Fence, Part One

Since we moved in, one of the only really negative aspects of living in our home has been one of our next door neighbours. It's a share house and we're not sure how many people live there but there's a lot and they're all loud. There have been massive parties, police have been called, and there are often suspicious activities in the backyard, and smells from under their house. So part one of this post is some photos of the fence when we moved in, and the view from our place. Enjoy. 

One of the issues is that our houses are so close together, but you can see that the fence was terrible, their yard is terrible, and it looked like half their garden was about to fall through the fence onto our yard. We never spent any time outside an it's been annoying us more and more since we moved in. Which was a whole year ago now!!

Continued in part 2...

The Study

Finally! The front sunroom has been converted into a proper, liveable space!!

This is really exciting for us, the front sunroom used to be a front verandah and somewhere in the past 90 years, one of the previous genius owners closed it in. In theory this is fine, so many Queenslander style houses have been changed in this way to quickly and easily add a room but it really heats up the house by preventing air flow, and the big clear panes of glass really make it feel like a hot house.

Before. I don't even have words.

Here's the beautiful room before we started. The roof and three of the walls are asbestos, and the floor boards are set with large gaps that had been previously filled with caulk that was actually starting to fall out into the carport below. So although we had hoped this room would just be some quick painting to make it nice, we started with the floors.

I never knew this, but you can actually get coloured caulk for jobs like this one. Yep, brown caulk. I'd like to say that filling in the gaps between the boards was quick and easy, but that would be a big fat lie.

Hopefully this gives you an idea of what the floors were like, if they were just 'ok' we would have left them, but it was just awful. Also, since we've put in the air conditioning we're trying to eliminate the natural air con - and in this house there's a lot!

Anyway, I started by trying to just neatly pipe the caulk into the gaps and then flattening it out with a damp cloth. I was confident that it would be quick but I spent about 3 hours on a 20cm section and decided something had to change. Enter the engineer husband, and this little trick…

Isn't it (he) BRILLIANT!! So it still took us quite a few hours to tape up the floor, pipe in the caulk, scrape off the excess with a  wet scraper and then quickly rip off the tape before it dried and stuck the whole lot together (not that I would know that's what happens or anything).  When it was finished it was worth all the effort, the floors look amazing now, at least compared to what they were.

Floors after! The caulk isn't exactly the right shade but it's close enough for us. If you look closely it has a few little flaws in the caulk but most of it is covered now anyway. So the floors were done, then we moved on to the rest of the room. The first task was to sand, although with most of the surfaces being asbestos we couldn't sand those. We used a special sealant paint to cover the asbestos without sanding it which acts by sealing the asbestos fibro in place and also acting as a primer. It was stinky and very thick to work with but took a lot of effort out of the sanding process.

In this room we decided to have a go at filling in the gaps between the vertical joins in the walls (or wall in this case since the others are fibro). We didn't bother in the other rooms we've finished due to the time pressures we were under but after nearly living in the house for a year we're starting to notice cracks in the rooms we painted when we first moved in. 

Husband also had a lot of work to do on the windows. The wooden frames were quite worn and the many layers of paint were chipped, leaving a very messy and uneven surface. He used putty to make a smooth surface and the result was beautiful. Here's the end result, I'm in love with the makeover here so I've added some before and afters.

All painted and nice, with the chief painter peeking around the door. He's a bit shy.

An example of a peeling fibro asbestos wall that looks almost perfect now.

Floors done, paint done. Sorry it's dark, it shows what time we finished up!

I'm not even sure that these photos show how dramatic the difference is, but believe me, it's big.

Next we had to add some curtains. I'm using the room as a temporary home office so we didn't what the windows as….errr… see through as they are. It sounds weird but seriously, you can see from the street into the sunroom and even into our bedroom behind it when the door is open. We decided to use some nice green curtains (ahem, the cheapest ones at Spotlight) and it makes it feel nice and relaxing in the room. I wanted a cool colour that wouldn't contribute to the heat.

