doing other things, mainly getting my online business back on track after some serious neglect.

I needed a break after the bathroom effort, but I have been surreptitiously sneaking up on the living room renovation. The biggest job in this room will be stripping back, repairing and repainting the huge window. I've already prepared the corner one - its now ready for painting. The rest of the room just basically needs a clean and a re-paint and I'm going to tackle making a set of roman blinds for said huge window.

The room has a fireplace with a built-in Saxon wood-heater in excellent working condition, but some previous owner had slathered a thick, textured coat of white emulsion over the bricks and mantelpiece. A combination of stripper and chipping and scraping got most of it off the bricks, but it was looking like a much harder job on the mantel itself, so I opted for a trompe l'oeil stone look, which I think looks pretty good! 

 

 

Here's the fireplace before and during the process of cleaning it up.

 

..........and a couple of close-ups of the finished mantel.

                                                             Here's how it looks now

 

I bought this 70 year old two-seater couch recently. I'm planning to refurbish it in the summer, along with a few other pieces of vintage furniture I have. This couch is still as solid as a rock - I love it!

 

 

The cats approve of the new couch.......separately! They still only just rub along together.

Now I'm just waiting for that painting urge to hit again so I can finish this room completely........I can feel it coming! 

 

 

 

 

 

A Bathroom is Done!

After  a reno epic, my bathroom is finally done!
When I think back to how it was, I couldn't be more pleased with this outcome - it is now a joy to be in, in contrast to the depressing, dingy hole that it was a couple of months ago. So here it is.......I'm still waiting on a fitting that goes onto the tiled wall to hold the shower hose - it should be here next week. And the silicone is still curing, so I haven't christened it yet.......but SOON!

 

Since I last posted, I had the re-finishing company in to professionally re-surface the stained and chipped bathtub - it now looks immaculate. Thanks to Dave and Scott from TasBath for a lovely job. Here are a few shots of the bath being done:

 

Yuck!

 

Scott working on the stains and acid-etching the surface..

 

Stains gone - ready for the base coat

 

Yellow elephant trunk?

 

Final coat curing under a heater

Then it was just a matter of waiting until the hand-basin unit arrived to complete the installation. I called on my friend Alan, to help with this. After a few false starts (retro-fitting new to old takes a bit of messing about!) we finally got everything successfully hooked up. And don't you just love a tradie who dresses to match the decor? I got Alan to help me lift the shower screen into place after he'd done the other work (it's heavy!) and I fixed it into position and put in the top bracket.

 

Alan matchy-matchy!

 

Here's a finishing touch: my sister, Jan, found this perfect bathmat while she was out shopping and bought it for me. I have a thoughtful sister :-)

So there you have it..........it's as good as done. Here's a little reminder of what it was like before:

 

 

 

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! 

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.