Starting to take shape

Living in a construction site is quite a challenge. In the mornings, getting ready for work can be like going on an adventure with a bathroom at one end of the house, a mirror at the other end of the house, some clothes in one room, others in a robe somewhere else, makeup on a dresser in a store room & shoes located somewhere else. I like to think it adds just that little bit more sparkle to the drama and excitement of a renovation project... The other challenge is managing to navigate your way through your home without injuring yourself. We currently each have a broken toe, sustained when walking from room to room and tripping on piles of timber. We also each have several cuts on our legs, sustained in a similar fashion. If it weren't for the fact that our house is slowly starting to feel like a home, we would probably be going mad but I am pleased to report that finally (FINALLY) it feels like we are making some progress.

We are using our new bathroom, which is lovely. Here are some pics:

The other good news is that the walls are plastered now, so we aren't in frame-up any more. The plaster all needs to be painted, so first coat of undercoat went on the walls and ceilings this weekend:

Bedroom 4

Bedroom 4

Office

This is the office - a completely new room!

Supervisor keeping us hard at work

Rolling on the undercoat

Once the undercoat is on we are painting these rooms before the floor in the office is ripped up and replaced by boards and the floor in the 4th bedroom is carpeted.

The progress is slow but steady & we're happy with that!

Upstairs floor

Upstairs has been a real labour of love for both of us, but really mostly for Ola. It has become his Sistine Chapel and it looks incredible - we are thrilled with it.

Basically we started with some strong colours and challenging textures and stripped it all back to a more appropriate palette.

This series of pics show where we came from and where we are at today.

When we bought the house - note: this is the previous owner's furniture!

 When we started work:

Part way through:

Layers and layers and layers of paint - all the effects are drawn by hand:

And the finished product:

We are just finishing the trim - 2nd coat - and then we are moving upstairs out of the mess downstairs and in order to give us the space to make even more mess downstairs!

Tiling in the bathroom

Once the bath was located in place, Ola had to build a cement bed for it to rest on:

We are very pleased with the new bath - it is quite deep - we are glad we were able to fit it in to the relatively small space we had within the room.  We couldn't fit a separate shower, so the set up is shower over bath but we are happy with that.

Next step was villa boarding the walls in readiness for tiling:

 Our tiler has been working tilessly (sorry!) to get both the bathroom and the laundry finished before he goes away on holidays, so we are glad to see a lot of progress on this little room:

Current status:

Laundry & Bathroom

Once upon a time there were a laundry and a bathroom. They were pretty ordinary, but they were functional.

But we decided we could improve on the status quo and decided to rip them out, re-do them and while we were at it, switch their positions around. The bathroom became the laundry (with a toilet) and the laundry became a bathroom. The other thing was access to the new bathroom was from the wrong side, so we closed up the wall and created a new door from the other side, so the 2nd, 3rd & 4th bedrooms could access it easily.
Here is the project in progress:

Some picturesque shots of the rubble which was the tiling and fixtures.

Then there is the new pipes for which Ola had to dig through concrete to re-lay:

Then we had the framing:

And we still had to remove the old corner spa:

Then build a new sub-floor for the new bathroom - the old concrete floor was lower than the floor of every other room in the house - go figure!

Wiring is in for new lights while we are in frame up.

Then to make a frame for the new bath:

and here:

and framing for the sliding pocket door:

More updates tomorrow- it's getting late now...

A new oven & sanding floors

It has been such a long time since my last post, there is so much to catch up on. Where to begin... How about June...!

So, we removed the old oven and replaced it with a freestanding cooker. The new cooker is incredible, we are thrilled with it. It actually has 3 ovens and 5 x gas burners. It is a Belling from the UK and I cannot fault it. There have been a few hiccups due to operator error but nothing to do with the actual unit. Plus it is black and very sexy!

Removing the cupboards to make room for the new cooker was like peeling back layers of an onion with old wallpaper and remnants from old tiling still obvious on the walls. We lined the back wall with bead board for now but we will be doing a tiled splashback when we put in the new kitchen.

When we re-shuffled the kitchen layout, we created a larger space for a fridge and we really needed a double door fridge. Some lovely folk who were moving to Canada (hi Ginnie!) kindly sold us their fridge before they skipped the country, and we were fortunate enough to make friends with them through the transaction. We were then lucky enough to make friends with the lovely people who bought our old fridge, which is kind of random but excellent at the same time!

Here is us installing the new fridge:

Then the next step was to sand the floors. I had heard it was a terrible job and yes, it was messy but it wasn't as bad as I had expected.

First we sanded upstairs, where we have been working with the chip-board to turn it in to faux floorboards:

 Then we did downstairs:

More updates in the next post!