First Renovation project!

We have been in the house for a week and already we have made some changes!
First we changed the locks on the exterior doors and had them keyed alike. Nothing like knowing you hold the only keys to your home.

When my mum sold her house and moved to China, she forgot to tell one of her old time friends. This friend kept going to the old house for over 6 months trying to catch-up. Thankfully she had lost the key ma had given her, or she would have let herself in!!!

I had nightmares of this happening with us, so it was definitely the first thing I wanted to do. Now I sleep soundly knowing only the people we give keys to can get in.

We also, while we were changing door knobs, put locks on both the toilet and bathroom doors, since no one likes getting caught with their pants down, haha!

The first real renovation task we did was painting the orange backsplash. Orange and black mottled, textured tile. Awesome and modern in the 70's-80's, but definitely not so now. Along with the exposed brick, it made the place look very dark and moody, especially at night.

Thanks to the lovely pinterest, I discovered a while ago, that it is possible to paint tiles! So I thought, why not! We looked up a few how to's and decided to go for it.

Before shots of the kitchen:

Here in Australia, we have the White Knight system for painting tiles and laminate surfaces. Three products for the system are Tile and laminate cleaner, tile and laminate primer and tile paint.

Basically, you clean the tiles, prime them, sand, paint, sand, paint again. It cost us about $100 for the products above as well as sand paper, painters tape, a brush and microfiber roller and tray.

 

Because the grout moved straight onto exposed brick, clean lines were an issue, since painters tape can't help. We did the best we could and we will tidy it up with a smaller brush.

This is the first coat of primer. It looks rough as guts, and we were nervous that the orange would still bleed through, but we were now committed to action!

The first coat of primer was interesting to put on, since it took so much paint to cover everything. I went along with the paint brush heavily loaded and made sure the grout was covered, then my other half, Michael came through with the roller and neatened up the brush marks. Since the tiles were textured I had to cover the surfaces with the brush since the roller missed have the dips. It is just lucky that they were so small that smooshing paint into the grout meant I got most of the tiles anyway.

The second coat went on much easier, much to our relief. The primer is cream, but we went with white top coat, but that didn't seem to affect it much at all.

The top coat was interesting. It was thick and sticky to paint. It went on tacky like how half dried paint feels. It was very challenging. Once again, it took a lot of paint to make sure we got everywhere and it didn't spread very well at all. We used the same process of Me brushing and Michael rolling out for a smooth finish.

Once we had finished we came to realise a horrible and rookie mistake. We had forgotten to read the label and it was oil based paint... We needed mineral turpentine to clean the brush, roller and tray (as well as my hands)!

We had none and if we did it would probably have still been packed in a box!! Michael had to rush down to the hardware store while I tried not to touch anything!

We got the turps and cleaned it all off, and we waited... The product says give four hours to dry (2 to touch dry). We hit 12 hours and it was still sticky! It took almost 30 hours to dry and by this time we decided that the coat we did, which was probably thick, was enough. We had to peel off the painters tape, and we caulked the gaps between the tiles and the bench top with white silicone.

We are very happy with the improvement and we will finish the touching up later, but for now we need the kitchen back!

Here are some after shots!

We definitely recommend it to anyone who can't afford the money or time to re-do their  entire kitchens, but want to update or change the look!

More projects to come!!

Ashley

Moving!

There is nothing like that sold sticker on the sign that tells the world "I bought this place!!!"

The big day came and went! I write this as we sit in our new home of a week. We are sorting out the little kinks that always come with 'new' houses.

The water heater is a gravity fed, which means we have no shower pressure :( First world problem, I know!


I must admit, it has been quite stressful, getting everything done on time. At 4:45pm on the Monday, 10 days before the settlement date, we found out that probate hadn't gone through for the vendors, since it is a deceased estate. Basically, we were told the house couldn't be sold until it did. Needless to say there was no sleeping that night!! I spent the next day on the phone freaking out, since no one thought to tell us that we could possibly not have a home! Probate was granted exactly a week before settlement, which was a relief to us!


 To add insult to injury, my darling other half spent weeks refusing everybody's help to move, stating "we can do it on our own, we'll be fine"... Meanwhile in the background, I could have strangled him! After speaking to him rather un-calmly and giving him a tour of our real house, we accepted any and all offers to help.

Weeks out I started packing up boxes and going through our monumentous amount of stuff. It is amazing just how much we have collected in the three years we have lived together! As many moving tips suggest- packing is the perfect time to look at all of your possessions and decide whether or not to keep it.

I honestly think 21 big garbage bags worth of stuff left my house, to both the bin and the Vinnies (an Australian thrift shop).

This was the first of about 3 loads to the thrift shop. Lots more went into the bin over a few weeks. The lamp I got from an old boss over 3 years ago who was giving it away... It never even got a light bulb or plugged in!

The boxes also started piling up, lovingly nicknamed Mt. Boxmore. Which took up our guest bedroom. Oscar, the devilish little boy loved all the nooks and crannies that were created and even found a way to climb them!

While doing the dishes one night I heard a mewing coming from the room, and it sounded a bit suspicious. Upon investigation I found this...

Little Bugger is on the guest bed we had upturned to make room for Boxmore! This was about 2 weeks before the move, and MT Boxmore grew to about double this size!!

We had 13 people help us on moving day and a truck we hired. Boy am I glad himself listened to reason! The boxes were loaded in less than 20 minutes and a majority of the move took 5 hours!

We are still unpacking slowly- it is so hard to be motivated when there are still a million boxes to unpack after this one...

My fingers are itching to start renovating to help make this house feel like home!