Well, the bedroom is painted and the new flooring laid.
Tonight we reassembled the bed frame, replaced the mattress and made the bed. Now I am ready to sleep in it.
Here is a closer view of the new floor.
After much discussion and debate prior to making our decision, we are very happy with the finished product. It will be much easier to keep clean.
The chest of drawers, cedar box and my dressing table will be put back on the weekend when we have more time.
A few days after Christmas we ordered a new lounge suite. This had been on the agenda for quite some time and we finally found the time to search out what we wanted on the internet and then went to see (and sit in) it in real life.The delivery time was expected to be 10 – 12 weeks but we asked if we could make a bit longer so that it would be delivered after our holidays in April.
One of the reasons we were looking at an extended delivery time was because we knew that there were a few other jobs that we wanted to do before we had a new lounge suite in the living room.
The main priority was to have the vinyl flooring in the lounge, dining room, kitchen, hallway and study re-surfaced. This had not been done since the flooring was first laid about 10 years ago and was well overdue. The main problem is that since it comprises such a major area of the house it is a challenge to move all of the furniture out of the way. This seemed like the perfect time.
So now there is furniture and contents of shelves and cupboards stacked almost anywhere I can find a space.
The guest bedroom
The front entry
The floors are not the only area in need of some maintenance. The kitchen ceiling was in poor condition and was GMan’s list of jobs. He had already noted that since the living areas of the house are open plan that he would repaint all of the ceilings.
Of course, you paint the ceiling before refinishing the floors.
The kitchen and front entry were done a couple of weeks ago. You can read about it here. The lounge and dining room are currently being painted.
Our bedroom has been completely emptied and GMan repainted the walls today. The photo is before the painting. Tomorrow the carpet will be replaced with vinyl flooring which will be much easier to keep clean, especially since we live on acreage in a semi-rural area.
The bed frame has been dismantled and is in the study.
We are sleeping on the mattress on the floor in my sewing room for a couple of nights.
Once the bedroom flooring is done and that room can be reassembled things will improve a bit. The next step will be to arrange for the resealing of the other flooring.
Moving furniture is almost as much of an impetus to declutter as moving house. We will not necessarily be putting everything back where it came from as we have realised that times have changed and some things that were essentials 10 years ago do not necessarily have a place here anymore. There is no rush so we will carefully consider everything as we reassemble various rooms.
There will be ‘after’ photos in due course.
Insourcing is a term that my friend Mimi from ‘A Tray of Bliss’ uses. I don’t know whether it is an original term but it is basically the opposite of what so many businesses and households do – outsourcing. So, insourcing is pretty much an alternative term for DIY.
It probably sums up a lot of what we do routinely – everything from growing food, gardening, sewing and even cooking meals. However, I am nowhere near as diligent as Mimi when it comes to calculating the potential savings of learning and using skills instead of handing relatively simple tasks over to someone else.
However, the calculating was handed to me on a plate today when we received an email with a quote for replacing the outdoor steps and installing a handrail. Upon reading it we saw the amount which had been allocated to removing and dumping the old pavers and timber sleepers. This included the hire of 2 rubbish skips.
“We can do that!” These 4 simple words saved us almost $2,000. Additionally, none of this will end up in landfill, we will have a pile of pavers that we can use for other projects as well as old hardwood sleepers that will provide firewood for next winter.
I know that pulling up pavers is not for everyone but it is definitely worth looking around and seeing if there are things that you could do and create for yourself rather than parting with your hard-earned cash for what may even be an inferior product.
We made a start this afternoon and will finish it on the weekend before the real work begins in earnest next week.
I can’t wait until this job is completed as it will provide a much improved entrance to our home. The new steps will be concrete with a non-slip finish coloured to blend in with the surrounding rock walls and there will be no issues with pavers subsiding and causing a trip hazard. The handrail will provide safer access, too.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Some years ago we had some major renovation work done which included replacing all of the old windows and the old vinyl cladding on the exterior. We chose a light colour – ‘Evening Haze’, I think, for the Colorbond cladding and a dark charcoal grey for the window frames.
While it was not a high priority at the time, we knew that one day we would repaint the besser block garage and workshop from the current salmon colour to something that would tone in with the windows and cladding. We subsequently decided on a fairly dark grey which we have already used for the fence posts for the vegetable garden and new front fencing. These are both close to the house and we did not want to introduce yet another variation to the colour scheme.
2 weeks ago we painted the first coat on the wall at the back of the workshop. Here is the before shot.
The new look.
We did not finish the exposed pipe because we ran out of time before we had to go out but GMan was back at it yesterday. He finished painting the pipe and did the second coat as well. This had to be done now as we are getting a battery system for our solar panels sometime in the next month or so and the battery bank will be placed against this wall. Over time we will get all of the exterior walls downstairs painted and finally eliminate the salmon paintwork forever.
The same weekend as we started the exterior painting GMan re-painted the feature wall in the lounge room. We originally had the television mounted on the wall and when that arrangement changed a few years ago we plastered and re-painted the wall but did not have enough to re-do the whole wall. Even though it was the same tin of paint as was used originally Gman was not happy with the result and we bought a new tin to re-do the whole wall. That had not happened but when we had to move the furniture to position the restored cabinet he decided that the time was right to do the painting so that is another job ticked off the list.
I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions but I do have goals and I resolve to achieve them.
My goals so far for 2012 are:
There will be other things that come up along the way but these are the things I have identified and am determined to achieve.
I am going to read some more of ‘Simplify’. I am making fairly slow progress as I am usually ready to sleep pretty much as soon as my head hits the pillow at night but I promise I will let you know what I think of it once I have read the whole book.
organised castle 