After we hung about 5km of green curtains.

This was how the room looked with the curtains…and it's a lot of curtain. We've also added a sheer layer underneath to cut out some of the brightness of the morning sun. It's not bad in the winter, but in the summer without a buffer I might actually melt in here. Then we added the furniture and the room really took shape.

Reading chair next to the bookcase. 

Home office set up. Can never have too many screens.

With the addition of the sheer curtains it's all done. Even partially blocks out the house next door (double win).

The Spare Room

The second bedroom has been one of those things that have been really slow going. To save some cash we decided to fix up the existing wall once the asbestos came down rather than covering it up with new vj sheeting like we did in the kitchen.



Before. We had started steaming of the wallpaper when we found fibro. Asbestos-y fibro.

And under the fibro... a total mess!

Jason has spent days and days agonising over filling and sanding the wall over and over until it resembled something good enough to slap some paint on. Along the way I may have been accused of being a 'backseat sander' for constant questions (mostly about how long the whole process would take) and honestly I think Jason could have spent months working on it and trying to make it perfect but basically the wall is AMAZING compared to what we started with.

 



Master painter at work











Painting nearly complete
 

This is how the room looked when our first visitors arrived:

 

 



Such an improvement! We were in a mad rush to get it finished so it's not perfect but it's a huge change from what we started with! It's quite a small bedroom so it's hard to get decent photos but overall the room looks really good. The next step (and there's always a next step) is to get a new ceiling fan with a light so we can remove the old fluro.

Trees? What Trees?

It's 2015 already! I think we expected that our house would be looking vastly more impressive by now, alas... not so much. We've kicked changes off for the year with the removal of the two big trees from our front yard. They provided a lot of shade in the front sunroom but they really had to go. They were far too big and close to the house, were ugly from being cut back so much, and made a mess on the gutters and front steps. When I came home yesterday to see the new yard I was so happy! Here's the before and after:

I'm not sure that this photo does justice to how bad the front garden looked with the trees there, but this was taken just as the removal was starting and a few branches had been cut down.

 

After:

The garden just looks so neat and tidy now. It's obviously not perfect, but at least we have a space to work with. The palms were always there, just overshadowed

We still need to put up a front fence and decide whether we'll even keep the garden or remove it to change the stairs and entrance but for now this is a great improvement!

Loving our daggy little colour coordinated letterbox!

That 70's Kitchen

Is still very much a 70's kitchen! I know it's been weeks and I had hoped that this post would be more "look at our amazing kitchen" and less "ummm we haven't really done anything". So let go of any expectations right here, it's still the ugliest thing ever although there are a few little changes that don't exactly change the overall effect but are definitely baby steps towards something better. Tiny baby steps. So with that disclaimer out of the way, here's what's been happening.

As a reminder, this is what we started with (yes, I'm rehashing this picture just to make it seem like we've achieved more in the past month. I know it's cheating). The wallpaper was removed on day one, and then we got the fibro underneath ripped off.

 

The panels underneath were in terrible condition so we got a builder to come in and add a new MDF panel in the kitchen, as well as adding cornices, belt rail and skirting boards to match the rest of the house and board up the exposed electrical wires. We got a couple of quotes for the work and they were both approximately $1700, including materials. Mr Fox really would have liked to have had a crack at this work himself but it would have required him buying a nail gun and a circular saw, and apart from how much that would cost... I really prefer him alive.

Here are a couple of before and after shots.

 You can see here that we moved the dining table into the kitchen to use as a temporary pantry once all the cupboards were removed.

There are a few issues with the work that was done, for starters removing the old cornices made one of the old walls actually shift a little bit, leaving a gap in one corner. Seriously it won't be long before our house is more 'no more gaps' than 'actual walls'. Overall we're so happy with how it looks and how well the cornice, belt rail and skirting boards match the others in the house. We're trying so hard to keep costs down, so even though we had the option of getting these features matched exactly and made for us which would have been amazing, that was never a realistic option (especially once I put my foot down with the nail gun and saw). We wanted a low cost option that is readily available when we need replacements or features for other rooms and these look great. You'd never know they didn't match perfectly unless you were looking for the differences.

