Queenslander

Arty, crafty, glassy.

| Jessica

There be photos of the new shower screen. Never knew you have to wait 3 days before touching or bumping it. Apparently it could explode. I ask, what takes 3 days to cure that a piece of glass might explode if you touch it?

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Not hugely in love with the piece of aluminium on the floor but I wasn’t actually given any choice. I love how builders make design choices for you (not). Anyway, it’s pretty unobtrusive and given that I hate water flowing throughout the bathroom from shower run-off I’m happy to see it there. My folks did a similar thing with a rounded piece of aluminium in their bathroom but it wasn’t high enough and water still flows over it. The only other alternative would have been to put a drain at the entrance but I hate the long ones – they’re swimming pools for cockroaches in our house.

I love the big, clear screen and that you can still see through to the picture window. It feels as if there is no glass at all! And the bathroom still feels spacious and well designed. So happy.

On Monday the boys come back to do the last of the work – the final siliconing of the glass, some extra electrical stuff, a louvre window, some tiling, and finally the silicone for the bathroom. Am I impatient to start using our bathroom? Not really. We’ve lived with the crappy bathroom for so long that a month seems short.

Of course, now I’m seriously regretting not having tackled the trim and door painting before the lads arrive. I might have a go with the oil paint tomorrow, just to get started.

In the meantime, DH bought a new Makita petrol line trimmer with a Bunnings gift voucher and I bought some herbs again. I love home grown herbs but I’m terrible at keeping the water up to them, and in Queensland summer sun you need to water every day – yes – even woody herbs such as Rosemary.

I’ve repurposed an old wire flower shelf back to its original use. I WAS going to de-rust and paint the thing but I couldn’t be fagged. I potted all the herbs, watered them and arranged them on the shelf and now I’ve created an artful Instagram picture (which I don’t use because Instagram).

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I’m pretty happy with the composition of this picture, actually. And yes, it has been edited a bit using Snapseed- our paintwork isn’t quite as bad as this!

Now DH is hard at work learning how to use a petrol line trimmer. There may be teething problems.

The pantry is go

| Jessica

DH and I finally got to the pesky West Wing and now the Oh Jesus Room is a little better: my desk at least is clean and I’ve dusted and we are using the cupboard spaces for good, not evil. DH refitted the blinds, I reorganised the space, and apart from the corner of painting equipment I’m dreading putting away – because it means I’ll never bring it up again if I do and there’s still a heap of painting to do – it’s basically done. I COULD spend some time reorganising the bookshelves because all the books are out of order (fiction in with my non-fiction, that sort of OCD hell) but I have to do my tax first. Priorities, people.

Onto the pantry. It has long been a bugbear. It’s a small room of about 1800x2400mm. Perfect for a bathroom or small storage room, it’s a walk-through space to the West Wing, so it has to have a clear passageway. Now that the West Wing is (partially) done our gaze yesterday turned to this horror space. We had used black Ikea Kallax shelves donated by my adult child to store our food, and two old yellow cupboards repurposed from the original kitchen to store linen, towels and other stuff. It was dark, messy and we couldn’t find anything. The shelves were too deep and dark, and the old cupboards hard to access. So horrible I haven’t even taken a photo.

Yesterday we took the unprecedented step of repurposing two chrome wire wardrobes we had recently bought from Bunnings into one storage shelf. It worked a treat. So much so we decided then and there to buy 2 new storage shelves in the same design for the back wall. At $59 each, 750W x 300D x 1800H they didn’t break the bank and it’s amazing how much better one feels when one’s living spaces are organised. I put them together in about 20 minutes – super easy to construct and the designers need some sort of prize for simplicity and ease of design.

I then stacked the shelves and noticed a small problem – the wire shelves weren’t secure enough for smaller jars and tall bottles to rest on without wobbling. We MacGyvered it. For those who don’t know, MacGyver is a TV character well known for his seemingly endless ability to make stuff within a time-sensitive emergency event out of bits of found objects such as duct tape, wire and paper. MacGyver

(Photo courtesy Oh My Geek)

Under the house in the breeezeway, I noticed some melamine shelves stored between the floor joists. We had saved them from an IKEA cupboard that had literally fallen apart because it didn’t have secure bracing at the back (yes, they used CARDBOARD AND PINS). I don’t know why we had saved them, but I quickly realised we could cut out the corners with a jigsaw and they would literally be a perfect fit with the new shelves. Serendipity! They are now supporting the cans, jars, bottles and pantry stuffs, and it looks clean and bright in the room, so much so I may even have to vacuum and wash the floors. This house is coming together, y’all!

