It's Been A While!

Wow, I haven't updated this for a month now but we haven't done much to write about! The renovations came to a stop when it came time to move out of our rental, get it cleaned, packed and then moved to the new house. It was a huge job, as school had started back (20 minute drive from old house to new school), hubby was back at work and there was so much to do at the rental, during school hours and then doing trailer loads at night with Scott after he finished work. Have I mentioned we moved from a brand new house with lot's of storage, into a house with no storage? May have spoken of it once or twice haha! Since we haven't finished coating our wooden floors, we can't really move any furniture in. We finished the 2 kids bedrooms and hallway, and painted one coat on Jacks walls, so their rooms are very basically set up for them so they are comfortable and can have a place to play while the rest of the house is in tatters. Since we can't really move our stuff into the house yet we hired a storage shed and filled it, plus our single garage, and we are just roughing it out for a while.

Scott and I are still sleeping in our sunroom on the floor but upgraded from a blow up mattress to our bed mattress so it's not too bad really! As we are still halfway through the floors there is stuff everywhere...absolutely everywhere. I built some Bunnings wardrobe inserts so we had somewhere for all our clothes rather then in washing baskets, and those are both in our dining room, along with opened boxes, a huge tv on the floor and tools everywhere.

You see we ran into a few problems along the way. After we had the plumber install the filters and pump on our rainwater tank (and what amazing water it tastes like!), our poor old pipes underground at our back door burst. He did a quick fix on that until we decided to get new pipes to our kitchen last week going under the house rather then under ground, as the next place to burst was under a huge concrete pad. He installed a new tap around the side of our house which places our hose in a much better position now too which is great.

We also made a real crap discovery a few weeks ago...many many birds nesting in our roof. We worked this out after us all being itchy non stop and working out there were all these wonderful mites coming through our VJ ceilings from the massive amount of birds. Argh. This has been an absolute nightmare. We got one of those big fake owls for the roof, it's meant to scare the sparrows off, but of course the sparrows love it ha! We went into the roof and removed all the nests we could and last weekend Scott and his Dad were up on the roof removing a part of the roof to remove a nest in a tricky spot, and starting to install even more guttermesh then what's there. These little sparrows get into the tiniest spots-I read they squeeze into 25mm gaps with ease, and they just don't go away. They have chewed a hole through our suffit into the roof that we need to fix too. So needless to say, all of this has really halted any work on the house whatsoever!

The last couple of days I have sanded a few more spots in the lounge and main bedroom with an orbital sander and we are hoping to slap a coat of clear on them today. It takes 3 days for the 3 coats to be applied, so that means we will all have to go out the front door and around to the back of the house to use the toilet at night for a bit, which is ok! Will be worth all of the hassle to have all these floors done and looking amazing!

The kids have  adjusted really well to living in such a non organised house, they don't seem to care in the slightest which is really good because it's taken me a bit to come to terms with us looking like squatters living in a squalor-I am sure we aren't the first renovators to do this and we definitely won't be the last! It's actually been really good for us all having no tv connected and not being able to just sit around doing nothing. Unlike with our old rental, we now always have something to do, Scotts not bored out of his mind anymore and I think he will have a list of jobs as long as his arm to do forever! The kids play constantly with lego, dolls, the dog and getting in doing some gardening and they are getting along pretty well! Oh, and they both love their new school and kindy and best of all most days we get to walk/scooter/ride there and we are getting out of the house being really active a lot more!

We made a last minute decision to wake up last Sunday and spend the day at our favourite place-Byron Bay which is about a 3.5 hour drive,  (in reality Scott actually lost a game of paper, scissors, rock to my sister Ashleigh, so he had to go). I think we needed the day away really badly after working so hard the last 8 weeks, we took our dog Sarge and went with my sisters family and it was a really, really lovely day spent at the beach, I won't settle for all work and no play and if the renovations go a bit slower so we aren't stressed and exhausted then I think that's ok.

I don't think I have actually posted any photos of the floors we have finished yet, or Jacks room painted so will add some of those in. We decided to be a bit different and paint the ceiling in the kids room a nice light colour since they got to choose their colour, and although this was something that Scott thought he would never, ever do being a house painter, he really loves how it turned out surprisingly!

Well I better go get these rooms ready for when Scott's home from work today so we can actually get some stuff done, so here's a few photos-I haven't been taking many at all lately!

Amanda
x

The kids digging around our compost garden

Our new tap and pipes, pretty exciting for us haha!

These new pipes to our kitchen have made our rainwater taste even more amazing!

Love Byron Bay

Byron Bay Adventures

Pretty happy with my flat pack building, the 1st was a nightmare but the second one was a breeze!

Floor progress

Jacks room, still a way to go, skirting and decorating but looking good!

Summers room, needs a good paint but she loves it so much!

Giving a set of 2nd hand drawers I bought for Summers room a sand

Clear coating floors with Feast Watsons clear

Jacks rooms painting progress

A bit of time out and fun for Australia Day!