It's just the back wall that has been replaced, the other wall has plenty of nail holes and old chipping paint but if nothing else, we're pretty handy with the sandpaper at this point so we can get those ready to paint. The belt rail isn't just for decoration either. These old vj walls don't have any studs in them, they're literally just held on at the top and bottom. Before we added the belt rail the kitchen/bedroom adjoining wall actually had a little movement if you pushed on it, so unlike the picture rail that is purely for decorative purposes, the belt rail stabilizes walls. We need to have one on at least one side of each internal wall so by adding it in the kitchen we can leave it off this wall in the bedroom. So there you go, Introduction to Belt Rails.

We also splashed out and got ourselves a snazzy little island bench this week. Even though it seems like there's a decent amount of (bright yellow) bench space, the cupboards are so low that they're a bit awkward to use, and they're almost all taken up with the microwave, toaster and kettle (obviously necessary) and the coffee machine (non-negotiable).

We LOVE this island bench, it was hand made for us and only $450. The shelves underneath are so handy - they'll probably be used for a pantry until we sort something out (yet to be determined). We just need to get a couple of little stools, you can just see there's space on the other side to tuck them in, which will make it a cosier little room since it's tucked away from the living room. The next step is to slap on some paint and we'll have half a kitchen that looks gorgeous! Let's just agree to not discuss the other half for a while. There's no money to replace it at this stage, and it's not in good enough condition to fix it up so for now we'll focus on the nice new wall and pretty island bench... ok?

Walls come down

Asbestos removal day! Well, the start of the long process of asbestos removal. It's exciting to be getting started with this after learning that our house is infested with the stuff. We purchased the house knowing that the back study area had it in the walls and ceiling, but now we know it's also in the kitchen, bathroom, spare bedroom, and both front sunrooms.

We've engaged a company who specialize in this kind of work to come and take the fibro away. We're allowed to do small amounts of asbestos removal ourselves and it would have worked out cheaper, but after reading about the process and the stress we've already had over these walls we decided to leave it to the pro's. For this stage of the work we're removing three walls, and having it all disposed of including the two pantry cupboards which are attached to the wall, and also the small kitchen cabinet in between them. The white cupboards on the other wall are just screwed on and will be taken under the house and recycled as storage (probably for Mr Fox's precious and fast growing collection of super masculine tools). This is costing us about $1500 which sounds like a lot for three sheets of fibro, but it will be worth it to not worry about appropriate handing and the potential health impacts if we were to bugger it up.

So Mr Fox and I met with the asbestos removal guys in the morning and left while they unrolled acres of black plastic sheeting in the kitchen feeling glad it wasn't us, and mighty excited (and even more nervous) to see what we'd find when we got home.

Kitchen: Before and After!

Kitchen Before: Two non-matching pantry cupboard things to dump.
Fibro wall behind to be ripped off.



Kitchen After: Original, unpainted vj boards!
Fridge against the wall instead of floating in the middle
of the room. Happy times for the fridge.

 

Kitchen After: Empty wall where white cabinets were.

Bedroom Before and After!

Spare Bedroom: This is how much wallpaper steaming
happened before we got nervous about
what was underneath.

Bedroom After: Scary electrical wire hanging.
Hole that goes all the way through to the kitchen.
Not one, but two shades of ancient green paint.