We never throw anything out. We thought we had an old working coffee maker downstairs gathering dust, but when we went to find it there was nothing there. This is a tragedy because our brilliant expensive cherry-coloured Breville coffee machine finally died yesterday and started shorting out the electrical circuits. It had been the victim of a power surge about 18 months ago and I think the temperature gauge had blown, so it was overheating and ruining the on-board computer. We limped along with imperfect coffee but were unable to get it fixed because it was just out of warranty and the cost to repair is usually greater than the cost to replace. Anyway, no espresso coffee for us any more. Cherry finally blew up. However, us never throwing anything out has proven to be a blessing in the storage department.

It’s a great day when your storage room starts to feel like a proper storage room!

On the other side of the room (where that little bit of pine shelf is visible) are two bookcases. Don’t say we can’t squeeze every last centimetre out of our storage areas!

 

Procrastination 

| Jessica

So close and yet so far. I’m putting off the inevitable by lying here writing a blog post about putting off the inevitable. Sad, I know. I need to finish our WIR and ensuite. I need to finish painting them. When this is done we can put our clothes in the WIR and turn the Oh Jesus Room back into a proper working space. 

I know this. But I can’t bring myself to get up yet and do it. Probably because painting is boring boring boring and I’ve discovered my work with gap filler in the WIR leaves a lot to be desired! I need to sand back some of my bodgy work and do a topcoat. Then I can paint the woodwork. There’s really very little to do!

Oh, ok. Here I go. In the meantime here’s a picture of the guest room I dressed yesterday. 

  
I’m hating the pine furniture. My mum made it and if I paint it it might look crappy. I’m tempted though; the white oil paint I bought is a perfect colour and I could change the pine handles to something else more on trend. The sofa bed is hardly on trend and it has faded badly in the West Wing in the 2 years we’ve owned it. But it’s useful, so it stays. I need to wash the cushion covers and hang some art work and get some curtains/ blinds on the windows. Then we’re done! (Well, ok, I need to finish off oil painting the windows and French doors but there’s a whole lotta prep stuff I need to do before I can, so it’s on the “to do in a million years” list.)

DH and I already love this room so much it’s becoming a multi-purpose space. My stepson is quite neat and tidy and he is unlikely to create much personality in the room, so when he’s not here it may well become a sitting room for us. And it will definitely do double duty as a guest room. It’s so bright and friendly. My old teaching studio. Vale, teaching studio. You were useful once! 

I can’t even.

| Jessica

So tired. SO, SO tired. I spent the weekend filling holes and sanding in preparation for painting the East Wing. Yesterday I gave the East Wing its first undercoat. I’m so wrung out I can’t even think, let alone walk around. I removed the huge sofa so that I could roll the ceilings and walls, put down my drop sheets, and went hard for 6 hours. Now, this doesn’t sound like much, does it? Except I’m an oldish, slightly unfit lady who has to smoosh paint into the VJ grooves with nothing more than brute strength and a tricky roller position. I’m all done in. And of course the muscles around my right shoulder have decided to cark it!

I’m about ready to kill the owner of the house for wanting VJ mdf sheets. The painter now has to fill every single little black triangle left by the groove with acrylic filler, which is a horrible job the painter has NO skill in. Given that the painter and the owner are one and the same, I’m shitty at myself for giving myself more work to do. Gah.  However, the owner thinks the VJ looks amazing. The painter reluctantly agrees, nursing her tennis elbow and cursing.

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Yesterday I completed the second round of cutting in with the undercoat and cleaned up some patchy areas, and now it’s only the acrylic filling and top coats to do in the East Wing. Then I have to decide on paint for the wood trims and architraves. Do I go with proper oil paint, or do I go with aqua oil paint (which is a big furphy, it’s just water based paint, and in no way looks or feels like oil paint)?

The lads are busy at it today putting in the windows. It’s starting to take shape but I don’t really like to work with them around. Mainly because I think they’re quietly laughing at my povvo attempts to cut in, but also because I’m concerned I’m getting in the way. They work fast and consistently, and are out of the house at about 3pm, so it’s best if I stay well out of harm’s way.

The weekend is looking a little dicey – we have family functions to manage, so I’m not sure if I’ll get to paint. However, I am all set up and nail filling, sanding or cutting in is certainly something I can manage if nothing else! And it’s a good opportunity to prepare a couple of areas I’ve pretended don’t exist, such as the new proper wooden VJs in our bedroom.

