Time To Paint

I haven't updated this in a couple of weeks, it's been really busy having Scott back at work and the kids on holidays still.  I want to apologise to friends and family we may not be able to catch up with as much as we would like, it's a hard balance at the moment and we've been working so hard to do what we can so we can move in. I hope everyone understands we can't make it to every bbq or birthday at the moment, sometimes we just need to say no but thank you and we will catch up once we have time to breathe! Scott's still staying at the new house and has come home a couple of nights but the time has gone way too quick and we have nowhere near as much done as we had hoped. But it's all good, we are getting there and now our goal is just to have Jack's room finished before we move in next week, the floors, paint, new window surrounds and skirting. We want him to be all set up and ready to start his new school so he's nice and settled, and at least then we can see one complete room after all this work, and then as we do other rooms we can all go and stay in Jack's room! I am so glad Scott's a qualified painter and decorator, this is such a massive job and will be saving us a lot of money, however it's very exhausting for him to come home and do after working 10+ hour days, I'm so grateful for all the effort he's putting in.

We had a plumber out yesterday who was awesome - and even came on time which was even better, that's a good tradie! He is installing a pump and 2 filters on our rain water tank, (which he thinks is about 15000 litres) because we have no pressure and the water is really dirty and not drinkable at the moment. He's quoted about $700 for that plus a new tap in the laundry so that's not too bad for nice, clean water for when we move in, we are spending so much money on drinking water at the moment!

We've also had quotes for our new back fence that the neighbour is going halves with us in, so will be replacing the fallen down one with a new 6 ft wooden one some time soon. That will total about $1800, but once halved that's a pretty good price, and that's for a 20 metre wide yard too for those interested for their own fence. We have a guy coming out this week to talk more about that and a few other jobs we need doing that we don't have the time to do ourselves so will be good to outsource a few things so we aren't stuck with it all!

I did a fun trip to Bunnings in my little car and somehow managed to take home the entire store and still fit the kids in the car! We got some awesome cape cod chairs which are the comfiest thing I have ever sat in, and a few storage units for the shed plus a little fire pit to keep us entertained some nights.

We hired the Bunnings floor sanders for another day a couple of weeks back and Scott and I got that done along with the help of his step dad Terry, thank you! It's not an easy job that's for sure but the floors have come up a treat and after some staining will look great finished! Sorry to our poor neighbours and surrounding streets for all that noise...

I have been using the orbital sander to finish up Jack and Summers rooms floors as well as the hallway and I'm slowly getting there, very slowly, just when I think I am done I sweep it up, stand back and take a look then find a new spot I need to do. Scott finally got to make a start on painting which we initially thought he would have finished by now - wishful thinking much, I have no idea how we thought we would have so much done, between work, kids and just life in general?! Lastnight he finished undercoating Jacks room and we started gapping all the big gaps in between the VJ wood and it looks 100 times better! I love walking in and smelling the paint and seeing the huge difference, you know we are getting somewhere then and you can actually see that, the transformation is in full swing!

We originally thought we would paint our walls a light grey Benjamin Moore type colour but we are now starting to think we might be a bit crazy and do a white on them. Just the undercoat alone on Jacks room makes the room look so much fresher and bright! The kids have been SO excited and begging us to buy a house for a long time so they could paint their rooms whatever colour they like so we of course we have to let them choose their colours. Sure the same nice colour throughout the house would look lovely, but it's not just a house, it's our home and we need to make it to suit us, not a magazine. They've selected their colours and we are doing something a bit different with their walls..but will share that later because it sound like an odd thing to do but once we do it and have photos I think it will look better then it sounds!

