Category Archives: Renovating

The Home List

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Happy New Year!!

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I mentioned in my last post that I did not have any major resolutions or grand plans for 2018.  However, I have created a list of things we want to get done.  We have agreed that we will not take any major overseas holidays this year but will try get some things done around the house.  We have been overseas for each of the last 4 years and while we thoroughly enjoy the trips it does not leave much time to catch up on domestic tasks.

We are at work during the week and find that we think of jobs to do faster than we can accomplish them.  Many are things we can do but some will definitely require some professional assistance.  In those cases we still need to make the contact and arrange for the job to be done.  GMan is considering taking some annual leave during the year to try to get ahead on some projects.

Here is the initial list – in no particular order.

Make 3 more raised garden beds
Connect tank and get new outdoor taps
Make outdoor sink
Have back wall washed
Replace front steps and add handrail
Revarnish verandah
Revarnish verandah handrail
Repaint ceiling in kitchen, hall, lounge/dining room and front entry
Repaint front entry
Recoat slate floor (front entry and fireplace surround)
Refinish vinyl floors
Replace 3 security doors
Paint external door to dining room
Paint board on wardrobe in 3rd bedroom
Finish painting edges of verandah ceiling
Create garden bed outside vegie garden
Make gabion seat for above garden bed
Build lychgate
Build pergola
Remove tree near front steps and replace
Remove trees beside driveway and replace
Replace garage roller doors
Finish concreting and pebbles and verandah
Paint exterior blockwork
Assess guttering – new or repaint
Battens under the house
Make rack with pulley system in workshop
Blinds for lounge/dining room

The first step will be to assign priorities to the items on the list.  There will other things added over time that may well take priority.  If I am completely honest I really don’t think that this will all be completed in 2018 but we have to start somewhere.

I am excited to report that the board on the wardrobe has now been painted so that is one thing off the list.  It was probably the smallest and easiest task on the list but they are often the ones which are most likely to be overlooked.  The 2 horizontal boards had been removed when we painted the room years ago.  GMan bought a length of replacement board but it was not put up until a few months ago.  I was determined not to leave it for years before doing the painting.

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There will be updates during the year as we hopefully make some progress on the outstanding items on the list.

 

Running Repairs

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I feel as though I could open my own repair cafe at the moment.

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Yesterday I repaired the cover for my iPhone rather than buying a new one.  I have a tiny tube of supa-glue and I managed to re-attach the plastic case to the cover and also re-join the split along one side of the plastic case.  I did such a good job that it is not really visible in these photos.  Unfortunately, I did not get any ‘before’ photos as the battery for my camera was flat and I had to recharge it.

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Tonight I did the second step of the repair when I replaced the small magnet which actually secures the closure on the case.  I had lost the original one some time ago so it did not actually fasten.  The replacement magnet was salvaged from the cover of a little notebook.  The notebook had become detached from the cover and my grand-daughter was ready to toss the cardboard cover so I retrieved the magnet before she did so.

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While I had the supa-glue out, I also repaired a Christmas ornament which had a mishap when being hung on the tree.

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The antler and the oar back in place.

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Finally, this is a dress which belongs to my grand-daughter.  It is strapless but not really practical for a 9 year old.  It needs some shoulder straps and I have found some black fabric which I will use.  I will do the sewing on the weekend during daylight hours as I find it too difficult to sew with black fabric and thread at night.

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Another Weekend

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Well, Sunday evening has rolled around yet again in the blink of an eye.  The weekends are simply not long enough for me to achieve everything I hope to do.

Some weekends are more productive than others and I am pretty happy with what I managed to accomplish.

All of the washing and 95% of the ironing are done.  Why 95%?  The iron decided it was time to die when I only had a few items left.  So, one of my jobs for this week will be to buy a new one.

I have planned our menu for the week, bought fruit and vegetables, swept and vacuumed the floors as well as doing some painting on the verandah.

GMan and I went to the computer shop to buy a new tower for the desktop computer as the other one had been deemed as unrepairable.  The new one should be ready next weekend.