Like every building job ever, it’s the little things that remain unfinished. An architrave here, a window there. In every room being worked on. There is nothing that is fully finished! I’m keen to get the painting finished in the ensuite, WIR and the East Wing, because this gets a lot of clothing out of the way, and a lot of crap in cupboards. It means DH and I get to use our new bathroom (huzzah!), and there will be at least 2 places without dust everywhere.

However, this is the dragging time. The moment when you think “when will this ever end?” And we’ve only been going about 4 weeks. I should be patient!

 

 

 

Quiet

| Jessica

Today a moment of quiet as the boys head off to do a “quick job” elsewhere before coming back in the afternoon to finish off the final bits and pieces. John the builder popped in to let me know, bless him. The tiler never arrives before 8.30am. Bliss.

The builders are nearly done. Except of course the windows. It’s always the windows. There are a few more pieces of VJ to install, a few more beadings to hide the joins, and then it’s my turn to prepare the WIR for painting prior to the installation of the robe carcasses. As John said to me yesterday, laughing, “you know the story, don’t you? The painters will fix that!” I replied, sadly knowing this to be true, “yes, but as I’m the not-very-good painter, you had better do a really good job!” Preparation is key. My understanding (from when I dated a house painter) is that for new walls (not plasterboard) and new wood a quick undercoat is applied first. Then the patching and sanding happens. Nail holes are filled, joins are sealed, then everything needing sanding is sanded. Another undercoat for the tricky areas such as ceilings of bathrooms, and 2 coats of the top coat are applied. I’ll be painting until Xmas, cursing every crusty old french door and window I insisted on keeping. I’ll be painting them all white but the last paint job they had was pretty terrible (oil paint in a beige colour, messy and just painted right over old crusty surfaces), so I’ll be working my butt off to make them look even partly respectable.

We have yet to decide on the topcoat paint colour, but I recently painted my stepdaughter’s room bright white, and it looks lovely and not at all stark. I’m tempted to follow suit for the rest of the house. In truth the whole house needs another paint because the ceilings are starting to look dull and the wall colour has lost its appeal. Dark rooms look darker, and light rooms look tired. Painting VJ is a bitch though and takes forever. There are 6 rooms definitely needing new paint including our bedroom, and it’s looking more and more like I’ll need to do it all. DH is too busy at work, besides, he’s not much chop as a painter.

The tiler will be finished by tomorrow (should he ever appear) and apparently we’re deciding on grout colours today.  Next week the bathroom fittings will arrive and soon enough the trades will be back to install and finish our new ensuite. And now: finding the rest of the money to pay for all this stuff.

Speedy Gonzales!

| Jessica

In academia everything seems to move super slowly. This becomes the normal. By contrast, the building works here seem to be going at a lightning rate. Yesterday the plumber was in roughing in all the pipes, and today the electricians are roughing in all the lines. Some things we’ve waited years to fix are being done today, including the light fitting in the dining room and replacing a switch that wouldn’t allow our kitchen light to be switched off. It’s only 9.00am. We’ve already been invoiced for a progress payment, but when I saw what has been done this week I’m not surprised!

It’s good to be on site here making sure dumb things don’t happen. Like where the outlets by the bed go. We’ve had the bed jammed into the corner to allow easier access for the guys to get their stuff through, so the electrician assumed that’s where we’d have the outlets. Der. No. Ask. Luckily I caught them in time to fix THAT potential problem, and the switches were moved over slightly. This sort of stuff is not terribly important because we won’t see the outlets anyway, but I don’t want to be fighting with the stuff under the bed to plug my phone in.

Another thing is people assume where lights go etc. For a short arsed person like me who wants lights on either side of the vanity mirror, the globes need to be basically in the middle of my head, not above. So I had to be quite strict on the placement – not ABOVE the mirror, BESIDE the mirror. Women know this. Men don’t. As I said, I don’t care about hubby: he doesn’t wear makeup. Besides, he’s not that tall that the lights are going to give him a sallow up-glow.

Also, because we can’t afford to put lights in the WIR sections (have a look at any decent renovation show and they are all lit from within, I kid you not, this is a thing), we’re having 3 LED down lights in the little room, to correspond to each section. This will ensure we can actually see everything. The guy seems to think this will make the room very bright. Says I, YES. Mostly they won’t be needed, but at night when we are changing to go out to yet another bloody function I need to be able to see my clothes. So I’d rather more than less lights please. Besides, I’m blind.

The architect is coming! The architect is coming!

| Jessica

This is it. Today is the day when I get to see all the plans finally laid out on paper. I’ll let you know how I get on.

