Phase one Compete

Last Wednesday was the first day in nearly four months that we didn't get up and let our builders in the back gate.   I felt both liberated, from the burden of handing out large sums of money, and a bit lost.  These guys have been my focus for nearly four months. I have dedicated my days to driving around Newcastle looking at things, buying things and hours and hours on the phone ordering and researching thing.  I have lost nights of sleep over all the decisions that had to be made, and trying to stay one step in front of them.  But last Wednesday I had only five small mundane things on my list, and I was a little lost…..

I would love to tell you that everything is done and our house is complete, but that is no where near the truth.  The big building part is done. All the structural things, and for the most part the electrical and plumbing work, is complete.  But now starts the part that we are doing ourselves. All the painting and the finishing that has to now happen to finish this place, is for the most part all up to us.  And don’t even talk to us about the landscaping! I don’t think either of us realised how badly this build was going to affect our yard!

But before I launch into decorating dilemmas and trying to furnish and style all my new spaces, let me show you where we are and how we got here over the last 6 weeks ….

When we got back from our holiday we had a deck: 

It was so nice and clean then!

Then the frame for the new laundry and bathroom went up: 

Archie being Site Manager - he loves a good box......

Windows go in and Sarking goes up: 

And then the cladding went on: 

And the roof goes on.  What you don't see here is four weeks of mistakes, miss-orders, leaks and general roofing incompetence - but finally it was done! 

Our deck got a ceiling, got painted and had lights and speakers installed:

And my favorite find: the deck wall lights! It was love at first sight.

My wonderful Dad made the fly screens for our louver windows and installed them just before he and my Mum jumped on a plane to Europe for 9 weeks....a life saver with all the fly's!

The new laundry and bathroom both had some brick work that needed to be fixed up:

Then plumbing:

And finally some sheeting went on and we had a room! 

And then there was finally tiles......

So this is where we are up to now with the back bathroom.  We have tiles on the walls and the floor has been finished.  The plumber is booked in for next week and the wonderful J and I are busy doing the final coat of paint in there.

Better photos of everything to come I promise! 

We have plumbers, tilers, floor polishers, skipbins and earth movers all booked in for next few weeks, so some major things still going on!  

Renovation Revisited Part 1

Our house renovation seems to go in fits and starts.  Some days I take 100 photos as so much is changing and the next – I have nothing to show.  In the two weeks leading up to our departure we were working like crazy to get the house ready for my lovely friend Michelle, who was saving our bacon by house sitting and looking after Archie our furchild.

As I patiently explained to my builder guys: “I can live with an extension cord coming out of the manhole in the bathroom that connects across the hallway, dinning room and kitchen floors so that my dishwasher works but I can’t ask anyone else too!!”   As such I was really putting on the pressure to have the house not only in general working order, but also clean, tidy and inhabitable for normal people who are not used to living in complete and utter mess ALL the time!

So this is what was happening in the lead up to our departure…. 

We (partially) installed a kitchen.  It is an Ikea kitchen that with the help of my lovely Mum and Dad we installed ourselves.  This is not something I personally would recommend to others; especially if you have an old house where all the angles and surfaces are not straight!!  

You have no idea how many doodahs and bits and bobs we have left over - I think we could build a whole kitchen with what we have left over from this one!

Outside things just started taking shape.  After weeks of discussions about footings with the engineer and builders we finally got the footings sorted for the new laundry and bathroom slab.

The pier holes for the deck were redone after all that rain we had; and while we were pouring the footings we concreted the piers.  

The bricky arrived!

And bricked up around all the new windows: 

And put the masonry walls on the new slab.

And built up the piers.

We even got to take out the old air conditioner that went through the old living room wall and patch it back up. You can't even tell where it had been from the outside!

APOLOGIES! As a result of the not so fabulous internet where we currently are I have to have to split this post in two .... but I will be back with photos of what it all looked like when we left a little over a week ago...... 

Treading the Boards

The first thing that we did even before we moved into our house over two years ago was pull up the filthy mustard carpet.

The house was so dirty that we ended up bringing the outdoor hose inside and just spraying down the floorboards as we scrubbed them, and letting the water go down the gaps! 

Since then we have been walking on bare unpolished boards.  Many people asked us why we didn't just get them polished in the interim before we did these renos.  The real reason I think is that we actually just got to a point where we were used to having them....... we never liked them and I often complained about them but I think sometimes you get to a point where you just get used to what you have.....   

But on Tuesday we said goodbye to the boards that we have been treading for the last two years, and said hello to the floor sanding man!  

You can see the new boards that we put into the old floor. I of course lost lots of sleep worrying that they would not look the same and match into the the old ones!

On Tuesday afternoon after work we went back to have a look: 

What a difference a sand makes!

On Wednesday I went back and we had one coat of varnish on the floor.  And on Friday we were done.  The hallway looks so much wider, the colour we choose for the walls looks better.  And we are so much closer to moving in! 

I think you can tell I am in love!!