Prepping walls for painting

So… we’re painting the entire interior of the house, did I mention that? Putting a nicer colour palette on a house can make a huge difference for quite a small outlay. Paint for the entire house has cost us roughly $600, and that’s using good Dulux Wash & Wear stuff as we’ll be buggered if we’re going to have a wall ruined by one of the kids leaving a hand print on it or something equally mischievous.

Now, you could pay someone to then do the painting, but that costs thousands of dollars. If you have that money, all well and good, but we don’t… so it’s a job that’s fallen to us plus friends/family to do ourselves. Painting is not as easy as just covering a roller in paint and going to town, there are a number of steps to get a good result, and first of those is cleaning the walls.

You may look at the walls in a house and think ‘hey, they look pretty clean as is, surely paint will just go over that and it’ll all be good to go’, and you may be right for the most part…

However, what about portions of walls like this?

Loungeroom corner before clean

Loungeroom corner before cleaning

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Lineal vs Square meters

So, when you get into buying wood and other such building materials, you’ll find that some things are quoted by lineal meter, and others by square meter. It can be a little hard to really envision the difference between these two types of measurement. So, maybe some photos might help 🙂 (more…)

Welcome to our house

So, here we are, work has begun on transforming this house from quite the run down, dated, hodgepodge of pieces into what we hope will be a fantastic family home for many years, and yet I haven’t properly introduced the house have I? How rude. Allow me to remedy that at once…

Front of house

Front of house, as it was advertised

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Saved!! :)

Hooray for Lee from Lilydale Crane Trucks who took my panicked call at 8.30 last night and with great humour and skill picked up our floorboards & delivered them to the house this morning! Tiarnach, Eibhlin & I had a great time watching the crane deliver the massive bundles & especially loved watching the way Lee controlled the crane with his remote – every boy’s dream!! 😛 I was so grateful that he got them to us safely that I just wanted to give him a big kiss 🙂

He controlled it from a hip controller

So casually he guided 1.5 tonne of wood around

Simon & my dad had the delightful task of bringing the 3 tonnes of floorboard (yes thats right – 3 tonnes) inside! Took them over 2 hours and Dad slashed his hand in the process yet the job was done and now the boards are safely inside. Thanks Dad!!!!!!  The boards need to acclimatise for 2 weeks before they can be laid so now we wait…

Aside from the joy of the wood finally arriving today I also had 7 tradies come to quote jobs. 4 flooring guys, 2 plasterers and a plumber.

Floorboards

140 sq/m of Tasmanian Oak Floorboards

We’ve chosen our flooring man and now just need to source the Form Ply to go underneath the floorboards.

I must say that I do enjoy demolishing things!! Had a wonderful time today ripping up lino and pulling off skirting boards.. hehe! Cant wait to get stuck in to the garden.. but that will have to wait!

Stumble at the first hurdle

So, the day of settlement is over, it’s real now, as we have the house, we’ve been in it, it is ours.

And the feeling of the potential this house has is stronger than ever, so I’m absolutely thrilled and excited by what it’s going to be. As it is, it has a lot of work, a lot… but that only makes it all the more rewarding in the end (I hope).

We took in the 130 linear meters of new skirting board we bought from the Trading Post, we set up a temporary entertainment area for the kids (tv/dvd player and toys) to try to occupy them during the times they have to be there while we are, and brought in the basics to be able to make something to eat/drink while we’re there.

And we waited for our 145sq/m of Tasmanian Oak floorboards to arrive.

And waited.

They were due between 3pm-4pm… it was 5pm, the woodyard wasn’t answering calls… I called my friend Ben to say his brawny assistance getting the boards into the house would not be required as it seemed they would not be turning up. We had dinner, pulled up some lino, pulled a mantelpiece off… but still no floorboards.

Floorboards at wrong house

Those are floorboards, this is the wrong house

We took the kids home to the rental and lo and behold… there were two large wrapped packages in the driveway which looked suspiciously like floorboards. But nooo, they couldn’t be.

Yup. They were. Not a lot of use at a rental, but there you go. Belinda called the woodyard and got through, and they wouldn’t admit any fault, so we were stuck with the wood where it was. Some more ringing around and Belinda found another driver who can move them tomorrow. We’re out $200, but at least there’s no rain forecast for tonight.

Settlement tomorrow!

Our new house

Look, rooms and doors and such!

It’s here… after deciding to sell up last year, and then not finding anywhere to buy, so then renting for 6 months, we’ve finally found our new home.

Except it needs some work. Quite a bit actually. Some of it has to be done before we move in, in 4 weeks. We will be chronicling the entire process, the first 4 hectic weeks, and the many additional projects that will continue to be done as time goes on.

We hope you enjoy it, and maybe even find it useful.