When I spoke to my mum who’s a long-time renovator and savvy house planner we agreed the costs will be about 30% over what the bank has lent us to do minor renovations. To build the studio and renovate the front of the house, I think will cost about $120,000. She agrees. We were only extended about $80,000, which has to include architect’s fees. I can probably scrape together some more money but it’s fighting for supremacy with overseas travel plans, one remaining credit card bill (DH loves me but forgets that I have to pay the bill from his gifts to me) and the last remaining school fee mega hit (huzzah, and fees are halved after July).

So near and yet, so far. I guess the alternative would be to do the West Wing first, plus update the house front (giving us our 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms), then go to the bank and ask for more to complete the remainder.

This is probably the BEST and most cost-effective solution but it still doesn’t get us the extra studio space. Yet. However, when I did some sums on what we could feasibly borrow if our house was worth $900,000, we would have nearly enough for the whole remaining shebang. It depends, of course, on the builder’s costings. Our guy is not cheap, but he is thorough, and as far as I know provides an accurate cost appraisal. And if we don’t change too many things on the run our costs should remain consistent. Problem is, as soon as you add 10% overruns, 10% GST, architect and contractor’s fees, plus council fees, it cuts everything up. So the initial $80,000 becomes about $55,000. Not a lot of money left for building stuff.

But it MIGHT be enough to fix up the West Wing, do the electrics and plumbing, add 2 new bathrooms and renovate the facade, buy a new stove and fridge, plus change a wall in the main house and add built in bookcases. Ah, compromises. At least we still have walls and a mostly working roof.

(Small Edit: I’ve not put a careful figure on our renovations but I believe it’s in the vicinity of about $3000 per square metre. I think this is too much, and when I put $2000 per square metre against the renovations it all becomes much more reasonable, also given that our house is a simple wooden cottage it’s not too expensive to change it.)

renovation compromise

 

Hating the waiting!

| Jessica

DH hates the way our house doesn’t work. He wants to come home and put his feet up and suck down a beer on the back deck, proudly surveying our patch of paradise and admiring our pretty little cottage, all decked out in a fresh coat of paint, and garnished with a pretty, easy-care garden.

We don’t have a back deck. But my architect who is coming over this afternoon has some ideas about that.

The long times between decisions feels like this process is taking forever. Not a bad plan when we don’t have enough funds for all the jobs we want to do round the house.

But we’re both quietly screaming with frustration. We’ve been here more than three years now, and neither of us are coping with the Hades summer conditions or the insects or the traffic noise. DH wants the house to look good on the outside while I want the inside to be more functional.

While we get a good amount of breeze through cross drafts we can’t really manage the heat or noise pollution. We have no sound privacy and noise comes up through the floor. Our West Wing is mostly unliveable. It needs gutting, rewiring, insulation and reorganising. DH and I have no ensuite or wardrobes and crap window furnishings in our bedroom. Our single family bathroom is unfit for use due to black mould. Our plumbing needs a complete refit due to leaking pipes and we need a new electrical board and new fittings.

Our daughter’s room is too small in the long term and our kitchen is tragic. Pretty but tragic.

We can’t do anything about the garden until the building plans are finalised. So every few weeks DH gets out there with whipper snippers and the lawn mower and attempts to beat the weeds into submission, while the diggingest dog puts ankle-breaking holes in strategic spots.

Our entryway is too small, the back stairs are on their last legs and there is no ceiling insulation in the verandahs.

Argh!

But as I explained to DH, my income has been bound by PhD studies, with little chance to improve my position until it was finished. Now that it is done, we have a much better chance of improving the house because the dissertation is out of the way. I can work more hours. Also, it’s the last year of 2 lots of school fees. Phew!

But the waiting….. Ugh.

The plans, the plans!

| Jessica

Waiting, waiting. In the meantime, I’ve changed the appearance of the blog for funsies. I’ve come up with some lovely plans, courtesy of my designer, who has shown all sorts of good ideas. Not sure we can afford a single one, but here’s hoping.

Here are some plans I’ve recently played with. The first highlights upstairs and the second downstairs. DH and I desperately want a back deck and extension to our home as we currently have nothing there. I also want a separate studio (with toilet) for my students. The next thing is garage, extra bedroom and bathroom and laundry. And as I mentioned in a previous post, our garden is an interesting jungle design at present and I want to create a back yard oasis – but not until the builders have finished with it first. As our house sits on an 810sqm block, we really don’t have too many limits in the first 20 metres – it’s only the back half of the block that easements are our pest. Our designer talked about going downstairs which works for us, but as we also want to extend the back, it makes sense to me to discuss and plan the next phase before launching headlong into the first phase. But we also need to finalise plans for the front so that when we go to council it’s all there ready to go.

 

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