A minor change can yield a big improvement!

Over the weekend we didn't feel that we achieved as much as we had hoped. There were a lot of chores to do around the house - washing, cleaning etc. I gave the oven a thorough clean - it was terribly grotty. I removed all the shelves and racks and soaked them for a few hours before scrubbing with steel wool back to shiny chrome. The inside of the oven also got a complete overhaul, as well as a thorough clean of the kitchen cupboards and the remainder of the house. The venitian blinds in the bedroom were also filthy - I had bought a tool from Spotlight to use on the timber slats to dust them, but I found this was pretty ineffectual, so ended up vaccuuming and dusting them individually which was time consuming... We have also had a return of the insect hoardes, so some of the weekend was devoted to stocking up on insect killing apparatus - we need to bomb for fleas and cockroaches again this week - apparently it is a job which takes ongoing maintenance... Next weekend we will spray a pyretheum barrier around the house to prevent reinfestation. At $14 x 3 pack, the process of bombing is really expensive, given we need nearly $60 worth of bombs to do the whole house :( Welcome to the tropics...!

But in amongst all of this we also managed to find the time to get some renovations done!

Ola used the router and cut a series of long, straight grooves in to the chipboard on the floor upstairs. He is cutting in deeper than we had originally planned, but considering we will be painting over the surface, we have decided it probably needs to be quite deep to give the finished effect we are looking for. This process is a lot slower than we had hoped as he really needs a good, solid piece of straight timber to use as a guide, in order to route the groove against this line. What we need is a long piece measuring more than 4 metres - this is the width of the room, so it sounds like we will be off to Bunnings this weekend...

I have continued to prepare the main wall in the Dining Room & Kitchen for paint. I used the sander to knock down the sample patches I had painted on the wall when we were choosing our colour, using fine grade sand paper on the electric sander. Then I used the floor sanding head with 180 grit on a long handle and sanded down the wall to take away the shine that was still present within the existing paint. Then I washed the wall down with a strong sugar soap solution - due to proximity to the kitchen, this wall was quite greasy and needed a good clean. Next steps are a coat of grey undercoat and then on with Antique White USA - remember we are covering a deep ochre coloured wall with white, so preparation is the key.

The final but most effective piece of work done this weekend was the removal of the hutch on the kitchen bench. Ola said it had to go from the day we moved in, but I hadn't been able to completely see his vision. He was right - it looks so much better gone!! Basically the hutch was designed to sit on top of the bench and to house the microwave, kettle and toaster. As we don't have a microwave and I have taken to using a whistling kettle on the stove top, the hutch was more or less empty. It also closed in the kitchen away from the dining room and restricted the amount of sunlight that would fill the kitchen. As you can see from the before and after photos below, removing the hutch has made the whole area feel more open plan, sunny and user friendly. It also opens up the bench space to sitting at, whereas before there was really nowhere to sit and enjoy. Removing the hutch was quite simple - we took out a few screws and broke the silicone seal between the hutch and the wall. In terms of time and effort it was really a minor change but the improvement factor was huge - just the kind of outcome we enjoy!

On the downside, there is now a section of wall which is not tiled, but we will address this once we decide what to do with a splashback or retiled section.

Ola also prepared the shower in the ensuite for a coat of flowcoat, which we will do next weekend. This involved stripping back the waterproofing agent which the previous owners had applied over the tiles on the floor in their attempt to stop the shower from leaking. The decision was taken not to flowcoat last weekend as we may have to sleep in a different room if the smell of the fibreglass fumes is too strong and we weren't prepared for this last weekend... Looking forward to seeing what happens on this front this weekend...

Upstairs - the great carpet removal!

