Moving In and a Few Renovations

Well, it's almost three full weeks into 2008 so I suppose I should start off by saying "Happy New Year".

A lot has happened since my last post back in November, most importantly, we moved into our new house. It's really nice having our own place. There is a sense of freedom that I've never felt before in rental places. There's no recurring house inspections by the real estate company to make sure I'm not trashing the place. I don't have to worry about putting holes in the wall when I want to hang a picture. If I want to put a hole in the wall, I'm going to put a hole in the wall, damn it.

To date, we've already done a few things to the house. Before we moved in, the paint on the ceilings was flaking off. So, we had some of them painted and they look a thousand times better. Then, we decided to get some security screens installed. We got a security door installed in the back of the house and some Crimsafe window screens installed.

During the two week break we had in December/January, we decided to do some painting of our own. The sleep-out section of our house was in desperate need of painting. Some of the walls had flaking paint, one wall was painted a horrible deep red and another wall had really bad wallpaper that was peeling off. Liz and I spent several days painting the two rooms. The hardest part was all the preparation work. We scraped all the flaking paint, filled in any cracks or holes, then sanded all the walls, then washed them, then primed them. After that, we were able to apply two coats of paint. The prep work was well worth it though because the walls look great now. Incidentally, we ended up painting the walls almost the exact same colour that they were before (a sort of beige colour called "Putty"). We didn't realise this when we bought the paint, it just kind of happened. We also painted the windows and I took that opportunity to replace all the hardware on them (except the hinges). I replaced all the latches (called "spur catches") and, today, I finished installing the window stays. Below are some photos of the new window hardware:

Window Stay


Window Stay


Spur Catch


This weekend, we also hung up some curtains in the bedrooms. Future projects include painting the outside of the house, getting a water tank, renovating the bathroom and kitchen, possibly building a deck in the backyard, and knocking down the chicken coop.

I'll keep you posted on all of that in the future.

The House

So, for those of you keeping track, Liz and I have grown up and bought a house. The settlement date is the 9th of November. We're pretty excited about the whole thing. We started watching DIY shows, thinking about paint colours and things like that.

I'm actually pretty nervous about all the work that we're going to have to do. I'm not the most handy person around. We're getting the outside and ceilings painted by professionals, but we're going to paint the inside walls. There's also a small amount of repairs needed for part of the roof. Apart from that, the house is pretty solid. We'd like to redo the kitchen and the bathroom eventually. We also want to plant a nice tree in the front. Perhaps a Jacaranda, an Illawarra Flame Tree, or a Trumpet Tree.

Here she is:



Here's the master bedroom with the bay window. The "sleep-out" section is in the background.



We're going to tear out these ugly cupboards in the kitchen and replace them with something nicer and more modern.



We have a coop! It was either for pigeons or chickens. We're getting rid of it. That's a pretty serious slab of concrete. I'll have to hire a jackhammer. That could take me days. I might befriend the neighbours before I get stuck into that job.



How cool is this old-skool built-in barbecue?



Here's under the house. The stumps are solid with no sign of termite infestation. There's room for a car or two in the background. There's also plenty of storage for tools and things. The washing machine goes down here too.



Here's the vestibule. I never thought I would have a vestibule. It leads into the living room and the dining room after that.



I'll post more photos as we move stuff in.

How to Destroy a Building With Only Three People

They're knocking down a building next door from my work.

From the moment I walk into work in the morning to the time I walk out in the afternoon, there is the constant sound of jack-hammering. This is not a sound that is conducive to concentration. I drown out the sound by listening to music stored on my computer. I've noticed a lot of headphones in the office lately.

So, I was intrigued by the demolition and decided to take a look for myself. I went out onto the fire escape (it's made of wood, go figure) in the back of the office and expected to see a whole team of people ripping up pieces of plumbing, walls, etc. Instead, there were three guys. Three. To tear down a whole building. One of them was in a bobcat/backhoe/jack-hammer thing on the roof. He was the guy doing most of the work despite sitting on his arse. He was breaking up the roof into tiny pieces.

Then, there was another guy who was holding a hose and shooting water onto the concrete that was being broken up. I can only assume this was to minimise dust and possibly sparks that were created when the jack-hammer hit the rebar.



Ok, so, he had a pretty easy job: just stand there and spray water. Nice.

Then, there was this guy:



Come on! This guy is sitting there, doing nothing. He was watching the other two guys for a while, and then decided that it wasn't as interesting as his own boots. I didn't stay long enough to see if he was going to do something else, perhaps he might look to the left. I know he probably got back into that little blue bobcat and picked up all the rubble and put it somewhere else. But even doing that, he would still be sitting down.

And here I thought demolition was hard work.