So, walls are out. We have less asbestos in the house. We also have three very ugly walls. We're happy with how it all went, and relieved to find normal vj walls underneath ready for us to work with. There are a couple of issues: there's a hole that goes all the way through from the kitchen to the bedroom like a creepy little peep hole, and also a horizontal slice into the wall on the kitchen side. The hole can be patched while we putty up the thousand or so screw holes in the bedroom wall, but the cut will be harder to disguise. We're going to (attempt) to put in a new vj wall on the kitchen side just to make it easier, and then paint both rooms to match the areas we've already done. The other thing will be getting skirting boards and picture rails to match what's left in the rooms, but that is a challenge for another day. I was hoping to put up pictures of the completed rooms in this post, but it's going to take weeeeks of work to finish.

The kitchen will look like a disaster area for a few months yet while those yellow benches still exist, but I'm so excited about finishing the second bedroom and actually being able to have people stay over! It's basically been a dumping ground since we moved in (not the only one!) and I just want to make it nice, probably still a dumping ground, but a less obvious one.

So that's where we're up to. This weekend we're getting the sandpaper out again and bulk buying the putty - and coffee!





Curtain Adventures

Honestly, who sells a house and takes the curtains?! One of the things I haven't discussed yet, is the windows in our house. Or more to the point, the total lack of curtains/blinds/anything to stop the neighbours seeing everything. When we bought the house it wasn't an issue for us, we discussed options for blinds and curtains, and basically agreed it was a good opportunity for us to choose something that we - or at least one of us - liked : )

I've been thinking though, who sells a house without at least some old blinds, or in this case, some flowery curtains from the 60's? The house was tenanted before it was sold, surely they had something then? All I can think is that whatever was previously used for modesty actually brought down the value of the house even further, which is really, really saying something.

When we moved in we realised it was a bit of an issue, but we managed for a few days just using some strategically balanced beach towels over the bedroom window. The rest stayed bare a while longer. The towels looked as trashy as they sound, but in our defence that window doesn't face the street, and disturbingly, one of our neighbours uses bright red sheets instead of curtains on every. single. window. *shudder* So by comparison our towels looked quite nice!

Before: Empty windows

I think we initially had visions of installing blinds in house particularly in the living areas, but at this stage the budget just wasn't going to stretch that far. Especially with the odd shapes of our windows - no two are the same. We agreed on curtains and last week charged down to Curtain Wonderland to see what we could get for as little coin as possible. It turns out that ready made (read: affordable) curtains don't come in the range of colours I expected. We (read: I) wanted some colour in the curtains to add some brightness to otherwise very pale rooms. Also, like with choosing the paint colour, I don't want too many neutral colours to clash against each other. I really wanted a very pale aqua colour, but the closest match we found at CW was quite a bright blue. Not exactly what I'm going for. So with our expectations set a bit lower we charged off to Spotlight. We had great luck: curtains in a nice (not earth shatteringly nice, but we're going for affordable first) duck egg colour. As we have two larger windows in the living and main bedroom, and two smaller windows in the dining and second bedroom, we're only using two sets of curtains all together. So for both sets on sale we paid $160, and another $100 or so for hooks and curtain rings.

After (but before splitting the curtains)

We used them with one curtain on each window, until our Sewing Guru (my Ma) came to visit with sewing machine in tow. She's a whiz and seems to be resigned to the fact that I'm not even capable of sewing a hem. It took a while to cut all the curtains, pin them and then sew the new hem in place, but my sister and I did what we could to help and it was so much cheaper than getting custom curtains, which we were quoted $600 each for. EACH! Ma also showed me how to pleat the curtains to make them look pretty (I seriously don't have a clue), and the final look is great and really fits in the house nicely. The colour is almost exactly what I wanted and I'm glad I took the advice of Sewing Guru and didn't choose curtains with patterned fabric, it's nice and simple this way and easy to accessorise with other colours if we choose to one day.

After we got the curtains finished, we also put our first hook in the wall for the clock (below). This is a big deal after so many rentals and making our pictures fit on the existing hooks in each house. It is actually super easy to use command hooks to stick on and remove when we leave a house, but it still felt soooo good to just decide where we wanted a hook and not ask for permission. My sister gave me this clock about eight years ago and it has probably been dragged to as many rentals since. It finally has it's very own hook (it doesn't have a battery yet though, if you're wondering about the interesting time on it, one thing at a time)! I'm also pretty sure that Mr Fox enjoyed an opportunity to use his (borrowed) drill.