In between all this, and Scott and I working (we are so lucky I work for myself, it's a lifesaver at times like this, being so flexible and able to do most of it in my 'spare time'), we also have been trying to make some fun times for the kids. We surprised them last week with Scott home for the night and a trip to the movies to watch Big Hero 6 and ate way too much popcorn and chocolate! It was the best kids movie I have seen, so many laughs! And we have all had a sleepover in the lounge room to watch Tinkerbell this past weekend before Scott had to go back to stay at the new house. We also had our little friend Mila's first birthday party which was a lot of fun and just nice to get out of the renovating clothes and out to see other people to talk to, and how could I forget our amazing dinner at the Meringandan Pub for our brother in law Marks birthday over the weekend! The kids had so much fun running around and playing together until late, I love seeing the cousins playing together!

I also ordered a new couch which we collect this week, and I found some beautiful second hand furniture online that I'm going to repaint and they should come up beautifully!

So we have 17 days of our lease left in our rental house and an entire house to pack and so much cleaning to do, as well as all the work in the new house, but we are happy to move into it partially done, it will be such a nice feeling just to be living in ONE house, not two-it is really hard trying to live in between two! So today I am spending the day at home to pack and do a little bit of my work which is just about all caught up! We went to see Scott last night but the kids won't see him now until Thursday, I think he will get a lot more done without us there though! As draining as this all is, I am still so glad we have done it, it would have been much harder if we had to move in straight away, especially with the lead paint etc in the house, and it's given us time to transition from one house to the other. We will get it all done in time, we have that many hopes and dreams for the house that it's going to keep us busy for many years, but if we rush it we will miss out on so much and not get a chance to enjoy any of it. We could go borrow money and get it all done in a few weeks and that would be kind of nice but it's just not the way we want to do it, we might need to do that later for other things but for now we are trying to use our savings and do whatever we can with what we have. Slowly watching it all take place and doing it together as a family is such a rewarding feeling and this way it's like one huge really big hobby for us all!  I cannot wait to not be paying a mortgage and rent at the same time though, it takes a lot out of the budget that's for sure, the extra $360 a week will be really handy! The next 2 weeks is going to be absolutely crazy so I will take any offers of help to pack or do anything to give us a hand! The kids are having sleepovers tomorrow night because I have a parent kindy thing to go to before Summer starts next week, so I will also try to get house stuff done while they are there and Jacks book list all bought. I appreciate the help we have had off our families so much, it really really all makes a big difference so thanks guys.

My stomachs grumbling and I can hear the sound of footsteps with one of the kids awake so it must be breakfast time, so until next blog post here's quite a few photos of what we have been up to!

Amanda
x

The no more gaps makes such a big difference!

Jack wants to help with all the steps in his bedroom

Finishing the undercoat in Jacks bedroom

Cooling off on a 34 degree day

Meringandan Pub for dinner

I wasn't joking when I said there were thousands of staples to pull up!

Pulling up staples, from under the lino and masonite floor

Kitchen after pulling up lino and masonite but before sanding

Kitchen after sanding

Jack and his cousin Abbie having a sleepover

So much sawdust

Dining room almost finished sanding

'The Lead Room', our bedroom after Scott being locked in there for 4 hours straight doing the floors

Scott's safety gear for sanding the lead painted floor..I really have to laugh when I look
 back at the photos below this..before we realised it was lead paint haha oops!

Sanding the lead floor..before we did lead testing

Our days are tiring...

...extremely tiring!

These cape cod chairs are amazing to sit in!

A rare family photo!

Professional staple remover

I love Bunnings.

A Little Update!

 I haven't updated this for a few days, but we managed to get a lot more done with our floors!  After a lot of paint stripping we hired a floor sander and the edge sander from Bunnings Warehouse for the day to sand Jack and Summers bedrooms plus the loungeroom. It was surprisingly cheap to hire them at only $100 for both for 24 hours, then just the cost of the sandpaper as well. We didn't get them all finished because one room was still a bit wet on the floor but they are coming up so much nicer then we ever imagined! Thank you so much to our brother in law Ian for coming for a long day to help Scott and I do the sanding, between the three of us we got so much done and we would have had no idea what to do without his help. Was a massive, hard day but we got so much done! We plan to have the rest of the floors ready to hire it again this coming weekend to finish all the floor sanding!

