For many weeks our evenings downstairs were illuminated only by two broken lamps. These dusty contraptions followed us around the room lighting whichever section we were using at the time.
But now that the painters have almost finished indoors downstairs, the electrician paid us a visit and brought us light in the form of 16 LED downlights and several arrays of switches. Yay!
Over the past week the builders have been finishing the walls, architraves, cornicing and skirting boards. The painter began preparing the walls. The plumber and tiler have set up the basics in the bathroom and Rozita is very pleased with her choice of tiles.
We have engaged a kitchen company who should deliver the kitchen, pantry, laundry, cupboard and benchtops by mid-April. The painter will be finished around then too and then they’ll finish the floors and electrics.
Meanwhile the builders will potter around finishing off bits and pieces (like the balcony), but they’re almost done.
In the meantime, we’ve got into a routine of daily dusting and living with 3 pieces of furniture – table and 2 chairs (the children stand respectfully).
How do you like our new kitchen? We saved money by using the materials from the 20 year old original and just shifted it a few meters. I forgot to mention this approach to Rozita who was a little surprised that she wasn’t getting something a little more contemporary. We’ve since had a discussion and agreed to compromise on throwing it all in the bin. She is working with the kitchen suppliers…
We’ve also got a new laundry. Again, I instructed the builders to take a similar approach and it met with a similar compromise…
After a bit of a battle with the builders over all our stuff being in the way we finally managed to remove most of it last weekend. With the temporary kitchen, operational washing machine, limited furniture and restricted electricity and lighting, we’re camping quite nicely. I think we’ll be like this for another 10 days until the walls and ceilings are finished and painted. Then we’ll get the electricity and lights back. After they sand/polish the floors we’ll be able to introduce furniture back. Plus we’ll have a new bathroom by then. We won’t have a proper kitchen or laundry for a couple of months though.
Oh and by the way there’s a dead possum somewhere under our floor. It smells really terrible and we’ve had 100s of those special dead animal flies buzzing around.
A fireplace has been chosen and the builders built a box for it. Also they’ve covered the walls and ceiling.
The builders have also installed the pantry walls (it’s through the doorway on the left).
Prior to this we had a full-on evening packing as much of our stuff as possible as the builders had had enough of constantly moving it out of their way. We hired a container which turned out to be too small so we’ll have to get another one next week.
We’ve barely got lights and internet is flakey. We’ve retained the kitchen so far but we think that’ll be moved tomorrow. Kayvon is getting low on clean socks so hopefully the washing machine will be reinstated temporarily.
After the excitement of moving upstairs on the weekend. Work has already moved fast downstairs. In the space of one day, the innards of our house have been unceremoniously ripped out. Today we lost 3 rooms and gained a large open plan living area.
In the photos you can see from the ceiling where the walls used to be. For the moment our furniture is inaccessible, though there is a freezer (in the living room) and we still have a kitchen (for another day or two). We won’t have a washing machine for a while and the village laundrette has closed so I guess we’ll just wash our clothes in the sea…
Two big things happened today.
1. The carpet guy turned up and laid our carpets this morning. Woo hoo – that was the last major thing to do upstairs.
Carpet
2. We moved upstairs! Yay. A big thanks to Parviz for helping us move the heavy stuff upstairs, despite not feeling well. It took all afternoon and certainly the kids rooms need a lot of sorting out but we’re all going to sleep upstairs for the first time tonight.
We’ve moved up!
Curtains, wardrobes and some bathroom finalisation is still necessary. But it’s all good otherwise and the new carpet is fantastic. Good night :).
Yep. We’ve got stairs. And they work. We had a large number of builders in the house today and 2 or 3 of them installed the stairs in a day. They brought them semi-constructed. They fit perfectly and look great. The horizontal timber needs to be sanded and polished and the vertical panels needs to be painted white. The handrail attached to the wall is a matching timber to the steps but we might remove the top portion as it’s not really necessary.
There’s space for a good-sized cupboard underneath – maybe for bikes and beach/sports stuff.
We took the kids up for the first time today. They went a bit nuts in their usual way but seemed to like their new rooms.
The mayhem downstairs continues. The builders have erected frames that will become the walls for the pantry and bathroom/laundry. In the photo, the window will be in the pantry and the old kitchen will become the bathroom/laundry. The door to the bathroom/laundry is on the far right (back) of the photo and the sliding pantry door is on the left (front).
Speaking of the new kitchen, the guy that was supposed to build our kitchen turns out not to be up to the job so we are looking elsewhere. This pushes our timeline out so we will be pleasantly surprised if our new kitchen is actually installed in March. That also causes a problem for the builder who in theory has to down tools now and come back in a month. Instead he has proposed that he keeps working, laying the floors, building the new rooms and knocking out the main area. That will keep progress going but as he’ll need to knock out the existing kitchen and laundry, he has suggested that he builds a temporary kitchen and laundry for us in their new positions. Sounds good I guess…
Meanwhile the whole family is sick, particularly asthmatics Kayvon and Rozita who are suffering from all the dust. Not an easy time.
The builders are a little over-eager. They removed our bedroom doorway and knocked out a wall to become a new enlarged doorway. Of course this was always the plan – Rozita cleverly came up with the idea of blending the new kids/guest room with the entrance room using an oversized opening. And the builders had to do this before the stairs were fitted as they’ll run alongside where the old door was. However (a) they didn’t need to do it quite so soon (who knows when the stars will turn up); and (b) the could have told us a little in advance so we could avoid everything getting coated in dust!
We’re also having interesting discussions with the builder about the door as it is oversized and expensive and glazed and restricted on space and he didn’t quite realise what he was in for. Stay tuned…
Upstairs is essentially finished other than the floors, wardrobes and stairs. So the builders have been downstairs for over a week. They mostly worked outside, adding windows and installing cladding. But this week they came in. Big time.
Today we acquired a new pole, which is nice. But more importantly they took a jackhammer to our floor tiles. I remember the previous owner showing off about how durable the tiles were and indeed they served us well for 8 years. They caused the builders some strife, hence the unexpected use of the jackhammer. We were told that there wouldn’t be any dust. Rozita will disagree. We’re coated.
So we’re walking on particle-board with lots of holes so the animals can join us (for example a large spider greeted Rozita after dinner). Next they’ll fix some wobbly joists or bearers, even out the floor height throughout the house and then lay the new timber floorboards. We have been assured that the timber doesn’t need to acclimatise for 2 weeks.
The builders weren’t actually supposed to start indoors downstairs until we moved up but because their stair guy has not been forthcoming, they have run out of other work to do.
This is just the start of what is going to be a pretty difficult few weeks…
Scott Renovation 