Renovating – Week 2… {The first proper peak}

It has been a crazy few weeks here in the Flutter household!
I kind of feel like I’ve been sucked into a void away from the rest of the world. One that’s covered in plaster dust and paint splatters. Each day rolls into the other in a blur of sanding, scraping, painting, dealing with about 9 different contractors, and choosing colour schemes…
But sitting here going through and putting together some progress photo compilations has really shown me how far the house has come along from when we first saw it.
We still have a loooooooong way to go. But progress can definitely be seen that’s for sure. Each day is a step closer to move in day.
Very, very exciting stuff!

I apologise for the length of this post, but I thought you might like to see some progress shots…
First up we have:

Abbie’s room:

Abbie’s room was possibly my least favourite room in the house when I first explored it!
It wasn’t even just the dated curtains, the light fitting, the brown brown wardrobe doors or really dirty and charming looking asbestos ceiling either… I think it’s because it is one of the only rooms in the house that looks out upon a neighbour, it’s on the dark side of the house, and it smelt a bit musty.
Hence I felt I felt the need for it to be the first room to be pulled apart and have some magic worked on it…

So far we have:
**  Had the asbestos ceiling removed by the professionals and repainted the ceiling including the black beams.
**  Painted the black window & door trims white
**  Upgraded the light fitting.
**  Taken down the curtains & curtain rails ready for new ones in a few weeks.
**  Removed the chocolate brown wardrobe doors to be painted.

Hannah’s Bedroom:

Hannah’s room is a bright and sunny room, leading out onto the deck (which is the reason it is Hannah’s room – I didn’t really want Abbie to have the room with the floor to ceiling windows and external access.) Out of all the bedrooms it needed the least done to it really and was the most pleasant to be in before. But never the less it is still getting the full scale makeover…

So far we have:
**  Had the yucky asbestos ceilings removed by the professionals and repainted the ceiling
** Taken down the old mouldy curtains and curtain rails ready for new ones in a few weeks
**  Painted the black window & door trims white
**  Hung a new light shade
**  Removed the wardrobe doors for painting
**  Removed all the shelves and 100 million picture nails from the walls

Master bedroom:

So far we have:
**  Spent a few hours scraping the decorative (non asbestos) plaster “whisper” off the ceiling and repainting the ceiling including the black beams
** Taken down the charming curtains and curtain rails ready for new ones in a few weeks
**  Painted the black window & door trims white
**  Hung a new light shade (I’m SO in love with my bedroom chandelier!)
**  Removed the wardrobe doors for painting

That just about covers the bedrooms.
I’m totally loving our progress so far!
The rooms all look and feel so much lighter, brighter and fresher with the work we have done and it’s really encouraging me to keep going when I start to feel a little defeated by the enormous to do list in front of us.

So far in the bedrooms we still have to:
**  Hang the new curtains
**  Paint the walls (not sure if we will make it before we move in, but we’re going to try)
**  Paint the entrance doors and give them new door handles
**  Paint & rehang the wardrobe doors
**  Replace the carpet in Abbie’s wardrobe and fix the water leak (happening tomorrow).

We have also made excellent progress throughout the rest of the house. As of yesterday we have completely scraped all the “decorative” ceiling plaster off the ceilings and cleaned them ready for painting.

Bins and bins of this stuff have been collected – better in the bin than slowly accumulating in our lungs as we live there I say, because boy that stuff came down easily and was covered in 30 years worth of cobwebs…

Special treat – there’s a few photos of me in all my plaster scraping glory…

Starting Thursday the rest of the ceilings in the house will all be receiving the same painting treatment as you see above for the bedrooms. All 160 or so metres squared of them still to go.
Sheesh I don’t even want to think about it, what a job!
But I know it will be sooooo worth it in the end. Despite it’s back and neck breaking labour intensity…

Definitely the biggest transformation of all this week has to be the downstairs space though…

Ahhh yes, our rumpus, aka my sewing room, has been completely transformed…
Gone are the freezing and unfinished block walls, and now we have insulated plasterboard walls, all ready for a lick of paint.
Not only just that but we now have an extra wall and a door so that it is now an actual room.
This awesome and large space has it’s own bathroom, external access and it’s own kitchen bench with sink, so now that it has an internal (lockable) door the potential for the space is huge.

For now it will be our spare room and my sewing space, but over time who knows, it could be rented out accomodation, a large master suite, or have a home business run from there?

So far we have:
**  Removed the old curtains
**  Cleaned out and sorted most of the things that the previous owner left there
**  Insulated and gibbed the walls to make it warmer and nicer to be in
**  Built an extra wall with doorway at the bottom of the stairs, finishing it to make a completed room
**  Installed 3 more power points
**  Ordered a new cabinet for the kitchen sink
**  Ordered new curtains
**  Ordered the new carpet for the room and vinyl for the bathroom

Still to do:
**  Fix up the lighting and light switch situation
**  Give the entire room a paint
**  Install the new kitchen sink (happening tomorrow eeek)
**  Have the new flooring installed (happening in 3 weeks time)
**  Have the new curtains and blinds installed

Last but not least we have:

The Deck…

The builder is in the process of removing our chicken wire balustrades and replacing them with much safer wooden ones.  This is definitely one of the non-luxury parts of the renovation that we couldn’t live without. – There was just no way I was taking the chance of a child pushing through the chicken wire and falling 1 storey to the ground below!

The builder will also be putting a gate across the decking stairs so that we can completely enclose the space.
Our deck is huge at about 42m2, so having it as a safe & sunny enclosed space is going to be one of the biggest assets of the home. I’m so excited to think of all the hours we are going to be spending on this deck basking in sunshine and watching that gorgeous view!

That’s about enough to report this time I think.
I hope you enjoyed your first proper peak at our new home and our renovation progress.
The plumber is coming tomorrow and that spells more major transformations to take place. I can’t wait to show you that and more next week!

More soon