Front Porch

I've always loved weatherboard houses, in fact I've always loved WHITE weatherboard houses. They just appeal to me. Maybe because they have a bit of character, but I always thought I'd end up in a white weatherboard house....and I have.

I've lived in quite a few places around the country... Tasmania, Sydney and Queensland...but back in Melbourne I feel at home and I think this is probably the last house I'll live in. It's me. It's us.

It is a house though that is forever changing. Sometimes the changes have been huge, with new rooms added...sometimes, subtle.

But changing nonetheless.

I bought the house back in the late 90's before I was married and it looked nothing like this. It was a mustardy/yellow colour. It had bottle green trim. It had an old cracked concrete driveway and a front fence that was made of a strange roofing iron that had been painted bottle green. There was no front porch or deck, just a small concrete landing at the front door...and lots of prickly bushes scattered around the front garden.

The roof was probably the worst though. It was a moulded metal type of thing that was supposed to look like tiles. It didn't. It was ugly. It had to go and it did.

The insides were painted yellow. White ceilings, yellow walls, stained wood trim. Noice!

Now, everything is white. Or off white. Antique White USA to be precise.

There was no heating and no insulation. In fact the walls consisted of a weatherbopard outer layer and a fibrous plaster internal layer. That's it. It was bloody freezing!

This is the latest change. A new front porch. Until recently it was just a deck, and Hubbie was reluctant to "close it in" with posts etc. But he saw a neighbour's efforts and decided it looked good, so off he went and voila. A new front porch

I like it

Keep on keeping on

We love a good renovation around here....so much so that we just keep doing it. The entire house has been transformed. Walls and ceilings have been replaced, walls moved, lino tiles lifted, floors sanded and polished, bathrooms gutted and re-done, roof replaced, chimney's demolished, kitchen gutted and rebuilt, rooms re-located....it's never ending really

This photo shows the newly reduced wall between the kitchen, dining room and loungeroom. The lounge is a strange sort of shape and is quite small, so opening it up by making the dividing wall a little smaller, seems to create the illusion of a larger room.

This photo is from the lounge looking through to the kitchen with my new bench tops and cook top in the alcove.

The lounge room/kitchen renovation is now completed...well, as completed as it will be till we come up with another idea and decide to "tweak" it again

These were taken on my mobile phone when my camera was out of action.

When I bought the house there was no heating and no insulation, so you can imagine just how damn cold it was! I moved in in the middle of Winter, so the cats and I slept on a mattress on the lounge room floor under two doonas! All the walls through the house were painted a lemony yellow...quite bright it was too. The kitchen was black and yellow, with a bit of white thrown in...not nice, unless you're a Richmond supporter.

There was no dining room and no study, so I had them built on.

The ceilings right through the house were sagging terribly and needed replacing, so that's what I had done. I thought I'd be able to live with the crackly fibrous plaster walls, but they eventually had to go too.

Ahh if I'd known then what I know now.....famous last words.

After replacing the ceilings and installing all lovely new cornices, as well as putting insulation right through, we then decided to replace the walls. The task was how to do it without completely destroying the cornice.

We got there...just... A big job, but it gave us the opportunity to put insulation in all of the walls and get some in the ceiling too ... then I had the floors done again, just to tidy them up a bit.

This house, like many others, is a work in progress.... a money pit. But I love it and I love the transformation we've been able to make.

Home Improvement

I've been following the progress of an absolutely gorgeous home that A-M has been building in Brisbane. It really is something to behold, but she's been having a few "issues" with her builder and his painter. You can check out her latest instalment at:

thehousethata-mbuilt.blogspot.com/

Anyway, it got me thinking about all the trials and tribulations of my own renovations over the years. Most have been wonderful experiences (no really, they have)...and I've met some great tradies who have become firm family friends and who have worked on multiple projects for me.

But there have been a few hiccups along the way too.

One case in point was a builder I hired to extend my small house. I had plans drawn up to build on a dining room, study and new bathroom as well as a back deck, but I only wanted it to lock-up stage so I could bring in my own plasterer. Well, tyhis guy's building skills left a lot to be desired and caused some real headaches, especially at the end of his contract. As we were packing the walls to get them square and level so we could hang the plasterboard, we realised that if we'd kept going we would've ended up with a dining room the size of a matchbox...every time we got one wall square, another wall was "out", so we had to re-do the other wall...and so it went as we continued to work around the room in a never ending spiral.

It was quite a challenge knowing when to stop, but in the end we just had to accept that it was never going to be perfect.

Another issue I had was with a painter late last year... I had painted all of the ceilings and walls, but we needed someone to finish off all the woodwork and windows etc.

Not only was this guy slow, he was a grot and even worse, he was a liar!

Apart from making me feel uncomfortable when he was in the house, he decided one afternoon to sand the french doors and architraves with an electric sander, but didn't bother to cover any of the furniture or electrical items like the TV or stereo. When I came home, I also noticed that, not only was my lounge room shrouded in a haze of fine dust, he'd sanded a small section of floor (that I'd recently had polished) where he thought he'd left a spot of paint. When I challenged him about it he denied all knowledge...and as I was getting angrier with him he told me to "be quiet and let him have his say.

As you can imagine, his time with us was not long

There's no real moral to this story...it really can be trial and error when it comes to bringing strangers into your home to perform tasks that you're unable or unqualified to do. The only advice I can offer is to get recommendations from friends or check out local suppliers like plumbing and timber stores or lighting shops to get them to give you some names of reliable tradespeople. That's how I found my cabinet maker and plasterer.

Have you had any major issues with tradespeople in the past?

The finished product

The driveway and front path are finished. A new tree's been planted in the spot where another old crab apple had to be removed. We put in a Crepe Myrtle. Lovely.

...and I can't begin to describe the difference it's made to the front of the house

Some lights have been installed on the front gate and some sandstone paving has also been laid outside the gate to the footpath

I'll get some more grass seed to fill in the gaps.

Lovely.