Bad photo of the curtains, but you get the idea.

Meanwhile, we've been deciding how and when to deal with the fibro asbestos in the house. We can't afford to redo the whole kitchen yet, but we really need to fit the fridge into the room better, so this week we're having two walls in the kitchen removed, and the one fibro wall in our spare bedroom. Now it feels like the reno is really starting!

The Painting

Hello! We survived! Here’s how the rest of the painting adventure went:

The priming was definitely one of the most time consuming jobs imaginable. The house was so old that we needed to make sure that all our hard work wasn’t for nothing and so we primed all the trim, any vj panels that had been sanded down to bare wood, and the first coat of the ceiling. It took a ridiculously long time (actually, so long that Mr Fox suggested he really liked the primer colour and maybe one coat of primer was all the place needed. And I agreed). 

Priming Complete

Once that was done we really started steaming ahead (ahem, in comparison to the previous few days). The time spent priming the architraves and ceiling paid off when we just needed one coat of white to make the ceilings look spectacular. It's a bit hard to see in this photo because we finished this job LATE at night, but trust me, our ceilings look hot.

Ceiling Done!

And then, we finally, FINALLY got to crack open the main event: our wall colour. Now, the colour was chosen quite quickly, but the decision followed many conversations about the right shade of neutral. The guys at Resene straight away pointed out the shades of Resene Tea, and it was exactly what we wanted. We got a test pot of the Half Tea, and straight away decided on the Quarter Tea. It’s a fresh shade that isn’t too grey or too brown or too close to white or too anything. We wanted something that wouldn’t make it feel too hot in winter, and definitely wouldn’t clash with the collection of neutral tone furniture we have. As soon as we started cutting in the walls with it, we were so happy with how it looked. Two coats later and the rooms were really looking good. The final touch was the enamel white for the trim which really transformed the windows and especially the pelmets which were previously a delightful brown (vomit). The final touch (and best in my opinion, since it took me eight hours to complete on Friday night) was the skirting boards. Changing them from dirty pink to shiny white really made the room look amazing. It was totally worth the back ache I had the next day! Here's a before and after to show the difference:

Before

After! So happy with the final look.

With the removalists arriving the next morning, I’m sad to say we didn’t really get to finish the painting. So basically, we didn't really get close. The doorways didn’t get any paint, and there are a few areas that need a touch up and now will have to wait a couple of weeks while we work on getting the house unpacked. On a positive note, our removalists were AMAZING! One was a kiwi, and once he and Mr Fox got through the obligatory process of “where you from back home, bro?” “do you know - insert name - ?” The bro- per-minute” rate was out of control and they absolutely smashed out the packing. As you can see with some furniture it's really starting to look more like a home and less like an abandoned slum, so happy days bro!

With some furniture (and unpainted entry in the background!)

We also got the results from our asbestos testing this week….positive. Sigh. We really need to remove some kitchen cupboards so our fridge can actually sit against the wall and to do that we’ll need professionals to manage the asbestos. Since it’s already quite a lot of work, we think it’s probably best to just remove all the asbestos in the kitchen at once, along with the kitchen. So, in addition to unpacking our three gazillion moving boxes, finishing up the painting and all the other adventures that come with moving (new phone line, getting internet, redirecting mail; all the fun jobs) we’re now planning a kitchen renovation. To be continued.

It’s so incredibly good to finally be living in our own house!!

