If it feels like its taking us a LONG time to finish our house, it is.
We first saw the house in December 2012.
It was moved to our property on the back of a truck in July 2013 (
full tour with BEFORE photos here).
We got council approval for it in July 2014. Then we replaced the roof, and started working on stripping back each room (including removing floor coverings,
asbestos, all fittings from the kitchen and bathroom) and
gradually painting and renovating.
The bathroom was fitted out about in the middle of last year, but it took us ages to get back to painting it as we had other rooms to work on first.
We painted the outside of the house with the help of my parents early last year (there is still a bit left to do, but its looks so much better).
A few months ago we had the
new hardwood ironbark floor installed. Now we are just waiting for the cabinet maker to build the kitchen (and then the plumber to plumb it, the electrician to the power points and the tiler to do the splashback!) and to finish off the laundry. I have spent hours with the cabinet maker choosing colours and deciding where the cupboards go, it is tiring making all those decision! But We Are So Close! It will just depend how quickly we can get all the trades organised to get their bits done.
Also, we finally got the shed wired, with lights and power points, so that we can start setting up Pete's workshop. Our builder has built a room under the mezzanine floor, so we that we will have a clean area for honey and soap making and storage. I have a second-hand kitchen to install in there (not from the house, it was 1960s era, I picked a newer one up locally). Our builders also fitted the front awning on the house and put in all the skirting boards. These are jobs that we could have done (slowly), but when the builders are there, I give them all the odd jobs to do as well, just to save us some time (and they do a better job).
Over the Christmas break we painted the new shed room (we picked up some cheap miss-tinted paint from the hardware, it was fun because it didn't matter what colour it was, we went with a cool lime green pastel). We also stripped the laundry ready for the builders to work on preppping the floor for tiling. And we took a massive trailer-load to the dump. I hate how much rubbish comes with building, even though we used a second-hand house, it seems to have generated way too much waste. I have set aside a few things that we can sell or give away, that might at least be useful to someone - windows and heaps of architrave that we don't need. I hope it can be used. And we have a pile of various kinds of timber in the shed at the moment, which "might be useful", just need to find somewhere to keep it.
So here are the photos of the current state of the house:
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| Here's the front of the house - complete with awning |
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| The laundry is ready for the builders, last room to be sanded and painted. |
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| Another view of the laundry |
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skirting boards done - need to be painted with primer before we get the floor polished
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the shed
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| the shed kitchen painted (we need to paint the concrete floor now) |
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the shed kitchen from the outside (we need to paint the outside,
got some miss-tinted grey paint for that too) |
What do you think? Are you renovating too? Any tips?
Have you found it hard to get trades out to where you live? We're looking at a property at the moment, of course a farm ;) and it's a real fixer upper....like they have boxed in the veranda and used sliding doors for the Windows....which sit 5foot above the ground.......no verandah on the outside...just opening doors and a drop ha! My worry is wed buy it and not be able to get the people we need to help renovate!
ReplyDeleteAs for the tip dumping...not sure about where you live, but our local tip is a resource recovery site...which means they let folk in to comb the piles of junk ( which have been separated out ) . We've scored many a good building item from there in the past. We're currently lining the floor of our bike shed with old decking people have pulled up and dumped. Perhaps your waste is also being reused?!
That's uncanny. I've splashed a bit of green paint around my bathroom recently too, as part of my new room blitz experiment. Very minor cosmetic stuff, compared to what you two are undertaking.
ReplyDeleteLove all the work you're managing to accomplish. I can't believe it's been so many years since you first started. Time flies! Almost there though. :)
the house is looking great! you'll be sipping tea out on the veranda in no time
ReplyDeletewould love to buy a property ...
& yes, did miss you
thanx for sharing