Renovation

Well yes, we are back! Well kind of, will see how we go, this writing posts takes a lot of time! But updates are long overdue, even Craig is telling me to write some posts ugh!

So firstly, we renovated. And let me state here for the record, I will never do that again. Ever. We really like the outcome and it was certainly the best option for our family, but nope, I think I would rather move, and I hate moving! There is still a few things for the builders to fix up, but I am not too fussed they are taking a long time as I am really tired of having tradesmen at my house all the time.

The process began in April and was supposed to take 7 weeks. We had so many delays and things go wrong that it really pushed Craig and I to our limits. In the end we didn't have a kitchen, at all for 7 weeks. For me that was probably the worst. We didn't eat out much but we ate lots of slow cooker meals (thank goodness it was winter!), with rice and potatoes, so Craig and I are in the process of (thinking about haha) trying to get fit and lose some of the weight we put on during this crazy, no vegetable eating time...

Alexander sat here literally for hours!

Our first full skip

Alexander wants to be a 'concrete man' when he grows up.

We had 4 weeks of just the concrete slab whilst there was a shortage of brickies and with some rainy weather. Hours of fun and the dirtiest kids you ever saw but they loved it!

 Yay!

 

We removed one skin of bricks, so that the internal wall wouldn't be so thick. This internal wall caused us huge dramas on a number of occasions, even partially falling over at one point. One time, Craig was away for work and had stayed on for the weekend for a football game I think it was, when my lights kept going out. The builders came 3 times that day and couldn't find anything wrong. Then one felt he should come and check it out again that night (after I had said don't worry about it, the kids are enjoying the candles and we had the fire going) and found a problem that during the storm that night would have caused a fire!

Soccer time now

The old kitchen. We got back from being in Adelaide from Big Nanna's funeral on the Saturday, to find out that I had only Sunday to pack up and clear out everything before the demolishers would be there on Monday.

The builders had previously checked and said that there was no supporting beam on this brickwork, surprise surprise there was. The kitchen couldn't finished being demolished until our inside roof was reworked. This pushed back our kitchen install, which was supposed to be the following week, then we had to wait for the cabinetmakers to finish a big industrial job before they could come and do ours. And this was only the start of our kitchen dramas!

 

 

The guy who put up our roof was the rudest man I have ever had the displeasure of meeting, he came kicking and swearing and I swore if he came back again in the same state as the first day he was there, I would have asked him to leave. Ironically he is a dad of one of the kids at school so we still see him around on occasion.

Craig spent a lot of time doing this!

We ate on paper plates, bowls and cups for months, and had our furniture covered often due to the large amounts of dust.

My favourite part of the renovation, these sliding doors! In the beginning we didn't think we could have them so had made plans for different doors, but we ended up having just enough space to fit them. Here is Craig preparing to stain them, that was hard work.

We were so excited to have a bench to put our toaster on.

Craig was really concerned most of the time about our slate getting damaged. It is really hard to match and we really love ours. The demolisher guy was kind enough to get some underlay and old carpet from a bin out the back of a carpet shop. Craig had this out for months, sometimes packing it up when it wasn't necessary but for the most part we had it out. I had to close my mind off to the possibility of where that carpet had been as my baby was crawling around on it!

Craig worked so hard and for some ridiculous hours to get the room painted and all the wood stained and varnished before the carpet and cupboards went in.

 

Although he was very messy!

 

Craig is normally very particular with painting but he let the kids (and me hah!) have a go at the first coats. It was fun although I did spit it in the end and refused to help paint anymore when he was too picky.

 



 

Unfinished breakfast bar.

I was so excited to finally have a working oven, even if it was in the middle of the kitchen! Our walls were very uneven amongst other things and we had to look around to make sure we got a good tiler so that they wouldn't make more of a mess of it. I love my oven so much, it is definitely the highlight of the new kitchen!

 We wrote our names on the concrete in the new room before the carpet went down.

 

We got carpet like Nanna and Grandads, we loved theirs when we visited. We were so glad that we got it in the end of year sales for about 40% off.

 

Zoe has spent months watching carpenters etc doing jobs, so she still walks around with a screwdriver fixing things, it is really cute.

Darn loom bands!

 

Our house looked like this for 6 months. That porta-loo was the very first thing to arrive and one of the last to go! We had a few skips and even have one back now for Craig's holidays as he does some more jobs around the house. It isn't as big as these ones were though!

 

 

And here is the completed house. I took these a few weeks ago as I forgot I hadn't taken any proper ones yet...

 

 

Breakfast bar

 

My most favourite thing, apart from my oven, is the wood around the triple sliding doors and where the kitchen window used to be

 

 

Love my couches, we have 4 recliners in here now...

 

 

Under this little window is where our piano is going to go, hopefully we will have one in a few weeks! Tiarni (and me!) wants to learn.

 

 

I love these cupboards, they are massive, as we sunk the room and they go right to the roof. I have so much storage now - they are half empty! This was when they were just painted with the sealer. Craig finished painting them this week in an enamel and they look really good now.

 

 

So there it is, finally an update. We love our new room and kitchen, it has made such a difference to our house. Will hopefully update more in the next few weeks about what everyone has been up to. Enjoy!