We pulled up the lino floor in the dining and kitchen, which then had thick masonite board under it which was really hard to get off, and was stapled down with the biggest staples I have ever seen in my life. The little office tool of mine that removes staples from books wasn't quite going to cut it with these ones. So off to the hardware store for some great Pincers and they do the trick, but not without leaving you with sore arms and hands! Once we got to our very last bit of floor to pull off and being surprised at the good timber floor underneath I said to Scott 'What's the bet there's a big hole in this last bit of floor.' I spoke too soon and about 3 of the floor boards in that last bit in the kitchen needed replacing, so Scott knocked them out and we are left with a rather large hole in our floor. After much searching and no luck in the shops for Hoop Pine floor at 135mm wide, we put a post up on trusty old Facebook and a man straight away commented to say he had a huge pile of the exact wood from a 100 year old house he demolished, so off we went on a family road trip to just over 1 hour away and we got 5 lengths of the board to have some spares. The man was lovely and it was great chatting to him about his own home which he built ground up by himself and is now solely run on wind power and solar panels, on a huge block of land with the most amazing views. He has piles of wooden boards we can go back to get when we need to, and best of all it's so much cheaper then the shops! What could have been a pretty negative experience (the hole in our kitchen floor), turned out to be a really fun adventure and I think we realised we are made for this renovating stuff, our family is pretty awesome and we all had fun with it. Even though the renovations have turned out to be a fair bit bigger then we expected, we really love doing it, it's so satisfying doing it ourselves. Will be fixing the hole this Friday!

In the meantime we have been pulling thousands upon thousands of these gigantic staples out of the kitchen and dining room floors, for what seems like forever! Tonight we finished the kitchen ones and tomorrow the dining should be done too! We were hoping to find old newspaper under the lino to shed some history on the house, but sadly there was none, however there is some really awesome imprinting onto the wood floors in some spots of old newspapers, and you can make out words, pictures of a lady wearing a corset dress and a man in a suit etc, plus things on sale for 20c and some stuff about the government, such a bummer it will sand off, it would be so good to keep it on the floors!

Scott went back to work today and is staying at the new house. He slept in the shed in his swag lastnight, but first thing this morning I had a text on my phone asking to bring our spare mattress out today because he had a pretty horrid sleep, I guess sleeping outside on concrete floor isn't quite as good as a comfy bed inside?! So tonight we set him up in the front sun room in the house away from all the dust and stuff (well, a little bit away) so hopefully he sleeps a bit better! He's back to 12 hour work days, then going to the second home at night to keep renovating, and the kids and I are staying at our old place and going to the new one through the day to do jobs and have dinner and spend some time with him. Tonight was our first home cooked meal in the new kitchen, quite a different experience! Surely I can win me a kitchen or something?!

The kids are still doing such a super job keeping themselves occupied while we are so busy, I'm sure it must be good for their relationship, but we do feel a bit bad sometimes, so trips to McDonalds, Bunnings playground and the skatepark for Jack to give his new scooter a whirl have been a hit! We really are so lucky to have such amazing children! Jack got his first pair of work boots today so he could actually walk inside without being impaled by staples and he seems to love them...and Summer just lives in her Crocs hahaha!

Oh, we bought a ride on mower too, as much as I absolutely love mowing with the push mower the backyard is just way too big to do all the time, so we got a great bargain and the kids get an awesome fun new toy to ride on with us! We are also lucky enough to have had Scott's mum and stepdad give us a bar fridge and wheelbarrow which help so much! Plus the use of Scott's dads trailer to help with dump trips, we are doing well and loving the help!

That's about it from us, will make sure to update with more photos once the floors are all sanded this week!

Amanda
x

Dinner at our makeshift dining area

Sanding Jacks room

Jacks room almost finished sanding

Loungeroom before and during

The new toy

The little hole in our kitchen floor

First time cooking in our kitchen

Fun at the skatepark

Dining room floor which one day was a verandah

Kitchen floor which left us with so many piles of masonite

My little worker in his new boots