housewarming

I went a bit Martha and made this invitation to email out for our birthday / housewarming party later this month. :)

Already wondering how 40 odd people are going to fit in our garden at one time...

progress

We have a new gate!

Here you see it in progress...


and magically finished!


Thankyou Gord. He makes these things look so easy. Although I have to say that if you ever put a new gate on a house you should first check where the electricity metre is so you don't lock the meter man out with your new gate! We unfortunately didn't think of this and now maybe we have to get the electricity metre moved. Blah.

Also I came home from work the other day and he had installed downlights in out bedroom, loungeroom and dining room! 8 of them! On dimmers too. THEN he removed the ceiling roses, and re-plastered the ceiling... What can I say? I am very, very lucky. The downlights make such a difference! It's quite amazing... I was kind of in two minds about removing the old lighting because it's a period house and I worry about making it too modern, but it's such a narrow space and these lights just make the room feel so big and airy!



It's less exciting but I also finally finished painting the window frames, and we removed pretty much all of the masking tape. They look so much better!

So we're gradually getting through the little jobs... which means over summer it'll be on to the scary stuff! - Roof, Bathroom and kitchen... $$$ scary.

Unrelated to home improvements but I must link to a webpage I just discovered and am already obsessed with... It's the 'behind the curtain' section of Kate Spade's website. The layout and eclectic design is so gorgeous. Also love all the varied content - like the 'desktop profile' section.. love love.

I want a design business of my own just so I can have a webpage like this! seriously.

Actually I have made quite a few exciting webpage discoveries recently so will update my links section shortly :)

ps) hi Jess! I think you may be my only reader, and yours is the first and only comment to have been left here :) so thankyou and lots of love! x

oh hello

...me in the vegie patch... doesn't look like much I know but allegedly (according to my mum) all these little green sprouts will turn into capsicums and tomatoes and zucchinis and beans! Amazing huh?


The garden (including toilet and shed!) Please excuse Gord's new BBQ which will not live permanently in that spot.



We made a long list of what needs doing today. A looong list. It's daunting but it felt good to prioritise things and decide what will happen first. It makes me motivated to get started.

The big stuff (bathroom, kitchen etc) is going to wait at least until late November when we'll be back from holiday. But hopefully we can knock off some more manageable projects in the next few weeks... like putting downlights in, and making a gate for the side of the house... and maybe Gord will have time to start the bookshelves! So exciting!

Some inspiration - I love these Zanotta shelves but they're a little crazy for our place... we're going all white... with a similar but slightly more simple configuration...



something like this?


working drawings...

hiatus

have had a bit of a blogging hiatus...

House stuff has been squished into weekends between a million other things... it's slow going and the list always seems so long. But there have been 2 minor achievements -

1) Garden clean up and VEGIE patch! I don't know what came over me :) Photos to come.
2) we removed the ceiling in the lean-to kitchen :





See? Doesn't look like an improvement I know... but... this is step 1 in the exciting mission of raising and levelling out the kitchen/bathroom ceiling! Sounds crazy but Gord seems to think he/we can do it...

It was so messy. so so messy. Gord was a hero as usual.

I am a bad blogger. I blame Optus. We still have no internet at home. :( Need to get onto that. Anyway, here are 2 quite boring pics, 1 is a blurry Gordon in our back garden. It needs a lot of love, but it's a cute garden, and I like the view of all the tiny rooftops. Also here is a shot of the houses across the road from us - our whole street is tiny single fronted victorian cottages pretty much... no tall buildings at all. Very cute.


Still lots more to do. Did nothing at all this weekend, it was Gord's big birthday party and the weekend quickly disappeared. Still need to paint those windowframes... maybe next weekend. I went to an old friend's place for dinner tonight. Haven't seen her for a long time, it was a bit of a re-union from my Spotlight days... 6 girls who I used to share every weekend with working in retail. Anyway, Siobhan has just bought a flat and did a total renovation before moving in, so it's very polished - new kitchen, new bathroom etc. Inspired me to get cracking on the bathroom... seems daunting but it's gotta be done! I am still dreaming about the possibility of raising the ceiling height somehow... it is so low in the bathroom... Just starting to worry about the money a bit.. need to plan a bit of a budget.

Am starting to get nervous about the lack of income after my current contract ends... scary stuff now that I have a mortgage to worry about. The more I think about it, the more I would like to try and start something up of my own... some kind of design/manufacturing thing that might help me tick over inbetween the film work. Gotta stop talking about it and just DO it. Seriously.