Apart from sanding and painting GMan managed to do all of the mowing so he has been busy, too.

However, the weekend was not all work as we went to the movies in Maleny on Saturday evening to see, ‘Hunt for the Wilderpeople’.  It was both funny and sad in places and I really enjoyed it.

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A Working Weekend

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I really felt as though I was back into the swing of things at home this weekend.  We achieved a great deal and by yesterday evening I was too tired to contemplate writing a blog post.  So here it is, better late than never.

We bought 3 new chickens who seem to be settling in well.  This brings the number back up to 6.

GMan managed to do the first coat of paint on the outdoor table as well as mowing and lots of work around the yard.

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This is our old outdoor table but instead of re-oiling we decided on a facelift and I think it will look great on the newly renovated verandah.  We bought some new black chairs from IKEA earlier in the year to go with it.

In between washing, ironing and preparing some meals for the coming week I managed to spend some time in the garden.

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The cherry tomato plants had just gone wild while we were away but it has been too cool for them to develop and ripen the fruit so it was time to pull some of them out and rediscover the garden beds.

Once I had cleared one bed, I emptied the compost from the tumbler and added some of it to the bed.

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We use whatever receptacles we can find for compost and the latest addition is the small rubbish bin in the background of the photo.  GMan removed the rusted base and it is now full of weeds and some tomato plants.  Eventually it will break down and then we can simply lift the whole bin off and we will have a pile of compost.

I bought and planted 3 punnets of seedlings – bok choy, zucchini and lettuce.

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There is much more that I want to do in the vegie patch but it will have to wait for another day.

 

Back to Reality

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After 6 weeks of holidays in the USA and Canada we have been home for a little over a week.  We went back to work the day after arriving home so the priority has been catching up on sleep and doing the basics to keep things running smoothly.

There have been some significant changes to ‘The Castle’ in the past few months and now that it is mostly finished, I can share the details with you.

We have had some of the verandah flooring replaced and it has all been sanded and resealed.  The railings are all new and possibly the most exciting thing from my point of view is the screening and gate at the end of the verandah.  This provides a bit more privacy and security to the verandah and creates a clearly defined entrance to the house.

Looking along the front verandah.

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The railing on the patio.

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The new entrance.

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The whole picture.

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We have lots of painting to do and there are plenty of other projects on the home improvement list but this is a big one ticked off.

If you missed the holiday adventures you can read all about it here.  There will be one more post once I sort out the final spending tally but other than that I will be back here – hopefully on a fairly regular basis.

A Frugal Mindset – 6

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I am coming to the end of this short series and today’s gem is all about DIY.

While GMan and I do quite a few things ourselves, I think it is important to understand your limitations.  There is no saving in attempting to do something yourself and ending up creating more of a mess that will incur a greater cost to have it fixed up.

We happily and effectively do our own gardening, sewing, cooking, landscaping, chopping firewood, cleaning solar panels, painting, tiling and some furniture restoration.  Things that we do not attempt are cutting our hair, computer repairs, car maintenance or anything electrical.

6. Frugal people embrace the idea of “do it yourself.” If something needs doing frugal people first consider whether they can do it themselves. No need to pay someone for convenience if you could do it yourself with just a bit of sweat equity. And those that are more content in their frugality actually enjoy that process. They like learning new things, and feeling self-sufficient without having to rely on someone else to do it for them.

Question to ask yourself: Why am I paying for that service or product? Could I get good enough results myself by learning something new, or spending a bit more time on the task?

What do you do yourself?  Or not?

Welcome & the Work Begins

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This is just a quick blog post to welcome anyone who is new to the blog.  If you are here for recipes, be sure to check out the tab ‘Recipes – Food’ at the top of the page.  I have tried to add all of the recipes scattered throughout the blog to links on that page.  There will be more add all the time.

In other breaking news, the work on replacing some of the verandah boards and all of the railings as well as some concreting and a new entrance to the verandah will be starting tomorrow.  The will be some blog posts with photos coming up to show the progress.