We began with carpet - carpet on the stairs and carpet in the upstairs rooms. Old carpet, threadbare carpet, light coloured carpet with marks from age. Not nice carpet! So we decided to rip it up - completely. Underneath is chipboard - we have decided to paint this to look like floorboards. It will continue our white on white colour scheme and is a much more cost effective option for the time being. Basically we will use the router to dig a series of long, straight grooves in to the chipboard to represent the individual floor boards lying up against each other. Then we will use a combination of grey and white paints to give a limewashed, whitewashed look to the boards. These will then be finished with a coat of Intergrain Ultra Floor which is a water based Polyurethane in a satin finish. We are not looking for a shiny, glossy floor finish with this - we are hoping for a smart, painted not polished appearance. We will also be painting the stairs in the same finish. For the time being this will suffice - we may eventually look for timber veneers to lay on the stairs but this can come in time...

So - up with the carpet! Under the carpet was a layer of very old, disintegrating underlay and a lot of dust and dirt. As Ola said: "now you can see why we don't want carpet"... The little timber slats with nails on them are still fixed to the edges of the room and to the stair treads - these are coming off with a crowbar and a hammer. The chipboard underneath is in reasonable condition. The floor itself seems to drop part way across the rumpus room, there are some repaired cracks in the wall to testify to this shifting of the extension over time. There is not much we can do about this at this stage except be aware of it.

Here are some pics of the work in progress:

Starting to remove the carpet in sections - the underlay is the black roll...

The room has dropped toward the left hand side of the sliding door...

The carpet as it was...

Rolled up and ready to go.

Threadbare carpet

Rolling away the old carpet and underlay - exposing the chipboard below.

A chipboard floor.

The pieces of chipboard have lines in between them already - this will be enhanced by our work with the router.

Chipboard steps

Need to remove the panels of timber with nails before sanding and painting these stairs.

Painting continues... Loving the long weekend!

Well the paint decision has been made - it is Antique White USA in Dulux. We paid the premium because we convinced ourselves that it was going to be worth it - time will tell. We committed to 15 litres which I think will get us through the downstairs - Ola thinks it will get us through the whole house so we will see who is right... I hope he is right as it will save us money and that is what this whole thing is all about! DIY and bank the change!!

So today, aside from the wall paint we also invested in 15L of ceiling white. We purchased Taubmans Tradex as we figured the ceiling will cop the gentlest treatment so we weren't prepared to invest in a premium product for this aspect of the job... Also, the guy in Bunnings said there is nothing wrong with the product, "just no fancy labels" - so we decided to give it a shot!

We also invested in 10L of gloss for trimming the architraves, skirting boards and window frames. We decided to go with Sandy Day - Half strength. This is another of the Dulux colours but a little darker than the Antique White. We want to give a strong enough contrast to the walls without detracting from the overall white on white look that we are working toward. I think it will be a real winner but the difference in colour with the gloss effect will be interesting to observe. The colour will look darker through the gloss so it remains to be seen if it looks too dark, in which case we will be back to Bunnings for some more drops of white in to the tin! The brand we chose for the gloss was Taubmans Easy Coat, Doors & Trim. We have used this before and it comes with Microban which gives protection against mould which is important in our opinon - we are striving for a mould free home!

So here is a snapshot of the wall in the dining room at the moment with sample colours on the wall - note the undercoat is the grey colour you can see. We are trying to cover the burnt ochre which is how it was when we bought the place:

Anyway - that is the story of the paint!

Tomorrow - more about the carpet and stairs!

Friday 1 October - paint on the walls!

Have cleaned the windows thoroughly - it is so much brighter in here now... It's incredible what a difference it makes...

Got some undercoat on the wall today and samples of each of the Dulux paints we are considering: Lexicon Quarter versus Antique White USA. I am leaning toward the Antique White but it needs a second coat tonight before we can compare in the morning sunlight tomorrow... Just to add to the confusion in choosing a shade of white that you can comfortably roll out across the entire house, I am now wavering from Dulux as we painted our old place in Wattyl paints which were fantastic and I priced this product today and was surprised how much cheaper it is... A tough decision to make...

Carpet upstairs gets ripped up tomorrow which will be a good feeling. We are going to be using a router to dig a series of long, straight grooves into the chipboard which is currently under the carpet. Then we are going to seal the chipboard and then paint over it. The finished effect is theoretically going to be that of white painted floorboards - but this remains to be seen. I have not found any examples on line of the kind of thing I am trying to do here, so this will be a true experiment...