Finally moved my shelves from home and my books... starting to feel more like a home :) Some time soon we'll build shelves along that whole wall, right up to the ceiling and over the door. But for now this looks surprsingly ok!



Also check out the newly painted window frame (on the right) - white looks so much brighter and nicer than the dorky beige window frame (on the left, yet to be painted). Painting window frames takes longer than I realised.

no internet + no time = no updates. very bad. It's been so busy moving everything and squishing all Gord's stuff in.

But finally here's a pic of the beautiful floorboards....

On the weekend was the big move-in! What a mission. At the risk of repeating myself I can only sing Gord's praises again and again. He is relentless... he started packing furniture into the truck on friday night and the first load was ready to go on saturday morning... He just didn't stop all weekend.. incredible. Funny how these things bring out the gender stereotypes... I ended up packing up the kitchen stuff, cooking and cleaning out cupboards etc, while the boys most of the tough stuff. Credit to Henry and Robbie (our saviour - he's been over to help us out 3 weeks in a row now!) for helping with the move - thankyou so so much :)

Unfortunately it looks like we'll have no internet for a while so I'm a bit behind with posting... I haven't downloaded the latest pics yet (especially of the beautiful new floor!) but here are some scary before shots of the bathroom -




The entire bathroom is about 1700mm square and consists of a bath and a sink basically. That shot is my brother standing in the bath. Seriously. Lucky neither Gord nor I are 6 ft tall. I am about 5' 7" and my head is only about 2 inches off touching the ceiling when I'm in the shower. That room needs some serious work... I think the current DIY priority list is as follows -

1) get blinds! It is freezing without them.
2) design and make bookshelf so we can unpack the 400 boxes of books we have between us
3) bathroom!? knock out wall to laundry, sort out level of floor, get toilet plumbed inside, etc etc...?

Lastly, some eye candy. I already dream of having a beautiful big rug in the bedroom... even though it's number 4789 on the priority list right now! But isn't this lovely? -

Lots to recap.

Last weekend was the first weekend of major DIY - Gord patched and fixed the floorboards -


- in the process discovering that the electrics under the floorboards were an accident waiting to happen... so then he fixed up all the electrics too. He also knocked out the ridiculous arch-shape in the doorway through to the bedroom. Here's the before shot -


Jim and Sean painted nearly the whole living space and bedroom -


Mum was a wallpaper-removal machine (and cooked Chilli con Carne for the troops!) -


Amber came later with Jonah, and Jess brought cake which we ate at the end of the day with cups of tea. Last weekend was such a mission. I painted, bought building supplies and beer (Very important!).

This weekend, Robbie came round again and helped finish painting the walls and ceilings, Mum catered again (so important - thankyou!) I painted and tidied and had a mini-tantrum trying to paint the window frame in the bedroom with enamel paint. BAD idea. I have since sanded off most of what I painted in preparation to go over it in water-based which looks much better, less shiny, and is much easier to use. Grrr.

Gord doesn't cease to amaze me - he's finished most of the electrics, wired up the TV antenna -


...finished plastering the newly rectangular(!) doorway -


....patched and planed the uneven floorboards... the list goes on. I'm so lucky.

And all that was the lead-up to tomorrow when the FLOOR MAN comes to sand and polish the floors. After hearing a few horror stories I decided there are some things best left to the professionals - no not electrics, not plumbing, just floorboards. :) ha ha. I can't wait to see when they're done... we're having them stained darker to help match all the different timbers. Something like this -


Not too dark... and not too shiny. I'm going with water-based instead of polyurethane finish so it looks more natural - less plastic.

Man that was a big round-up.

This weekend is stage 2 of the DIY blitz. Trying to get all the big stuff done before Monday when the floor man is coming to sand and polish the boards. So today was all about painting, plastering, fixing floorboards, wiring electrics and the TV antenna. Actually I just painted... everything else was Gord. Had some help also from Robbie... and of course Mum took care of the catering again. Aren't we lucky?

Progress photos tomorrow, but in the meantime here's the floorplan and Auction flyer, which shows some good 'before' photos :)

First Things First Post!

I just bought my first home. Here it is.



It's 3.5m wide, 1 bedroom. It's got an outside toilet(!).

So much potential... so much to do!