This is what it currently looks like.

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Behind the Scenes

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Just because I have not posted very much recently does not mean there is nothing going on here at ‘The Castle’.

We have had 2 phone calls in the past 48 hours to confirm that some of our plans are coming to fruition.  The first was from a tree lopper to confirm that he will be here early next week to remove a couple of very large trees and mulch them as well as the smaller ones that GMan cleared recently.

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Once this is done we will be able to consider the next step in some of our long-term landscaping plans.

Yesterday we received a quote from the builder for the next major renovations.  This will include replacement of some of the verandah floorboards, new railings, cafe blinds and screening and gate to provide added security to the verandah area.  Some more concreting to finish the path near the steps and provide a base for an additional water tank will also be done.  We will discuss the finer details with him this weekend and hope that the work will be completed with the next couple of months.

It is great to feel that some of our planning to beginning to come to fruition.

Maintenance and Mr Bunnings

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Home maintenance is an ongoing issue and one with which we have varying degrees of success.

On Saturday evening The Duke announced that he would need to go to Bunnings the next day.  Bunnings is a chain of large, supermarket-style hardware stores and the nearest one is about a 60km round trip so it is not a matter of jumping in the car and going around the corner.  Therefore, we tend to make sure that we get everything we need in one go.  We also took the opportunity to go to the fish shop and buy some more salmon.

Anyway, off we went to Bunnings and bought a new garden sprayer (the initial reason for the trip), new blades for the Stanley knife, a new garden tap, plumber’s tape and new rollers for the sliding door.

The outdoor tap had been leaking for some time and changing the washer made no difference so The Duke decided it was time for a new tap which proved to be successful.

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The next project was to install the new roller on the sliding door in the bathroom.  We  had to remove the timber pelmet which covers the track mechanism.

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I did not take a photo of the actual tracks but we had to replace one of the rollers as it had broken.  The door could still be used but it did not run smoothly and it was evident that there was a problem.  We took the broken piece with us to ensure that we bought the correct sized replacement.  They did come as a single item but we decided to buy 2 so that we would have a spare.  At $4.00 each it is not a huge investment and we have another in case it is required in the future.

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Two out of two jobs successfully completed!  The Duke and Mr Bunnings worked well together.

I think the trick is to know wat jobs are within your capability and what are not.  Do you reglarly undertake home maintenance jobs to keep things in working order?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recipes and Restoration

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In response to the comments from my Clean & Green post the links to recipes for both the cream cleanser and wool wash are under the tab at the top of the page marked “Recipes – Other”.  Unfortunately, the wool wash one does not have any photos as they were a victim of my culling photos some time ago 😦  I do need to make some more again before long so I will take some new photos.  Also, I have found that the mixture sets quite firmly so I will be experimenting to make it more like a gel or even semi-liquid.  I will let you know how I go.

Dressing table

Since we finished restoring the silky oak dressing table we have been searching for a similar unit for The Duke’s clothes.  Many that I had seen on Gumtree (online buy/sell site) did not have enough storage space.  I was hoping for a silky oak piece but that was not essential.

On the weekend we bought this piece.  The thing I really love are the small, deep drawers at the top.  They will be perfect for separating socks and underwear.

Chest of drawers
The seller had owned it for about 20 years and never restored it.  We will need to replace the bases of some of the drawers and do a bit of structural refashioning.  The piece is not original as the top left-hand drawer does not match the others and the front of the unit looks as though it was once the back of a piece of furniture.  Apparently it has come from Coober Pedy (an opal-mining town in the outback of South Australia) and there is clearly a lot of history so I believe it deserves to be restored.  It needs a lot of work but we are confident that it will come up nicely.  We intend to replace the wooden knobs with metal handles to match the dressing table.

We do not intend to embark on this project at the moment as we are trying to get things ready before we head overseas in a couple of months.  So we have covered the piece with a heavy drop-sheet and left it until we have more time.