The Panic

Pop the champers – we’re homeowners!! Settlement went perfectly to plan and on Friday afternoon we picked up the keys and had one blissful evening walking through our new house and imagining all the changes we were going to make. We really should have enjoyed that time more…

On Saturday morning the work started. With only seven days before the removalists arrive and an entire house to sand, prep, prime and paint, the pressure was really on. Luckily we had some fabulous, worth-their-weight-in-gold family and friends who came and got us started with the work. I’m pretty sure that if they hadn’t arrived, Mr Fox and I would still just be sitting on the floor crying about how impossible it all was. In hindsight, we should have been more worried. On the first day there were eight of us, on Sunday we were down to four. Last night it was just the two of us, and at 8.30pm – 36 hours after getting the keys, we had only just finished sanding, filling holes in walls, more sanding and an epic clean up. By 1am there was primer on the walls, but not all the walls. With four more days until we move in the panic is starting to set in.

 

 

The time pressure hasn’t been the only problem – on other teensy little issue that arose right after we finished stripping wallpaper – asbestos. Or maybe I should say suspected material that could potentially contain asbestos. We already knew that there was asbestos in the study, and we very intelligently closed the door to deal with that one later. What we didn’t expect was to strip (the world’s ugliest) wallpaper and find sheets of something suspiciously fibro-ish. Cue panic stations. I’m still face palming about not investigating before we started work on the wallpaper in the kitchen and the spare bedroom. There’s still a paper layer over the board (Masonite? Fibro? We still don’t know) and none of the boards are broken. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t go home on Saturday night and spend a loooong time with Dr Google looking up asbestosis. We’ve booked in the pro’s to come and have a look and take samples on Friday, so obviously those rooms won’t be painted when we move in, but that’s ok.

As for the rest of the week, we do our eight hours at work, put in eight more hours with the paint brush and wish that there were more than 24 hours in a day. Tonight we really, really want need to get the ceiling done to have a chance of finishing by Friday night. Now, time to bulk by the caffeinated beverages and smash out the rest of this week.

Meet Our Fox Den

Hello!! Welcome to my little blog! My name is Margaret and I should probably start by mentioning that whilst this is planned as a blog to capture the highlights of a house renovation, my husband (Mr Fox) and I aren't exactly experienced renovators (unless bellowing advice at contestants on The Block counts, in which case we're seasoned experts).

Mr Fox and I have been trying to buy a house for a long time now and after years of job uncertainty, crashed contracts, more rentals than I'd like to think about and what feels like thousands of inspections, we have actually done it - we're the proud new owners of a mighty large mortgage! Our little cottage is a not-so-grand old Queenslander, built in the 1920's.

We initially fell in love with her when we realised:
1. She's right around the corner from where we live now
2. We could actually afford her
3. She's right around the corner!!!! Hello!!

We love the suburb we've been renting in and really thought that we'd never afford a house without moving considerably further from Brisbane than we are now. I knew when this house was advertised that there must be something wrong to be affordable to us. Our first inspection was at dusk and with the power at the house already switched off, within a few minutes of arriving we were all using torches. In hindsight, this was probably a very clever move by the agent - it's a lot harder to see where the wood borers have been when you can barely see where you're going!! Mr Fox and I fell deep in L-O-V-E with the location, the work that needs to be done at the house started to seem more do-able. The next day we made an offer, and by that night the deal was complete.

Here's what we got: two bedrooms, a kitchen straight from the 70's complete with yellow bench tops and very stylish flowery wall paper, one bathroom, and a decent size yard. The house is actually in pretty good condition, but there's still a mighty long list of jobs that need to be done.

We haven't moved in yet but the first part of the transformation has already been decided. The entire interior is getting new paint! The current colour scheme of pale pink with dark pink trim is just a teensy tad outdated, and the years as a rental has left it... well, it's gross. The house still has the original vj walls. Don't know what they are? Neither did we... turns out that while they're a gorgeous original feature of Queenslander's that look fantastic when cared for, they're a real pain in the backside to repaint. And we haven't even started yet!!

Right now we're busy booking removalists and cleaners and keeping our fingers crossed that settlement goes as smoothly as we're assured it will. Wish us luck with the move!!!